Or a spelling that you’ve never seen.

When I use a word I don’t need any rules:

It says just what I want it to mean!

At a farmer’s market in the Big City the other day I couldn’t help but notice a vendor’s sign reading “Chevron.” For the ignorant (which in this case included me, although I had some suspicions) this was followed by an explanation, “(Goat Meat).”

“Ahem,” I said, as gently as I could, smiling. “Are you aware that goat meat is chevon, without the R?”

The lady looked at me as if to say who the heck are you and it’s none of your dang business. Then, very stiffly, she shook her head. “No, it’s chevron.” She got it out of a book, she said.

I told her it was the wrong book. I didn’t want to mention that the one I wrote — Raising Milk Goats the Modern Way— was probably one of the first to use the term, way back in 1975, and that I too have often seen it misspelled since then. But she was adamant. “Chevron” it was, and “chevron” it was going to stay.

My main concern was for the hundreds of people, maybe thousands, who would see that, and think it was correct. Then what would they think when they saw chevon used properly? Is this any way to educate the public about goat meat? Or language!

Most people don’t seem to care about such matters any more. Old guys like me can blame it on all the new technological gadgets we don’t use and can’t even understand. I can translate Latin more readily than Twitterspeak. But it goes far beyond that. Most misuse of language is just plain sloppiness.

I recently got an email with boilerplate at the end — the cute sayings or wise phrases that automatically show up in every email sent. This one was “Smoke signals accepted only between dawn and dust.”

While “dust” does sound an awful lot like “dusk,” it’s only one letter off and it wouldn’t be caught by a spell-checker, this fellow happens to be a sign painter, most of whom think every “its” needs an apostrophe, whether it’s a contraction or not. (At least he didn’t say “excepted.”)

Despite the richness of our language, new words are constantly being introduced, and not only because of the computer age. The just-published 11^th edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary has 2,000 new words, including “vuvuzela” “staycation,” “bromance” and “turducken.”

Chevon is a manufactured word, not the French word for goat meat. Here’s what I said in the book:

“In Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, Wamba the jester gives Gurth the swineherd an English lesson. While domestic animals are alive and must be tended, he explains, we use their simple Saxon names: calf, cow, sheep, pig, and so on. But when they are dressed and served to the Norman conquerors, they are called by their Norman (French) names: veal, beef, mutton and pork.

“In 20^th century America, the equivalent of the Norman conqueror was the consumer. People weren’t very interested in eating goat, so goat farmers made up a new word that would be more appealing: chevon, from the French words for goat, chévre and sheep, mouton. (Goat cheese is also called chévre.) Of course, we might also call goat meat cabrito, from the Spanish for “little goat,” but except in the Southwest, chevon is the more common form.”

Actually, there is a connection between goats and chevrons, the V-shaped stripes. Etymologists tell us that chevron is an Old French (1390s) word for “rafter.” Supposedly, the connection between goats and rafters is the angle of the animal’s hind legs! But goat meat? No way.

While there are legitimate reasons for inventing new words, ignorance is not one of them. New words are not made by misusing old ones. Goat meat will not become chevron simply because someone perpetuates a mistake.

Thank goodness. I shudder to think about the lady who once showed me her “tobogganbird” goats. Fortunately, most of the world continues to call the breed by its proper name: Toggenburg. Toggenburg is the name of the upper valley of the River Thur in Switzerland, where the breed originated.

Some misused words do make a bit more sense. I have heard people refer to medians, those strips between two traffic lanes, as “meridians.” “Meridian” comes from Latin words for middle of the day, but middle of the road?

The importance of good communication skills in both business and personal relationships has been highly touted in recent years. In spite of this, I have seen numerous examples of absolutely atrocious writing — from high school teachers. This does not bode well for the future.

Because whether you’re talking about a wether or the weather; a Gallup Poll, a flag pole, or a polled goat; the bail of a bucket or a bale of hay or posting bail to get out of jail, using the right word is important for clear communication.

But how could a guy like me, who keeps saying most people don’t where their food comes from, resist commenting on something like this?

Supposedly, this appeared in a San Francisco newspaper. Because I try to look kindly on all of God’s creatures, my first reaction was that this was one more of those all-too-common internet spoofs: nobody could be that stupid. (On the other hand…)

Or maybe it was meant as satire. You know, a hunter makes this ridiculous statement to point out just how foolish some anti-hunting arguments can be. The trouble is, most people don’t get satire, and one like this, that could be serious, loses some punch because it leaves some doubt.

