For the midsummer rite I'm going to be involved in leading later this weekend, our group will be honoring the Norse god Thor, particularly in his role as defender of the crops and common people. He would be a welcome presence right now, in a time with lots of enemies to keep at bay, and also in the middle of a local dry spell that has me concerned about water supplies for both humans and plants. Thor is the subject of many myths (which have nothing to do with Marvel, I might add), and a strikingly large percentage of them involve some complex adventure which ends with a WHOMP! from Mjollnir. This song thus highlights a few of those myths for your listening entertainment.
Imagine, or select from the news, some terrible crime that has occurred somewhere in the world. People may have been killed. Property has been damaged. What would be an appropriate response?
One meaning of the season of Beltaine not often understood by modern folks, who are used to food just kind of appearing at restaurants and groceries, is that historically by this time of year it was not uncommon for people to be running low on food or even be starving. In a well-managed home where nothing had gone wrong, there was food into the spring, but this was really the season where you found out whether last fall's harvest was going to be enough to keep you going. And to make matters worse, food preservation techniques weren't what they are now with refrigeration, so rot was a real problem. This all meant that around this time of year, an average person was eagerly awaiting fresh vegetables, and the Beltaine celebration is in part about seeing the signs of fertility and growth that tell us that we'll be able to eat fresh food and won't starve to death in the next few months.
In the first installment, I laid out the general case for money not really working for its intended purposes. In this, I'm going to go far more in-depth on why money doesn't really do what classical economists think it does for a key component of what an economy is supposed to do, namely getting goods and services to the people who need or want them.
This song started with a simple observation: Despite all the trouble with Covid-19, my daffodils were still blooming right on schedule, trees were budding, birds were migrating back to the area, and the world was still warming up. This gave me a comfort that I badly needed, and I wanted to share that comfort in song form.