Losing your fingerprints

He is checking his faculty mailbox. The mailboxes are a series of squares made of some butter colored wood, stained with years of newsprint, memeographs and fingers of professors and college students.

His expertise is philosophy. We talked that fine North Carolina autumn day about the Turing test -- some esoteric measure of a machine's ability to think and be human. It's a topic he's woven into his lecture, he tells me. 

I am 24. He is heading towards 80. 

My thoughts are, mainly, about what can I do to get ahead, make the boss happy, make a name for myself, find love. Mostly, find love. I am past college now. A fine school. 

But, I am learning now, in this conversation.

All these years between  now and then, I am in that moment. 

That lesson at a college I am not attending but working for, selling my expertise in writing, communicating and marketing. 

I am his student in that moment.

Sun comes in through the dusty  window. His glasses, plain black plastic rims and lenses, are not the cleanest. His eyes are old man eyes. Brown going steel-gray.

I wonder what he made of me in my rush to fill the faculty mailboxes with a flyer on some insignificant meeting about some not-very-important project to promote the college to newspaper reporters -- my concoction.

He's struggling to get the papers out of his box.

"You know, Mark, someday you'll wear out your fingerprints."

Today, in a meeting with farmers struggling to make ends meet, I noticed I was having a hard time handing out copies of a report I thought might be useful to them. Rubbing my thumb to my index finger I feel a definite lack of a fingerprint.

Peepers

This sound is as pure a welcome to spring as I know.

We heard it today, on a walk through Western Shore woods.

And, I wondered, if when we came home to this place east of the Bay

the Peepers would be here.

Like they always are come earliest of early spring.

They were. With moon rising and Carolina tagging Duke with another loss in that old basketball battle as we tumble toward a time when the the weeping willow takes on its green and the hard ground turns soft and mellow, again.

Soon the Peepers will be joined by a full chorus.

The Carbon Conversation

"Carbon sequestration."

"Open space."

"Less pavement."

I am in an strategic planning session. A group of very smart people from as many different backgrounds and occupations as there are people gather in this big room and discuss what can be done to improve the outlook for fruit and vegetable growers in the Mid-Atlantic. For today's purposes, Mid-Atlantic ranges from New York to Virginia. This small subset of the bigger group, some 60 of them, talks about how do fruit and vegetable farmers and the surrounding industry improve the environment and benefit from their positive environmental impact.

I've been at this work of talking with and helping farmers of every sort for almost 20 years now. 

Something feels different about this time. Somehow, all this attention being paid to where food comes from has people ready to listen to farmers and buy from and find ways to connect with the land and these stewards of the land.

In fact, in this little group, farmers are heros. They are feeding us and saving the earth, going at that carbon reduction that will slow global warming and make a commitment to a future that none of us will enjoy, but our children and grandchildren may. 

Food miles. That's an idea thrown out from a farmer. Let's get people talking about and understanding food miles and our carbon footprint. What does it all mean? How far does your food travel. What does that mean? Somehow, we all know, that closer is better. That food from a farmer who is keeping that field across the street productive and alive is better than a field across the street from someone else far, far away. It's a more complicated issue than that. But, at least people are paying attention now to where their food comes from.

This is a good time to be alive and digging this.