Chapter 13 — Things Devolve in the City / Things Evolve in the Country
A serial novel in the form of correspondence among a family while the world as we know it collapses around us. I recommend you start at the Introduction:
https://readmedium.com/climate-for-change-introduction-5331d5ab9313
But you can start anywhere you want.
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Chapter 13:
Website chatbox (All communications translated from Bulgarian):
Dear Grandpa,
Wow! I am excited to hear about the gift economy. Mom has the people on our block doing something similar. We have decided to pool our skills and assets. There are people who have a lot of extra clothing, and there are newcomers who arrived with nothing. Now everyone has enough warm clothes for the winter. There are people who are unable to shovel the snow on their sidewalks. We organized a crew to do the whole block when it snows. I am on the crew, and it is like a party. We always have a snowball fight, too! Mom let people on the block know about our big freezer full of meat. It didn’t seem right to hide it anymore. Now, once a week we have a big potluck, and everyone salivates over the meat dish that Mom cooks up. We also included the soldiers who are stationed at the park in our meetings and potlucks. We know all their names and they certainly don’t seem as scary as they once did.
Our block has a committee formed to convert all of the yards into a sort of collective urban farm. Our goal is to grow a lot of our own food next summer to add to the rations. Melody is on that committee. She came home yesterday talking all about propagating fruit trees from rootstock and cuttings and adding organic matter to the soil. I did not recognize my little sister. She said that the committee is going to find a rooster to mate with our backyard hens so we can raise a big neighborhood flock and have eggs for the whole block. The soldiers are building a greenhouse in the park, so that in the spring we will all have transplants to plant into our gardens. Mel thinks we can get the soldiers to help us build more chicken coops, too.
Daisy and Jeremy and I are gathering ideas for our second issue of VeRU. Our first issue was a big hit with our friends. It also kept disappearing from the back rows of public transportation, so I think other people are reading it, too. We printed another 200 copies of the first issue and distributed them in the same way. It was exhilarating and terrifying to try to leave them without getting caught.
Today General Stewart sent out a text message declaring ownership of cigarettes illegal. He acknowledged that many people were addicted to nicotine, and those who needed it could get the gum or the patch at any military center, but he said that the black market, which mostly uses cigarettes for currency, must be stopped. It is a drain on the hard-working people who participate in the formal economy, he said. He also outlawed the burning of firewood, saying that it is unsustainable. We are told to report any smell of woodsmoke to our neighborhood soldiers.
I am not sure if the 20 cases of cigarettes that Mom, Melody, and I have accumulated are worth more or less after General Stewart’s decree. Maybe the fact that they were outlawed has made them rise in value. Maybe since they are illegal, they won’t be useful as currency. In either case, it is a little weird that in the same month that he made recreational use of marijuana legal to gain the hearts and minds of the people, he goes and loses the masses by making tobacco cigarettes illegal. I do agree about the firewood ban though; the clean air we just recovered by the ban on fossil fuels was starting to get worse because of all the soot from wood fires. And now that the forests in the city have been stripped bare of dead wood, I hear that people had been stealing the wood siding off of people’s houses to burn.
In research for VeRU, Jeremy and I rode our bikes over to the General’s mansion today. There is a rumor that people go into the mansion and never come out. There is also a rumor that he likes teenage girls. We watched from a block away, while we pretended to play football in a side street. It was cold, and we hardly saw anyone go in or out of the building. It was a chilly stake-out with no results. Tomorrow we will try again.
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Dear Benji,
We have a landline telephone again! At this point we can only talk to other people within the confederated townships, but we are hopeful that soon we will figure out a way to call into the cell phone network. Your grandmother and I would love to hear your voices! There are also many people out here who have had no news from their families who are trapped in the city.
