10/25/06

letter to tom tancredo

Representative Tom Tancredo
6099 S. Quebec Street
Suite 200
Centennial, CO 80111
USA

October 20, 2006
Daejon, South Korea

Congressman Tancredo,

I haven’t been registered in Colorado’s sixth district since the summer of 2000, and it is for this reason that you haven’t yet heard from me in regards to your participation in the public revival of fascism. First of all, I guess I must congratulate you on your successful campaign to bring illegal immigration to the forefront of national political “debate”. Well, congrats Tommy, you’ve managed to stoke the fires of racism in a way that hasn’t been seen in this country in a long time. I see two possible explanations for your irrational assault on illegal immigrants: 1) you actually believe all of the hateful nonsense you spew about the damage illegal immigrants are doing to our country; or 2) you recognize this nonsense as such, but find it politically advantageous to shout this type of Third Reich rhetoric at the top of your lungs. I don’t know whether you’re (1) an idiot, (2) an asshole, or both, so I will address each of these two possibilities separately.

Who do you think built Highlands Ranch, anyway?

I’m going to tell you a little story. I grew up in Castle Rock, and in high school, I bussed tables at a little Italian restaurant about two blocks from your office on Wilcox Street. Some of my best friends at that job were the Latino guys. They worked hard, they were pretty much always in a good mood, and they were happy to help me practice my Spanish. These guys got up and worked landscaping jobs from 6:00 until 3:00, then worked at the restaurant from 4:00 until 10:00 every day of the week, except Sundays. And if you’ve ever seen a landscaping crew working, or been in the kitchen of a restaurant, you know that these guys were not the only Latinos doing this. Contrast these people to any of the restaurant’s patrons, who were 90% fat, lazy, and for some inexplicable reason thought they needed to watch television while in their cars, and it’s not difficult to guess who built the district you are now king of.

This is why your position on illegal immigration is utterly nonsensical. The lifestyle that you and your constituents enjoy is entirely reliant upon the labor source of illegal immigrants. These are the people who build the houses, strip-malls, and sprawling parkways that you tout as Colorado’s “economic development”. I can guarantee that your constituents, on average, consume at least one fast food meal a day. Have you been to a fast food restaurant in Douglas County lately? Not even high school kids will work there anymore. You and your idiotic white upper-middle class constituents can rattle off all the hateful babble you like about Latino immigrants, but without those people, you wouldn’t have a house, you wouldn’t have a three lane parkway to cruise your Tahoe down, and you would probably starve to death, because you wouldn’t have any restaurants to eat at.

Furthermore, aside from the fact that immigrant labor built your district, the immigrants you target have no intention of being permanent residents of the United States, where they may or may not be a drain on our societal resources. They don’t want to be Americans any more than you want them to. For the most part, these people love the country they’re from, they only want to come to the U.S. to make a bundle of money that they can take home and retire on. I spent the past spring in Central America, and just about everyone I met (north of Nicaragua) had lived and worked for some time in the United States. But you know what, they all went back to their homes and families.

Do you put “Professional Hatemonger” on your resume?

Okay, at this point, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you (as any reasonable person would) already understand the points made above. Of course, a good deal of the blame belongs to the mindless multitudes of Centennial and surroundings, but you should not be swindling your constituents like this. This is the oldest trick in the book, playing on people’s fears and inciting racial hatred in order to gain a political advantage. While you may be winning so far, you’re not clever, and I hope that your inner shame will drive you to dementia and ruin. I apparently have no understanding of how low moral standards can sink, but I hope that one day you will realize how evil it is to: 1) make people believe false things for your own gain, and 2) insult and injure an entire group of people who have done nothing to you, save build and landscape your house, harvest and cook your food, and give you an excuse to get drunk in early May.

Toward a sensible policy

Despite my (at times) belligerent tone towards you, I do agree with you on one point: in a perfect world, we would not require cheap immigrant labor to build our homes and provide our food, nor would people in other countries need to leave their families and work demeaning jobs in order to make a decent living. The only question left is: how do we achieve that? Well, you and I both know that we can’t achieve this goal by building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. That’s not going to work any better than the “War on Drugs” has worked. We all know that.

