My friend is home from the Peace Corps for a short while. She’s serving in Moldova (look it up). Amidst her stories of the confusion and growing pains of a young nation trying to distance itself from the not-that-past-tense specter of the Soviet Republic while being an oft-conquored bit of land (about the size of New Jersey) she mentioned that fruit is in abundance.  Fruit and vegetables. The pride and joy. And, everyone grows them. Probably, as she said, pretty freely with pesticides, but everyone has enough to eat of these. They grow beets in the basement next to their wine cask (because they also make their own wine – and I understand it is pretty godawful, but something to experience). My first thought was, no one can be so very poor when they have such bounty! The beauty of the fields (sunflowers! onions! fruit trees!) is something we equate with verdant fields of yore. But as we talked more about it, she made clear that everyone has this stuff. It’s not an elite thing (so, the elite aren’t paying to get this freshest of the fresh fruits and veggies), it’s not worth more to people to have this straight-from-the-earth stuff. In fact, it’s a sign of having less to have to grow your own. Funny, isn’t it? The further we get from an agrarian community, the closer that agrarian society becomes to ideal. It’s sick, too. But that’s perspective.