Whoever started this out took it at face value with the heading “Unkilled Hamburger” and the standard web put-down for such items: “Folks, remember as you read this, this person probably drives and votes AND may have already reproduced! God help us all…”

And then there was the news that the chemical BPA, which recently created such a stir for being in plastic baby bottles, is (and has been) present in almost all cans of food on the supermarket shelves (and in your pantry). Just about everything you eat that comes out of a can contains bisphenol A, which slowly leaches into the food and water. It’s a key compound in the epoxy linings that keeps the canned food fresher longer, and keeps it from interacting with the metal and changing the flavor of the food. But it has also been blamed for cancer, obesity, diabetes and heart disease. So far, no one has found a substitute. Think of the homestead implications I could write about on that one.

Or how about that report on the dwindling nutritional values of fruits and vegetables? Somebody compared USDA data on 43 fruits and vegetables over the years. For example, in 1950, broccoli had 150 mg of calcium: today it has 48 mg. There are reductions in vitamins, minerals and protein, across the board. The reason, some say, is technological industrial farming where selective breeding and synthetic fertilizers are used to increase size and to speed growth.  Another study showed that organic tomatoes can have as much as 30 percent more phytochemicals than the industrial kind.

Followers of J. I. Rodale — and I used to think that included most homesteaders, but now I’m not so sure — knew all of this many years ago, so what else is new?

None of this has much to do with homesteading, per se, but it does reflect on life on Spaceship Earth. In this vein we could also talk about the report that 3,100 firms (and roughly $40 billion a year — just for “intelligence”) are involved in the “war on terror.” Add in all the other expenses, along with the inconveniences and in some cases downright loss of freedoms, and it’s hard to tell who’s winning. One thing’s for certain: the terrorists got a lot of bang for their buck. The implications for self-sufficient living? Hmm.

A family in California made news by telling how they survived — in spite of turning off all of their telephones, computers, and televisions — for one whole day. And the people who think that’s really something special drive, vote and have reproduced. God help us all.

Then there’s the continuing flap over the global warming scientists, the news that China now uses more energy than the U.S., and that China’s population might actual decrease in the years ahead. That one tickles my imagination. Couple that with another recent population figure: The average Amish family has around seven children. The Chinese population dwindles, the Amish population doubles every 23 years — eventually there are more Amish than Chinese — just think of the implications for sustainable living! What a great speculative fiction story that could make!

But as I said, I have too much to do already, and even writing a blog isn’t on the list. At least I  have plenty to think about while I do those homestead chores, beyond the sidewalks. — Jd Belanger

The answer is evident already. Some people are warning against a ban on offshore drilling. One authority said drilling should be allowed in “less sensitive” areas. As if getting hit in the head with a hammer would be painful, so show me a “less sensitive” area of your body I can pound on.

I have always realized that most people wouldn’t accept my homestead solutions to so many of the world’s problems as outlined in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living and many other writings, but I’d always assumed that they would at least appreciate the Garden of Eden kind of world that kind of living would result in. That’s why the sudden thought was so terrifying. To the question “Is this the kind of world you want to live in?” a good many people wouldn’t hesitate a moment before shouting YES!

They love cities, the bigger, more crowded, noisier, and more sophisticated the better. They fear and detest the countryside: solitude, lurking unknown dangers, rough unpaved terrain, bugs. Oil pollution in the Gulf of Mexico or in Alaska doesn’t faze them: they’re much more concerned about the latest tech gizmo and power outages and whatever entertainment is planned for next weekend. And of course, they love their cars. For most people, reducing the use of personal transportation would be a major hardship, and eliminating it would be unthinkable.

I always knew my diatribes against the American automobile culture and sybaritic comforts in general would be ignored or ridiculed: there simply is no way anybody is going back to the “Dark Ages” of maybe 50 years ago unless they decide to become Amish, or if some unseen and unimaginable force would revive hippiedom. And of course, that would still leave a vast majority believing that the world simply could not function without all the trappings of affluence that even “poor” people have come to take for granted, again, in my lifetime.

In other words, most people are not going to give up their lush lawns and washed cars — to say nothing of flush toilets and daily showers— until they turn on the faucet and nothing comes out. They are not going to give up piloting a huge metal machine on paved roads to go someplace else for some insignificant reason, nor will they even give up mowing that lush lawn — until there is no more gas, or until it becomes truly unbearably expensive, or until the air becomes too polluted to breathe. They are not going to grow vegetables and chickens in their backyards — until the supermarket shelves are empty and they are literally starving. And even then they’ll most likely blame politicians and demand that “something be done about it.” But then it will be too late.

It’s all going to happen, and you know it. It’s about sustainability. It simply isn’t possible to use up water, oil, and other finite resources, or to befoul them so as to render them useless for human purposes, without eventually coming to the bottom of the barrel. When we reach that point, it’s all over.

During the 50-some years I’ve been writing about this, I have seen rare glimpses of hope: periods when it really did seem like maybe the world was coming to its senses, or more often, that some external event would force the issue. They all turned out to be chimeras.

