Primer for a gardener

      Primer for a gardener

 

            Pure is the rose

            child of light

            serene and perfect

            in my sight.

 

And I would surround myself with purity,

the world and man being trammeled as they are.

 

Therefore have I caused

all ordure, rot and filth to be removed,

the land unsullied,

that roses,

nought but roses

might abound,

fitting fruit

of this cleansed

and sober ground.

 

Yet this sweet dream,

as all my select plantings,

will not yield.

And roses have I

not a one.

 

Purity, it seems, won’t  show its face

Where imperfection also has no place.

 

                        Chuck Merrill

                        (revised) 10.Mar.05

Modest Proposal

To: Editorial Pages, Lexington Herald-Leader

Rep. Damron has a point about guns on campus. The only trouble is, his bill doesn’t go far enough. Hence my own modest proposal. It has 2 parts.

1. The state issues to every resident over the age of 13 the firearm of his choice plus several hundred rounds of ammo, total cost per person not to exceed, say, $400.00.
2. Make every fourth weekend in the year open season on “extra persons.”

With these 2 simple provisions, unimaginable numbers of the world’s most aggravating problems would, in amazingly short order, be reduced both in number and in degree of complexity. Think about it this way.

There is near unanimity among experts that overpopulation is mankind’s overall most pressing worry. Almost certainly, it lies at the heart of nearly every other problem facing us. There are simply way too many people. And they keep multiplying, no matter what. Nothing we have tried heretofore—not war, drought, starvation, poverty; nor legal executions, plain old neighborhood feuds and street killings; not even the organized mayhem on every street and road in the land: not all this together has made even a tiny dent in the ever-worsening overburdening of the earth’s diminishing resources by too many people. Even though we readily recognize there are too many of us, we do nothing about it. Isn’t it time to bite the bullet, as it were, and take steps? Of course. With fewer people to feed, clothe, house, employ, educate, etc., etc., we would automatically have more of everything we value most.

With my proposal, in perhaps as little as a single year, the herd could be thinned very substantially almost across the board—including on campuses big and small. (After all, why should schools be exempt from what already happens everywhere else?) Overpopulation would, in very short order, cease to be any sort of concern at all.

There is one troublesome legal/ethical question: who counts as an ‘extra person’? Luckily, this issue would also quite handily be solved in the process of carrying out the proposal. Obviously, anyone who doesn’t survive open season must have been ‘extra’—and thus by definition dispensable. Though we may have our differences about evolution, we all, I think, basically agree that survival should go to the fittest. Folks who don’t make it through open season just aren’t that fit, are they?

Moreover: with my plan, those who do make it through have automatically learned very necessary things. Not the least of these would be: the essentials of gun care and use, keeping your powder dry, taking really careful aim, and the like. Additionally, people would gain a better appreciation for solid survival skills, not merely in the wild, but also in the workplace, in malls, on the street, in the home—and, of course, on campus.

Furthermore, we would resolve a tricky fact of foreign policy and international relations that has plagued us for centuries—namely, that we keep trying to act as if we were better, more ethical/moral than other folks. My plan would immediately place us at minimum on the same footing with huge portions of the world—much of the Middle East, for instance, as well as large parts of Africa, Asia, South America, and other, smaller places. Pretty soon, the whole world would be on the exact same footing—for in this, as in so many other things, we would be taking the lead and showing the way. We do, of course, still pride ourselves on our leadership role, don’t we? Well, isn’t it time to really lead? Certainly. Extreme situations call for bold initiatives.

Some, to be sure, might worry about the cost of supplying all these guns. Fageddaboudit. With my plan, a decade at most should, I estimate, be sufficient to eradicate virtually all problems of whatever sort pertaining to mankind. There just won’t be any anymore.

At this time, man can finally stand tall and assume his rightful place in Creation as the most resolutely mindless predator ever to walk this old earth.

 

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