If we really want to solve this problem, we need to do two things: 1) improve economic conditions in Central America, so that people do not need to migrate to the U.S. to earn a living wage, and 2) force Americans to pay a little more for their houses, roads, food, etc. To accomplish 1), we need to find a way to encourage economic growth in Central America. Not the kind of growth that free trade agreements bring, but true growth. We need Central American companies to create economic growth there, not U.S. companies exploiting cheap labor. My girlfriend and I developed a plan that will do just this: institute a guest worker program (5-7 years in the U.S., then you go home), add an extra tax on guest worker wages (about 3-5%), put this money in a special business grant fund, and then distribute this money as business grants to people who have returned to their home countries from the guest worker program. This plan allows us to force immigrants to invest in economic development in their home countries. This investment will eventually solve the immigration problem better than a wall ever could, because if people can make a decent living in their own country, they won’t leave. Solving issue 2) is a little more difficult, but I imagine once the source of cheap labor has dried up (through the abovementioned plan), market forces will force Americans to readjust their lifestyles. See, this problem can be solved without invoking racism, or spending billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on nonsense like fences and a “War on Immigrants”.

Why I’ll be voting all the way from South Korea this November

Obviously, thinking there’s a chance that the 6th district would vote you out of office is slightly less realistic than expecting Isaac Newton to come prancing up on a unicorn to my 26th birthday party. I’ve lived in that suburban wasteland for long enough to know full well that you’ve got that district by the balls. So why did I even bother registering and requesting my absentee ballot? Well, aside from a very important governor’s race, the opportunity to make Colorado the state with the most progressive drug laws in the country, a horde of measures targeting gay people, and the all important local offices, this is my chance to offer my own personal fuck you to Tom Tancredo. I can write as many letters to you as I want; and your interns may or may not read more than two sentences of them. But the electoral system is my one constitutionally guaranteed right with which I can tell you to fuck off, and (whether or not my view wins) it gets officially counted somewhere. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up that right, as futile as it may seem. Not when people like you are running my country. You may represent the evangelical, dimwitted bunch that has invaded my state, but you’ll never represent me.


Regards,

travis h. eddy

10/22/06

drunk in the jil jul bang

When we go out with the foreigner crew, we almost always go downtown to Unangdong, where most of the westerner bars are. It’s a cool area, right near the train station, and the buildings were actually built more than fifteen years ago. There are wide blocks of pedestrian walkways, with tons of stores, restaurants and bars. Last night, however, we decided to drink locally. The new teacher at our hagwan, Brian, and I met our crew at Sole, a bar less than half a block from our school with a picture of Keanu Reeves on the door. Meanwhile, Taylor went off to rummage around in the garbage and try to find good stuff to stencil on (she finally found spray paint at a supermarket, and was very anxious to get spraying). Brian and I enjoyed a pitcher of Cass while we waited for the other guys to show up. Drinking in Korean bars is kind of awkward sometimes, because Korean people always, always, always order food when they drink. Having already had dinner, neither Brian nor I were interested in any side dishes, making us the only people with no food on our table (save the edamame/cracker/vegetable platter and sprout soup that come complimentary). For some reason, it was free cigs night at Sole, and some ladies brought around plastic beer mugs with colored lights in the bottom, a pack of cigs and some rosemary sprigs in them. Every table got one, and when they set it on your table, they would then pour hot water in it, which would cause a dry-ice steam to pour out around your new cigs. It also created quite a pleasant smell.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that most of the friends we have made so far work at the hagwan directly below ours, and there is definitely some serious competition and rivalry going on between the two schools. Our friends brought their bosses, and I was sitting next to one of the directors, who insisted that our bosses had “stolen all their ideas” from his hagwan, and was constantly trying to impress me with how well they treat there teachers. Also, these guys were Korean, so of course they ordered a huge platter of spicy chicken, boiled egg and vegetables. Everything was going good, the pitchers of beer kept flowing around the table, a couple rounds of pineapple soju came around, and I even became hungry enough to sample some side dishes. Luckily, at this point (while moderately sober) I informed the group of my odd habit of only speaking in shouted Spanish after I’ve had too much to drink. I shouldn’t have said anything about this, because they would discover this fact soon enough for themselves. Our ringleader, Ben (known to Taylor and I as Ben X), was pushing to go downtown, but we decided instead to travel to the convenience store down the street. Interesting Korean cultural fact: every convenience store has outside seating, and drinking at the seven eleven is actually a very popular past time. So, we sat down outside the mini mart with several “pitchers” (1.6L bottles) of beer, and I proceeded to have a very heartfelt discussion Ben X about disciplining my students. The Spanish was already starting to come out.

