Johnny Appleseed, Guest blogger
A good day and graces upon you, my fine American friend. My name is John Chapman, though your kin and kind might better know me by what my friends call me, Johnny Appleseed. That name was given to me because when I was a youth, I planted many an apple tree in this great land of ours, and helped encourage the prosperity and well-being of a good number of my god-fearing countrymen. I did this because it was clearly god's will that the land be full and lush, and our people live well upon it.
Great woe came unto me recently when, in reading this most commendable of [ed.:Blogs], I learned that this most esteemed, American company known as Peeled Snacks had recently purchased IMPORTED apples. How dissappointing that Peeled Snacks, this sterling example of American can-do, being so concerned, like me, with the health and wellbeing of country and countrymen, should stoop to buying un-patriotic apples. In protest, I immediately arose from the grave and wrote the company to give them a piece of my long-dead but freshly angered mind.
Though the owners of Peeled Snacks did see fit to deal with me politely, respectfully, and concientiously, they allayed my anger not at all. Rather, they deflected it, ricocheting it away from them and towards their government (not MY government, as the deceased are not eligible to vote). Things I learned from them about policies and practices in this day and age that sent my old bones, built by Gods hands and made with the strength of apples, a-quivering with rage.
All my hard work so many years ago, planting orchard after orchard of apple trees, bringing health and wealth to the land, has nearly come to naught. Apples, so truly American a thing, as American as the Stars and Stripes or the musket, seem now to be too expensive to PICK! The cost of having a man or woman take that truely sweet gift of God from the the tree surpasses what the apple will earn in the local marketplace, making an apple's harvest unprofitable!
To this I ask, just what MAKES a profit? Is it the amount pocketed at day's end? Is it perhaps a year's cumulation counted come the Yuletide season's calm? Or is its calculation less concrete, needing perhaps to take in a longer term, a broader consideration, a deeper consequence, and a less certain or quantifiable "profit"?
Though I'm not a betting man, I'll wager that every apple brought from across an ocean, that every FOOD brought from afar, earns no money at all. The cost of shipping it, surely, has been calculated considering the price of the "gas" used in shipping. But what of the price of the "gassing"? What of the cost of cleaning up the effect of the shipmentupon the sea, upon the air?
What of the cost of rotting and spoilage and tarrifs? What of the cost of finding new jobs for the apple pickers? What of the political cost- of the wrangling and arguments with foreign dignitaries, the price of managing the ports, of the wars fought for the oil that steams the apples homeward?
But more than anything, more than any price attributable to a mere apple, what of the cost to the land? Should an apple tree be felled, what will take its place? I see across this great land (STILL great in spite of any contrary words), where orchards once shaded quiet lanes and walking places, grossly bloated houses now dwell: houses with many times more rooms than people, as if a man no longer needs the space in which he dwells, but needs also the space he can imagine filling with one hundred ghosts that serve him, though he be but a ghostless, servantless man.
This price I cannot calculate with an abacus, but I contend, nay I GUARANTEE, that this cost is far, far greater than any profit gleaned from foreign apples. Let the growers abroad eat their own apples, and let us eat ours savoring each sweet bite for its pure American taste and nourishment allotted by the thought of the Allmighty. Let us eat our own apples, grown in our own lands- the lands of my father and the children of my kin.
Are these apples not sweet enough?