Which increases the odds that yes indeed, the world will eventually become uninhabitable for humans. The Earth will not die; there will still be life (such as cockroaches and lichens), but humans? Not likely, even in a primitive state.

There are a number of problems involved here, most concerning today’s common concepts of the ideal world, where oil pollution of ecologically and economically crucial oceans is less of a problem than poor tv reception, snow removal must be a top priority for a northern mayor who wants to remain in office, and in general, nature is not a partner, but something to be conquered. Almost all of these problems could be alleviated by simple, self-sufficient, sustainable living.

The Earth’s resources are not infinite: we must exist within certain limits. We have already reached some of those limits, and are approaching more. But what would be so terrible about living within those limits? Those who believe in and demand constant economic growth and see that as the only “progress” consider such thinking to be ridiculous, and what’s worse, anti-capitalist. But to a homesteader, who understands the webs and strands and can appreciate the here and now and simple pleasures, it’s a no-brainer. We must change our management of the planet now, voluntarily, by the way we live — by what we consume, waste, destroy and despoil, and by what we conserve, protect, recycle and substitute. Most importantly, it’s not a hardship at all: With the right attitude, it’s a beautiful way to live!

Unfortunately, since most people don’t agree, we are likely to lose not only the beautiful life, but even the option of pursuing it. Which should terrify anyone who thinks about it. So I hope you too will lie sleepless. If enough of us can work together, it still might not be too late.

Language note: Most people still speak of an oil “spill.” I do not. A “spill” is when someone tips over a glass of milk and says “oops!” And while we’re advised not to cry over spilled milk, that is certainly not the case when millions of gallons of petroleum wreak further havoc on our already beleaguered planet.

Warning: If you’re one of the sensitive readers the editors of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living were protecting from naughty words, better plug your ears, cover your eyes, or simply skip this and come back next week.

CIG to Self-Sufficient Living really isn’t so much about self-sufficient living as it is about saving the planet through sane living. Most readers seem to miss that, which sorely disappoints me, because I leaned over backwards to weave that into the “self-sufficiency” theme the publisher wanted. (What makes it worse is that the very first sentence is “This book is not what you’re expecting.”)

In Chapter 1, “What’s It All About?” I list all the varieties of self-sufficiency, most of which are connected with Saving the Earth in one way or another. And I close out the chapter by saying if you don’t fit into any of those categories, maybe you’re not a crew member of Spaceship Earth. You’re just a passenger… or perhaps even a mutineer. “They refuse to accept the finite and nonrenewable nature of many of the resources we consider essential to our way of life.  They don’t believe that everything is connected to everything else, and that their actions, and inactions, have widespread repercussions. They are, in effect, mutineers. They are pissing in our ship’s freshwater casks, and we have no way to replace that drinking water. It’s time, and past time, to stop these mutineers. It’s time to become more self-sufficient.”

I wanted to emphasize, as strongly and dramatically as possible, that the most important reason for self-sufficient living is to save Spaceship Earth. That required strong language.

But in the edited version it came out “urinating.”

Although I’m an ex-Marine and have a very extensive colorful vocabulary, I’ve always been very careful about my writing. After all, my mother used to read what I wrote. But doggone it, “urinating” is such a  piddly word, where I wanted something bold and robust.

By some odd quirk, even though I had never used that word in more than 50 years of writing for publication, it turned up again in the same book. It was on page 205, in Chapter 16: “Adam and Eve Did It.” Their “Garden of Eden” was no garden: they were foragers. This chapter is about wild foods —and again, not so much about scrounging for them as a means of self-sufficient living-off-the-land, but to demonstrate how recently we have come to rely on industrial agriculture, and how easily we could go back to stalking wild asparagus after unsustainable agribusiness collapses.

The book mangles one of my father-in-law’s standard jokes. He would have said, “Some people prepare dandelions and any wild food like kidneys: they boil the piss out of them.”

Again, an editor questioned my choice of words. This time I admitted that it was merely meant to be humorous, and could easily be deleted. But I warned, “if you take out that word, leave out the entire joke, or it doesn’t make any sense.”

So what did we get in the book?

“Some people prepare dandelions and any wild food like kidneys; they boil them.” Anyone who thinks that says the same thing as the original is not an editor. An editor should know something about the function of a kidney, a little about cooking… and a whole lot more about humor.

Here’s a weird and overlong footnote: an example of why writing takes me so much longer now than it used to. It involves having a lifetime of memories, not all of which are accurate.

I vividly recall a passage from one of the first “farming” books I read. We Chose the Country was written in 1948 by Herbert Jacobs, a Madison newspaper reporter who lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright house and was teaching at the U.W. School of Journalism when I was a student there —all of which is mentioned in CIG to SSL, for various reasons. Jacobs told of a neighbor who described how to sow alfalfa using a horn seeder— a sack suspended from your shoulder, with a long tube extending from the bottom. “You just swing it back and forth like you was pizzn.”

