by: Rick Johnson 
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
RikJohnson@juno.com
Lets play a game. You can do this with your kids as a learning experience but don’t tell them it’s a teaching thing because kids hate to learn but love games.
Pretend you are a medieval farmer in Ireland (or England or Netherlands or Maine or Minnesota or…). Or you can be a mid 20th century farmer or rancher too. It still applies.
Go to your change jar and grab a small handful of quarters. Then grab a large handful of pennies.
Each quarter represents a cow you own (note: I own 9 cows)
Each penny represents one week’s worth of food per cow.
Now line your cows up and divide your food among them. Remember that it’s Samhain, the ground is frozen (It freakin’ snowed in Minnesota a couple weeks ago!!) or close to it so what you have is what you have. No more, no less. (I found that I have a total of 12 weeks food for my herd.)
Go to your calendar and count days from today. (17 January. After that my cattle starve!)
Here is the hard part. I am in a rowboat that can hold 6 people but only have food and water for 4 people but 10 people need to be saved. What do I do? Who lives and who dies?
Is there any chance that the Winter will be mild enough for me to plant really early or that something will grow early enough to feed my cattle on 18 January?
Not much.
Hard decisions must be made. I can keep all my cattle and maybe watch them all starve to death (and my family with them) or I can cull the herd. Kill some to let the rest live.
Here is where math skills come into effect. This is called Culling the Herd.
IF I kill one cow and divide his food among the rest, I can now feed my herd until 31 January.
Any chance that the hay will be grown by then? That’s Imbolc which means “In the Belly” and is the promise of Spring. But a promise doesn’t feed my cattle and growing season is still weeks away.
So if I kill 2 cattle and divide their food, I can feed the rest until 14 February. Is that enough time? Maybe with a real early Spring so I’d better do some real good Bonfire jumping at Yule, or some weather magick but you don’t change the weather, you shift it and causing rain here creates a drought there. Do I have a chance? Probably not.
If I kill 3 cattle, I can feed my herd until 28 February. Ok, that’s good. It works and I still have 6 cows left. Mot many but better than none.
Ok, I get my axe and .. but wait! This means that I HOPE that Spring will arrive on time. What if we have a hard Winter? What if Spring is late? Maybe I’d better kill 4 and not take chances.
That will feed my 5 cattle until 28 March but I will have lost half my herd.
All my hard work to be wealthy and successful is gone and I’m back where I started.
Now I’m sitting by my fireplace terrified. My wife can’t understand why I’m like this and I cannot tell her that if I make a mistake in math or make the wrong decision I can save or destroy the family for she has her own problems to solve. The weight of the world is on my shoulders. I MUST guess right!
So, what are my options?
I can go to the local Witch and ask them to divine the future, “Will there be an early or late Spring?”
I can go to my neighbor and beg for help, giving up my self-respect.
I can find a bank and take out a 6th mortgage at 15% interest that my children will be paying.
Nightmares abound.
Ok, what does this mean to you. After all, when the frig is empty, you just go to Abco or Frys.
Well, decisions like this relate to our everyday life. The cattle and feed are a symbol for the decisions we must make every day.
At work, my boss is fighting for her job. She sucks as a boss and I want her out but… will her replacement be better than she or worse?
Which do I support? If I choose wrong, I could be fired in her housecleaning out of spite. And at my age, who will hire me at any decent position.
Or, the prez is fighting two wars and threatening a third.
There aren’t enough soldiers in the military to handle this. 60 year old men and women are being recalled into Active Service. People who put in 20-30 years of military life and want nothing more than to relax and grow old are suddenly finding themselves back in harm’s way.
What happens when those are all gone? Will they draft your son and daughter to fight and die for oil or politics? Your vote or letter could turn the tide one way or the other.
You’ve been putting off your IRA or Deferred Compensation and now that retirement is getting near, you wonder if you will have enough retirement money to live on. What if Social Security is gutted again? Should you have done that 401k?
That person you are dating. Is it going anywhere or is it just fun?
What happens if “Oops! Baby time, I guess we should have taken better precautions” and now 1/3 of your paycheck and time goes to an unexpected life. Or marriage that you weren’t prepared for.
What do you do? College or military or Peace Corps or business school or the local McDonalds?
Where will you be in 10 years if you choose wrong?
Your business is going well but current political conditions could affect your future. Should you reinvest your profits back into the business that may be obsolete with a boycott or diversify and risk them both in an uncertain economy?
Sometimes we must cull our own lives to ensure a better life in the future.
We clean the house and get rid of junk we will never use.
We clean our lives and cancel or make friendships that will benefit us physically, morally, spiritually, economically.
We break off relationships that are dragging us down even if that means divorce. Or we establish relationships that could lead to a family and home.
We look for a better job that will keep us sane and pay the bills and a decent retirement. Or go for that promotion that puts us at more risk but provides more wealth for the family.
We say ‘no’ to that really beautiful person who is interested because she is a psycho-bitch and although the ride will be great while it lasts, being stalked isn’t fun after the lust dissipates.
It’s all symbolic.
Samhain is a time of sacrifice, of worry, of looking to the future and hoping you did well enough in the past, to support the future.
To contact me or to request topics to be covered, send to RikJohnson@juno.com
by: Rick Johnson
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
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