This week I instructed the militia to visit every house and take a census. There are many people out here who haven’t been to the meetings at the church or even heard of the meetings or anything about what we are doing. Some are old timers, who have just sort of hunkered down, and others are clearly squatters who have come in from elsewhere and occupied someone’s vacant house. We welcomed everyone to join the township’s community. Most seemed pleased to have people looking out for them. Many are running low on food. We didn’t kick any squatters out, but we did tell them that we know they are squatting and that when the troubles are over, we expect them to give the house and land back to the rightful owners. We also asked them to abide by our hunting regulations. We were well armed, and almost all the people we met on the census tour met us with firearms in their hands. Usually when they saw who we were and that we just came to talk, they invited us into their houses. We always brought a thermos of coffee and fresh cream, which seemed to smooth things over. Usually, people offered us some small item of food, although if they didn’t, we never took offense.
On our census visits, we always invite people to come to our Sunday gatherings. Most come at 10 a.m. for church, but those who prefer to worship (or not) in their own way will come at noon. We always have a good potluck, followed by our version of the gift economy in action. People who have an abundance of something bring it to give away. People who have the most need are asked to take first from the pile of goods, and then those of us who are doing a little better can graze through the pile. It is not just food. People bring furniture that they have made or clothes they don’t need. There is one guy who sits in the corner and fixes small engines for people. After the exchange of gifts, we usually have a “skill share” session. We ask people who have a skill to share to give lessons for others. We have had cooking sessions as well as any number of sessions on what you would call “survival skills.” I always learn something. I led one session last week on how to turn all those soybeans we have into tofu. Not very well attended, but there are a few people out there who were pleased to learn how to make it.
The EBG said today that a large flotilla of boats arrived in Florida today from Cuba. The hurricanes hit Cuba very hard, and people joined the flotilla to leave Cuba hoping for a better life. The EBG person was with the flotilla when they landed, just south of Miami. They said the city was completely abandoned, with no evidence of electricity or running water. Most places in Miami look like a ghost town, but the EBG reported that there are squatters living throughout the city, and there were reports of gunfights between squatters and the arriving Cubans. At first, there was no sign of the U.S. military except for drones, but the second day Coast Guard ships came and started shooting at arriving boats, and helicopters dropped commando teams to seek out the people who had already landed. The EBG reporters surrendered to the Circle troops and that was the end of the broadcast.
That is all for now. We are looking forward to Thanksgiving this week because we are going to have a huge feast for the whole community. It is also finally deer hunting season, and our township folks are anxious to go out and get their deer. I can’t blame them. I’m looking forward to some venison chili myself.
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Dear Grandpa,
Our second issue of VeRU went out yesterday. Jeremy wrote a story about the metro fence. I wrote about the union movement in coal mines in the 1800’s for the history corner. Daisy went to the train station and interviewed people getting off of a train from Chicago. She wrote a piece about how Chicago is being run differently than the Twin Cities. We included a short section about the Cubans landing in Florida. I wrote about the gift economy on our block, but I didn’t mention our family’s meat freezer. In the community events section, we included a bunch of bogus events again, which hid a coded invitation to protest next week with the “Mothers of the Disappeared” in front of General Stewart’s mansion. We met a small group of them the last time we staked-out the mansion, and we asked if we could help. They need visibility above all else, they said.
It was a big week for underground newspapers. My friends from the soccer team know that Jeremy and I wrote VeRU. They keep showing up at the park with other underground media to show us. There are “zines,” with comic-style artwork and messages of resistance. There are anti-Stewart posters, and there are several other small newspapers, similar to ours. When Daisy went to the train station to interview people, she was given some underground newspapers from Chicago and St. Louis. It feels good to be part of the free-speech movement.
Thanksgiving is coming for us, too. Our block has decided to do a big potluck. Nobody has any turkey, but Mom has promised to roast the last few chickens from our freezer. The Circle has provided extra rations for this week, and the stores seem full of food they haven’t had in a while, including butter. I’m really looking forward to our neighbor’s pie crusts made with real butter. I’m not sure how people will do this Thanksgiving without aluminum foil, which has been banned by General Stewart for obvious reasons.
