Cornucopia

Grocery shopping is done. I wandered around the store, marveling at the huge assortment of products available to us in America. Tomatoes from Italy, olive oil from Spain, cheese from France, anchovies from Tunisia, the list seems infinite. Miracle of miracles, I found dried buttermilk. It has always bothered me to purchase a quart of buttermilk to get one cup and then have the rest spoil in the container. I got home and then performed the usual shopping day ritual, spaghetti and meatballs. Thank you Lidia, you must have learned from old Mrs. Tocci, just as my Mother did.
There are constant references to the new global economy. Business has gone global. Stocks, bonds, manufacturing, and resources are intertwined in a global network now. I don't think that they were the beginnings of a global economy. The silk road is thousands of years old. The trade in salt, which I learned about in a book given to me by an angel, is even older. The Basques fished for codfish off of Newfoundland in the early sixteenth century. Spain concentrated on precious metals and stones from the New World and that trade destroyed their way of life. They went from the most powerful nation in Europe to an inflation ridden afterthought. The Italians took the products of the New World, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, corn, and salted codfish, to heart and that way of life endures to today. The United States prides itself on the assembly line, steel , and invention but what were we before the self-scouring plow opened up the Great Plains to wheat and corn? The wheat was brittle and couldn't be harvested in large quantities until a cultivar from a small town in Russia was discovered to hold on to it's berries during harvesting. There has long been a global economy, based on food and shelter. What else do humans need? Instead of countries trading bombs and bullets over disagreements, the trade in food makes much more sense. Almost every culture has recognized the concept of one Creator. The conflicts arise from small men arguing over dotting the i's and crossing the t's.
America is a country, not a nation. We need a government that will bring us together as a nation. We could be the world's cook rather than the world's bully. Someone once said, I think that it was Eisenhower, that "The people of the world want peace, sooner or later the governments of the world are going to have to step aside and let them have it.".
I am up early and melancholy thoughts race through my head. I am fearful about the world that my generation is leaving to my children and grandchildren. It is not the world that our parents left to us. We have reaped the bounty of the New World and squandered it. One billion dollars for a bomber? How many homeless people could that house? How much corn could that bomber drop on Darfur? I will stay where I am, reading, cooking, and enjoying the bounties of this Earth. I don't think that many wars have been started in a kitchen or a library. I intend to enjoy the bounty of Tunisia this morning.