When I first read that in the 1940s (or so I thought) it was extremely daring language. To be honest, I distinctly remember pondering the meaning: having been brought up in a home where naughty words simply were not allowed, it took me awhile to figure it out.  I was definitely thinking of that when I wrote about the Spaceship Earth water keg problem.

So imagine my surprise (and dismay) when I decided to check the exact wording of that quote for this blog… and couldn’t find it. Here’s what that passage actually said:

“How do I work this thing?” I asked Tony.

“Nothing to it,” he said. “Swing it from side to side, slowly. Just pretend —“ and here he whispered in my ear, chuckled heartily, and whacked me on the back.

I’m absolutely certain I did not make up the word “pizzn.” However, Herb’s wife and daughter were nearby, watching the operation, so I assume that’s why Tony whispered. No doubt Katherine later asked Herb what Tony had whispered, and that’s when I heard it.

But that’s speculation, because I don’t have time to read the entire book again to solve the mystery, much as I’d like to. And I already got waylaid because I discovered that my copy belonged to my father-in-law, which means I couldn’t have read it before I met Diane, in 1953.

In addition, in the process of writing this I learned that an original copy is now worth $45, and it’s #5,087,536 on the Amazon “Best Seller” list, which makes even my 1990 book, The Place Called Attar, look pretty good, at #1,280,634.

But hey, enough of this. I gotta go.

—Jd Belanger

Some people seem to be fascinated by writers and their craft. I don’t know why, and I’m not one of them. But since my latest book — my eighth and no doubt last book — has just come out, it’s National Library Week, and I’m going to be at a “book signing” at the Gilman library this afternoon, this is as close as I’ll ever get to being a big-time author. So it’s a good time to share a few behind-the-scenes stories, which I’m sure every writer has.

Some concern the fabled love-hate relationship writers have with editors and publishers. Since I’ve spent my entire professional life wearing all three hats, I’ve felt relatively immune. Yet, there are moments…

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Raising Chickens was released last week, and I got my author’s copies the other day. (And this book was finished — met the three-alarm red-hot super-important deadline — last July.) One of the first things I noticed was the caption on the first picture, on page 2. “Chickens run wild in many places in the world, even in cities: on the streets, in grocery store parking lots, and sometimes in front of restaurants where a certain colonel is known for chicken of a different kind. Here are some feral chickens in downtown Panama City, Panama.”

Okay. A little bland, but nothing wrong with it — unless you know the whole story.

My point was that raising chickens ain’t rocket science. (Maybe I went overboard on this throughout the book, because the editors seemed to want to make everything 10 times more complicated than it has to be.) There are lots of places where chickens flourish on their own, even where some people try to discourage them, such as Key West Florida and much of Hawaii, as well as places where you’d least expect to see them, such as in front of a KFC. And I had a knock-your-socks-off photo to prove it, thanks to Staci Walker of Danville, Illinois.

The editors (there were seven of them) found the picture as hilarious and fitting as I did. But when they stopped laughing, they said the company lawyers would never go for it.

Not to be thwarted by such a minor detail, I contacted KFC. Their PR people had to run it through legal, of course. But when that all-important deadline came up and I hadn’t heard from them, I had to put some pressure on them. The lawyers tossed off a noncommittal “we will neither license nor give permission to use this photo.”

Well, to me, in lawyer-speak, that simply meant they didn’t want to get stuck okaying the picture. It certainly didn’t say we couldn’t use it. (And how could they stop anyone from showing a picture of an advertising sign, taken on a public sidewalk, anyway?) But I knew the Alpha (Idiot) lawyers would side with their KFC (chicken) colleagues, and with the deadline looming, I decided to fight it with my own (and only) weapon: words.

The cutline I wrote said chickens run wild in many places, even where a certain colonel is known for chicken of a different kind. But I added, “The prissy square-toed lawyers wouldn’t let me show you that picture, but here’s one of some feral chickens in downtown Panama City.” I thought that added a little more punch, and sort of an imaginary visual. But the prissy square-toed editors deleted it.

Here’s Staci Walker’s picture — the one the lawyers didn’t want you to see.

Staci Walker took this picture on Grand Cayman.

By the way, the Panama photo used in the book is credited to David Chase. His name really is Chase Davis. That is most likely my fault, which is another story, but it shows it ain’t easy being an editor.

There’s more — much, much more. I won’t bother mentioning the “contest” they’re running to find the “most popular” Idiot’s Guide. For one thing, I just found out about it, and it ends at midnight tonight (April 16). In addition, it involves becoming a “follower” of @IdiotsGuides on Twitter, which is all Greek to me, and sounds kind of fishy. But that’s nothing, compared to some of the other insider, behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on.

Maybe I should write a book. — Jd Belanger