By the time we left the convenience store, I was definitely taking a few tumbles here and there on the perfectly flat and smooth walking surfaces. Taylor got everybody fired up to go to her rubbish rummaging spot behind “Shark Zone” (a mall). We went ahead a picked up three mannequins between us, some odds and ends, and I’m pretty sure that this was where I picked a large tree branch that I decided I needed to carry around with me. After an interactive photo shoot in the street with the mannequins, somebody brought up the do re bang. Bang in Korean means “room”, and do re means “sing”. So the do re bang is where you go to do karaoke, and true to the name, you get your own private room and karaoke system. This one even had a private bathroom. A fact I promptly forgot when I started to get salty mouth syndrome, and left the room to try to find a toilet. The guys outside were like “dude, you have your own bathroom in that little room where all your friends are.” Oh yeah. By the time I got back to our room, my mouth was no longer salty. There was even a shower, in case you got a little sweaty while singing. I was intently trying to peruse the song book while everyone else sang, and never did find a good song.

After we left the do re bang, we ran into Ben #3, who we had been with earlier in the evening, alone outside a seven eleven with a bottle of soju. I’m still a little hazy on the details of where he had gone, and why he was drinking solo at 6:00 in the morning. Well, of course we had to sit down with him and finish off the soju. Again, somebody came up with a wonderful bang idea, and soon we were all off the jil jul bang. I’m pretty sure jil jul bang translates as “hot room”, but it is the public bath house. This one is 24 hours, and also located in a mall. I wasn’t sure anyone would be bathing at 6:30 on Saturday morning, but there were definitely some folks there. The tubs weren’t quite as hot as I like them, but it was still relaxing. It did not sober me up. We (the dudes) were supposed to meet Taylor after twenty minutes, and all of a sudden I looked up and everybody was gone. It took me a while to drunkenly slither back into my clothes, and by the time I got out into the lobby, none of my crew was there. I don’t know why I thought this meant that Taylor had gone home without me, but I did, so I left immediately and went home. Taylor was not at home; she was at the jil jul bang waiting for me for one hour. Sorry Tay Tay. Today I have been absolutely useless.

10/13/06

nuclear crisis II: update

Okay, so further research indicates that there are, in fact, some hardliners here in the Republic of Korea. Recent editorials have taken a more aggressive stance against the northern brothers, and you even hear denouncement of former president Kim Dae-jung and the sunshine policy. In the legislature, there was heavy bickering between the ruling Uri party and the opposition conservative Grand National Party over how to word the resolution condemning North Korea. Even the polls are showing broad popular support for a move away from the engagement policy, and even moderate support for a South Korean nuclear weapons program. So it looks like I may have to retract my statement about South Koreans being more sensible than Americans on this developing situation. It seems like hard-line crazies really do just encourage that behavior to come out in others. At least the heavy legislative debate shows that there are multiple opinions, and not everyone in the government wants to go off the deep end on this one. (unfortunately, safari does not support the link adding feature of blogger (or if it does, I can't figure out how to do it), so the links I wanted to add here are not working. People interested in what the South Korea news media has to say should go to http://joongangdaily.joins.com/, the definitive South Korean english language news site.)

Opinions among my students are reading in a similar fashion. A lot of my kids place at least partial blame for this situation on the United States, but there are some super-nationalist opinions out there too. One kid told me yesterday that the US should instigate a nuclear attack on Pyongyang. When I pushed him on this, he softened his position to say that the US should just assassinate Kim Jong-il. Again, though, almost all my kids assume that it is only a matter of time before there will be reunification on the peninsula. Even among the kids who think there should be punishments against the north, there is almost unanimous agreement that further isolation of the country would be a bad thing.

