American Jars for American Jobs (I’ll admit it, I’m a secessionist.)

In so many ways the fourth of July reminds me of the challenges of existing in a world so aggressively influenced by United States big business (er, government).

The persistent meddling of the US government into sovereign nations’ private affairs is storied and troubling. The constant war-mongering and resulting profiteering; disgusting. Deciphering the contrast between words and actions of US lawmakers and business leaders with regard to the health and welfare of the working person can be disheartening at best. Even the stickers displayed on the packaging of these jars is misleading. America actually signifies all of North or South America, not simply the United States… but I digress.

The point is, I’m proud to support an American (sic) company. Local should trump all. The jars I fill with pure Vermont maple syrup are made in Muncie, Indiana. Cool.

Do you want to find out more facts about the history of Ball Mason jars and perhaps identify when the special blue tinted jar you’ve got was made? Visit the fresh preserving website and download the pdf titled “Jars of the Past”. They’ve got the entire history of when each design change was made through out the 125 year history of these quality canning jars that are useful for preserving virtually anything!

But back to the point of succession. My sister-in-law was surprised to learn of my leanings. I was surprised to have a “sister-in-law”. But more so, I was surprised she was surprised.

She said, “You could kiss your health care good-bye”. I took this to be a conversational non-starter.

I’m a slow thinker, so I thought. “Well, sure. You can kiss almost everything good-bye as we know it now. Don’t you think the result at the end of all the work to take care of each other would look better than it does now?”

Really, couldn’t we, in Vermont (~675,00 people), do almost everything better than the bloated, misguided national bureaucracy we’ve got now? I won’t bore you with specific examples of bloated or misguided (hint: see warmongering).

For some interesting writings on succession, see Vermont Commons. For some reason, my favorite contributor to their newspaper, the Greenneck, doesn’t put his stuff on the website… but thought provoking site none-the-less.