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Dear Benjamin,
I hope your Thanksgiving meal was as good as mine. I can tell you that we probably had a lot more meat! There was venison and plenty of turkey, and someone roasted a whole pig as well. People were trying to outdo each other! There were potatoes three ways, as well as sweet potatoes that one neighbor grew. Someone even went out and foraged wild cranberries. I didn’t even know there were wild cranberries around here. There were many winter squash dishes, as well as a lot of Brussels sprouts. One farmer had dehydrated wild mushrooms this past summer, and she brought a mushroom stuffing that was to die for. Our community is completely out of cane sugar, but we have plenty of maple syrup and honey, so all desserts were sweetened with that smoky-flavored homemade maple syrup or delicious local honey. There were mostly pumpkin and apple pies, but folks made cakes and cookies too. I brought a barrel of hard cider made from our honeycrisp tree, and it was gone in an hour. I have never been more grateful for a Thanksgiving.
I think I can guess where your real butter came from on Thanksgiving. I think your General Stewart is making deals with farmers. Yesterday a helicopter flew into the township and landed right in our field. Out popped several armed soldiers. They waved and said that they wanted to talk. I’m glad they landed in my field and not any of my neighbors’. I don’t think my neighbors would have waited to find out that they just wanted to talk. They are more of a “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality. Anyway, after we all put the guns down, there was a man in a uniform with a bunch of medals who walks out from the helicopter. He walks confidently over and offers his hand to shake. He introduces himself as none other than the famous General Stewart. He said that his intelligence said that the warlord of this area lives on this site, and he wondered if I could take him to meet him. You see, I don’t think I looked much like a warlord. I was in my worn-out coveralls and covered in shit from mucking out the dairy barn, and with my gray beard and ragged orange hat, I don’t think I presented that imposing of a front.
I told him that I was no warlord, but if he wanted to meet the sheriff of the township, he was looking at him. General Stewart warmed up considerably when he learned that I was “in charge” out here. He had brought gifts for us, including small bags of white rice and white flour, which he made a great ceremony out of presenting to us. The condescension was dripping off of him. I accepted the gifts with as much astonishment as I could offer, given that I had a full grain bin of wheat, and our Native neighbors to the north had traded us a big bag of wild rice last week.
I think he expected us to be living like wild animals out here. I was sorry to disappoint him. I think I have actually put on a little weight since the coup, with all the visiting I have to do as sheriff. He came to offer us a deal. I did my best not to betray how well we are doing. I don’t think we are nearly as desperate as he thinks we are, and I want him to think that he is negotiating from a place of strength for as long as possible. I think he needs us more than we need him. They have probably figured out that they need farms and farmers to feed all of the people in the cities.
Here is the deal he offered: he wants to bring the rural areas back into the organized U.S.A. He was sorry about the lack of electricity, cell phone reception, and fuel; this was all directed by the Circle, which doesn’t understand the situation out here in the Midwest, he said. If it were up to him, he would lift the travel ban tomorrow. He said he was authorized to offer that we could sell food to the city and be paid back in items that we need. He asked for a list of things we need. He said that in exchange for this trade relationship, we could stay on our farms, but we would all need to register as Certified Rural People, and every one of us would need to get the chip implant that you all have in the city. We would also all need to register our firearms and turn them into local military offices. He said we could check out our guns for each hunting season. He said that once we register as CRP’s and turned in our guns, we would likely get more than just trade. I think he was hinting that he might restore the power grid and the Internet or allow travel to the city, but he didn’t say. I told him we would think about it. He said to look for a helicopter next week. I sent a message out to all of the sheriffs in the nearby counties, to not make any deals with Stewart until we could get together and decide what to do.
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Dear Grandpa,
Today is the day of the protest at General Stewart’s mansion. Wish me luck in getting a good story for VeRU!
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Next chapter: https://readmedium.com/chapter-14-mother-of-a-disappeared-c2f936867e1d
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