One particularly interesting aspect of my students’ opinions is the surprising clarity with which they understand the issue of nuclear proliferation. Thinking back to when I was in middle school, I don’t think I really paid attention to nuclear proliferation, much less understood the ins and outs of it. The most consistent (by far) answer I get when I ask what should be done to stop proliferation is that the US and other nuclear armed countries need to start depleting their nuclear arsenals before they can legitimately tell other countries not to develop nuclear weapons. Almost every single one of my students understands this. I don’t think that idea would even cross the minds of thirteen-year-old American kids. Of course, serious politicians cannot publicly subscribe to this idea, fearing the ever-powerful scorn of the mighty Washington, but it’s comforting to know that the new generation has some sense when it comes to this issue. Still, I will never understand why popular debate never mentions the 12,000 (or whatever the number of nuclear weapons the US has squirreled is) reasons other countries have for desiring a nuclear arsenal.

10/10/06

nuclear crisis

All weekend long, I was trying to make sure my senses were acutely tuned, hoping that if I tried hard enough, I could feel the tremor of North Korea stomping its nuclear foot. It was with great disappointment then, that I failed to notice even the slightest shake in the ground at 10:36 am local time. Now, one might imagine at least a social tremor radiating throughout the country that shares a heavily fortified border with the world’s newest nuclear power. I had thought when the word came down there might be panic, or a tangible sense of dread in the air. But there was no such feeling. I don’t think any of my Korean co-workers even mentioned it to me today. The whole reaction all weekend has been, well, subdued. CNN Asia is pumping us full of hype and fear though, so don’t worry, we’re getting our fair share of crazed blabbering.

This is not to say that no one here is talking or thinking about North Korea, but the discussion is surprisingly calm and rational. Of course South Koreans don’t like the idea of North Korea demonstrating its nuclear might, but they’re not frantic about it. People here are much more likely to point to broad and ultimate causes of the current situation, rather than spouting off some kind of rant about a crazy dictator and calling for punishment.

Now, I’m certainly no expert in international affairs, let alone specifically the Northeast Asian region, but I’ve learned a thing or two about people’s attitudes since I’ve been here. Let’s start at the beginning. South Koreans I’ve talked to have absolutely no beef with North Koreans; they don’t even call themselves “South” Korea. People here seem to just assume that they will reunify with the North at some time. They very much consider themselves and North Koreans as one group of people: Koreans. There is certainly not hatred of North Korea, and more then anything, I think there is a sense of sympathy for the North. The commentaries in the English language newspaper lately have portrayed a North Korea that has been kind of pushed into a corner by the international community. This is the same sentiment I’ve gotten from many of my students when we talk about these issues. You hear a lot of talk about how what North Korea really wanted was a direct dialogue with the United States. (As an unfortunate side note here, you may remember (I believe it was) the second 2004 US Presidential Campaign debate, when Kerry pledged to open bilateral talks with North Korea to diffuse the crisis, while Bush insisted that the only way to make any progress was to continue exclusively with the six party talks.) The overwhelming opinion I’ve heard is that the worst road to take is further isolation of North Korea. But now, South Korea feels they’ve been pushed into a corner of their own by this nuclear test. They feel they will now be pressured into joining the hardliners in the US and Japan. While South Koreans are uncomfortable with the current situation, even my 13-year-old students have the sense to know that nobody’s going to be aiming nuclear missiles at Seoul any time soon. The talk in the papers is the more reasonable fear of a nuclear arms race in the region.

For what it’s worth, I find much more legitimacy in the South Korean position than I do in the US position. I wholeheartedly agree that further isolation of North Korea is going to do no work towards achieving the ultimate goal of stability in the region. I heard this same argument about China about ten years ago: if you want to change a country, the way to do it is to trade with them, expose them to democratic and Western values. It made sense to me then, and it’s essentially what happened. Granted, they’ll still go out and beat 55,000 dogs to death in China, but they haven’t run anybody over with tanks lately. China has become much more open and liberalized in the past ten years, due mostly to increased trade with the rest of the world. North Korea wants a dialogue and a relationship with the west, that’s what this whole issue is about. And if we can achieve our goals by having a dialogue and opening up to them, I see no reason not to do it. Of course, I understand the reasons not to reward their bad behavior, but come on here. How many drunken fistfights occur needlessly because nobody is willing to step down and talk things over? It’s time for Washington (and Tokyo) to step down and say: “hey, let’s talk about this, we’re acting like children here.”

