Tuesday, April 15, 2025

This is the twenty-second installment of West Wind, your daily drop of thoughts, ideas, and info for this Season. Currently the wind is blowing toward the topic of scarcity.

Scarcity has been on my mind for a while now, even during our yearly watching of The Muppet Christmas Carol (the best adaptation, I will fight for this). I know it’s not the right time of year to be discussing a seasonal work like this, but by the time Christmas rolls around again, I’ll have forgotten about it. So we’re here now. In the story, the Ghost of Christmas Present struck me as being perhaps the most important of the three journeys that Scrooge goes through, since the overflowing abundance that the spirit presents is the direct antithesis to Scrooge’s miserly attitude. In the movie and in most adaptations, the spirit is shown with a large feast in Scrooge’s house, but in the book they then go out into the street and the abundance of the nearby stores is described in detail as well; all the food and gifts that are meant to be shared with everyone.

Scrooge wants for nothing in his life, has every material comfort that can be had, but is scarce on friends and companionship. By viewing the Christmas celebrations of the Crachits and of his family, both of which are in the opposite situation, rich in connections and scarce in material goods, he can better learn what is truly important. People aren’t happy because they have enormous feasts and every comfort before them. They thrive when they have less and make more out of what they do have.

We live in a rural area, where families have lived almost since this country was founded. Cemeteries are full of headstones all bearing the same names, and people have been around here for quite a while. One of the side effects of these deep roots, coupled with the farming mentality, is the people have a lot of stuff. There are property auctions regularly around here, not only for the land or house but everything in it too. Farm equipment, tools, clothes, dishware, knick-knacks, tchotchkes, all sorts of things that the family has collected over the years. These are then sold off to the highest bidder, so that people can continue to have them and then presumably include them in another auction later on.

This is a strange situation for me, since after moving nearly twenty times over the history of our family, we barely have enough stuff to fill our house and the small shed nearby. We moved to Indiana with a 22-foot moving truck and it was only half full. While this has made us highly mobile, it also means we haven’t been able to handle some projects around the property for not having the correct tools, and we’ve had to make up for it. So I don’t know that there’s really a best way.