Sept 26/2001



Yesterday I dug potatoes. I started at the edge of the beds and worked in;
the potatos revealed themselves in unexpected ways, rolling up out of the
dark earth in clusters. We planted too many, they were sqeezed together,
each fighting with the next for space, so we have a lot of small ones. I
sift them out and stack them by the side. Later I take them to the barn and
spread them out on an old blanket; they need to dry out before we store
them. Today I'll put them in heavy-duty paper feed sacks and place them in
a box where they'll keep all winter.

Yesterday evening I met Doug at the gate. He likes to talk about potatoes.
And sheep. And the weather. Sheep, the weather, and potatoes. He hasn't,
this year, had much luck with his potatos. Terrible time, he says, shaking
his head. Slugs and too much rain. Little potatos this size.

He holds up his thumb.

I nod my head and say, that's a shame.
Yes it is, he says. Surely is. Love a nice potato. Nothing better than a
potato.
I agree.

Used to be, he says, we'd grow more than we could eat. And that was for a
family of five. We'd have potatoes all winter and summer too. Every meal.
'Course this was back when. We'd make what we used to call a Trump.
He explains what a Trump is: a shallow pit in the ground lined with straw -
potatoes on that, more straw, finally a layer of earth. The earth keeps them
dry, the straw keeps them from freezing. And when they needed a potato, it
was out to the Trump. I tell him I put mine in paper sacks in the barn.
That works too, he says.

I don't know whether or not to tell him that we've had a good crop, I don't
want him to feel bad about his own potato failure. Finally I tell him.
He's pleased. Nothing, he says, better than a potato.
I think about that all the way home. Nothing better than a potato.

I've overwatered Loraine's pansies and killed them. The dirt turned to mud
and the roots rotted. She's not happy about it. I've also neglected to
pick the runner beans.

For the past week I've seen the Trade Centers blow up and crumble,
miraculously reassemble themselves, get blown up and crumble again so many
times I feel like it happened next door, not somewhere I used to live,
thousands of miles across the ocean. I've seen hundreds of planes hit
hundreds of Trade Centers. I've seen millions of people running for safety.
I've seen rubble appear, disappear, appear again. I've listened to endless
hours of gossip, hearsay, hysteria and panic.

And I've watched with a sad sense of inevitability America's response to the
bombings. America has acted, as it always does, with wide-eyed shock, like
an innocent, spoilt child. I watched the memorial service in Yankee
Stadium, a shocking display of military/ patriotic fervour that was chilling
in its mindlessness, during which I heard, seven times, the phrase
'unprovoked attack'. How can America persist in this shameful act of
national amnesia? America is, without even a close rival, the biggest
worldwide dealer in arms, the biggest supporter of terrorist organizations -
in Afganistan, in Africa, in Central America, in Asia, in every corner of
the world. It's incredible that I haven't heard any American politician say
what Bush should have said the first day - that this is our fault. We armed
these people, we trained them, we escalated the arms race, we treated them
shamefully, we used them for our own ends and then deserted them - we call
them names, we humiliate them, we leave their country in ruins, we use
consumerism as a global tool so we can dominate and control them. Untill
America, and the majority of Americans, realize that this wasn't an
unprovoked attack and that America must, like any child, take responsibility
for its actions, there won't be any rest from unrest.

A society based on cash and self-interest is not a society at all, but a
state of war. - William Morris

The business of America is business. - Calvin Coolidge

America is once again open for business! - Robert Giuliani at the reopening
of the stock exchange last week

We've been doing some recording in a small studio in Wales. Wayne, Chris,
Jim, Jenny, Ewan and Loraine. So far so good. Sitting in a room playing
songs. The studio is perfect - remote and lovely, a small converted barn at
the far end of a valley. Outside sheep and cattle loiter at the fence, rain
threatens, the days are cool.

On Monday Ewan and Wayne record a track with Greg. Ewan calls and tells me
it was a big success. I ask him how it sounds and he says fine. I say
fine? and he says better than fine. Beautiful.

I tell him that's good. That's what I want to hear. Beautiful. That's
good. Beautiful is a good thing. Beautiful is what we want. Beautiful is
what we need.


Beautiful is what we all need.




jeb loy