10/9/06

korean efficiency

I get really frustrated sometimes when I consider all of the ways in which our world could be more efficiently organized. There are so many seemingly simple ways that our lives, homes, cities, world could be slightly altered in order to save energy and just make more sense. As the growing energy crisis looms above my generation, there are literally thousands of things that could be done to stop the unnecessary waste of energy. This is not the sole solution to our energy problems, but serious conservation must necessarily play a role in our future of energy use. More than anything, though, it really just bothers me to see things done poorly. It doesn’t make any sense to waste energy because lifestyles and cities are not properly designed or organized. Nor does it make sense to waste energy because people feel they have some sort of right to be lazy or unnecessarily demanding about their lifestyle.

The common reaction to this kind of thinking in the US is that it’s well and fine to dream of a society where everything makes sense, but that people will never change their habits to achieve this. I guess I have always responded to this attitude with a kind of disgruntled acceptance and cynical attitude about the general useless of humans. I mean, it is difficult to imagine your average American riding their bike to work, or drying their clothes on a line. It’s hard enough just getting people to separate their recycling from their garbage. I am ashamed to admit that I often fall into the trap of thinking it is for some reason impossible to get people to do what makes sense.

Now I’m going to tell you about how things are done in Korea. I’ve never thought of Korea as being a particularly environmental place. And I still don’t know if it necessarily is. But the way things are done here just makes sense. It’s like they already do all of the little things that I trounce around America saying: “we should do this”, and “we should do that”. To start off with, they do not fuck around with recycling in this country. We separate our household waste into: food waste, clear glass, dark glass, cans, plastic bottles, plastic wrappers, plastic bags, black plastic bags, paper and garbage. We live in a building with 150 apartments, and we have one (smaller than American) dumpster that holds all the trash. Next, there is no centralized air heating in our apartment building, all of the heating is done through the floor (as it is not winter yet, we do not know how warm this keeps your apartment). Every light I’ve seen in Korea so far is fluorescent. There is apparently no such thing a clothes dryer here; every apartment is equipped with a small washer, and a separate glass-enclosed balcony for air-drying clothes. All of the balconies on the apartment buildings face south. The apartment buildings are all designed so that they are tall and skinny, one apartment wide, so you can open your balcony and front door and get excellent airflow. (I should mention at this point that most Koreans live in apartment buildings that are essentially of the same design.) The use of motion sensors is one of the best areas of efficiency. All the lights in the stairwells and corridors of our apartment building have motion sensors, so that they only turn on when someone is actually walking there. All of the escalators have motion sensors, so that they too stop running when no one is using them. The light in the entryway to your apartment is on a timer, so that it’s only on for a short period while you’re entering or leaving the house. The printer in our office at school is filled with paper that has already been printed on one side. The city is designed so that there are pockets of commercial areas surrounded by the aforementioned apartment complexes, so you can always walk to the basic necessities. I’ve already discussed the urban agriculture. Add to all these major practices all of the clever little things I see on a day to day basis (for example, when there is a connection between two electrical cords outside, they use a cut up plastic bottle to protect the connection from rain), and it is amazing how cleverly life is organized here. It’s so nice to see people living in ways that actually make sense.

Seeing the way people live here really turned the cynic in me upside down. All of a sudden, I can say what I wanted to all along, namely that people can and will change their lifestyle to be more efficient. The world really can make sense! It may be a bit early for a victory celebration, though. The fact that Koreans will adapt their lifestyle towards efficiency is very much centered around a cultural heritage that emphasizes the common good over the individual. You separate your recycling, because it is just HOW THINGS ARE DONE, and to suggest that you’re too lazy to do so would really reflect poorly on you. There is nothing like the feeling of entitlement to a certain lifestyle that you find so prevalent in the US. And, aside from thousands of years of collective cultural conditioning, Korea doesn’t offer any real concrete examples of how to deal with that stubborn attitude. Of course, there are both positive and negative effects of this kind of culture. Everything is efficient, there is incredibly little crime (people often don’t even lock their bikes on the street) and everything is clean. But I’ve complained on more than one occasion about the blandness of all the residential buildings looking exactly the same. People have very little to no personal flair or style; everyone looks completely homogenous. There is seemingly no kind of counterculture (though I’m sure there is in Seoul). And there are no drugs! This is good if you’re talking about the absence of junkies and crack-heads on the street, or meth-heads rifling through your personal belongings, but kind of a bummer if you’re a lowly dope-fiend, a little homesick and looking to get stoned.

I’m not totally willing to accept that this is a perfect trade-off though. I’m far from convinced that in order to have a decent recycling program, city and apartment designing that is energy efficient, and lifestyles that make sense, you have to give up architectural aesthetics and rock and roll. This is to say that the Korean cultural identity is not the only way to convince people to live efficiently; it is just a very good example of the fact that it can be done.

10/5/06

urban agriculture


i think i've technically been a proponent of urban agriculture ever since, as a small child, my mother read me a story about a farmer who moves to the city and makes it beautiful by planting all kinds of wonderful things (by the way, if anybody knows the name of this book, please feel free to tell me). in the past seven years or so, i've taken this childhood fascination with a cute story and honed into a more or less coherent set of beliefs. chief among these beliefs is that we need to bring small scale agriculture back into our personal lives and into our cities. there are many reasons why this is an important practice to take up. first, a tremendous amount of energy goes into transporting food from where it is grown to where it is consumed. since the majority of the world's population lives in urban centers, producing food in these urban centers with save considerable amounts of energy in food transportation. second, producing even a small amount of your own food where you live allows you to eat healthier, fresher food, save money, and refrain from participating in the industrialization of farming. third, with a little creativity, there is an amazing amount of space that can be used for food production within urban centers. the more food there is produced in the city, the more land there is that could be returned to natural habitat for native plant and animal species. fourth, the act of gardening is really good for you. it clears your mind, gives you some exercise, and helps you to understand the cycles that allow energy from the sun to become the energy that sustains your life. finally, i just think that urban gardens look and are really cool.


for all this talk, i'm certainly not any kind of full-fledged city farmer, though i've certainly dabbled in urban agriculture. most notably, i had a rooftop garden just off the bustle of SE 39th ave in portland last summer, that was surprisingly productive. i also assisted mr. ian blazina in a highly sucessful garden in sellwood, and observed his wonderful efforts in recent years turning nearly his entire backyard into a lovely grounds of everything from hops to blueberries. overally, portland is an excellent city to observe and take part in urban agriculture. a stroll or bikeride down nearly any street of the city's east side will attest to this. however, for all of this gardening in the residential neighborhoods, seeing any kind of food crop growing downtown is nearly unheard of. truly urban urban agriculture is not really seen, even in portland.

in daejon, on the other hand, urban agriculture is EVERYWHERE. i'm not really sure why or exactly how this phenomenon occurs, but on a short walk around my neighborhood (which is in no way populated by houses with yards and gardens) you will see tons of food being grown. the most common crop you will find has got to be chili peppers. these things are literally growing everywhere in this town; in pots in front of restaurants, adjacent to parking lots, in the little dirt area in front of apatement buildings, everywhere. this could easily be explained by the amount of chili pepper used in korean food; the country probably needs to grow these things wherever possible just to create the alarming amount of spice koreans demand from every dish. the urban farming phenomenon extends far beyond chili peppers, however. there are several other crops that you will find in odd places, most notably strips of land between sidewalks and parking lots. you will most often see squash or pumpkin. a close second would have to be soybeans, followed by greenbeans, which are often grown up the stalks of corn plants. some sections of town have corn planted in with the trees along the sidewalks (depicted above), though this corn will never make it to harvest, and seems to be planted for more decorative than productive purposes. rooftop gardens are also quite popular.





aside from this slipping in of gardens to any available space, there is an interesting practice that i haven't quite gotten to the bottom of yet. there happens to be a lot of building in our neighborhood; it's kind of the "new downtown" of daejon. anywhere there is a lot of construction, there tends to be a lot of empty lots. here in daejon, those empty lots are full scale gardens with large plantings of crops. they don't appear to be community gardens, because they don't appear to be broken up into different plots. for the most part, it seems like just about anyone can wander through these gardens, though (but, a lot of people don't even lock their bikes here, either). occasionally, i'll see someone out working in these gardens when i'm out cruising around. if i spoke korean, i could just go and ask them what the deal is - who owns the garden, where the food goes, etc. but, well, i'm not quite to that level with my korean yet.





i will post updates as i find out more about this korean phenomenon, and discover new gardens. hopefully my korean will be sufficient enough by next spring that i can try to secure a little plot of land on which to do my own planting.