We continue our following of monetary expert Tom Greco. For background reading on Greco see our “Categories” section in the right hand column.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day. After driving more than 600 miles yesterday from
Tucson, I spent a restful night at the Motel 6 in Buttonwillow, choosing it
as the much more frugal option over the other lodging possibilities closer
to L.A. At a shade under $33, it’s probably the best bargain in the state of
California.

The morning TV programs from New York City show, as they always do,
enthusiastic crowds eager to be seen by the folks back home. This time they
are gathered for those special events that happen every year on March 17,
the day when everyone is Irish. Bundled up against the thirty degree chill,
they remind me of that time more than a half-century ago when a few of my
college buddies and I drove up from Philly to watch the Saint Paddy’s day
parade and join in the revelry. How many bars could we manage to hit in two
days. How many girls could we meet?

Those were the days when a family could live pretty well on one income. The
ten dollar allowance that my dad sent faithfully every week was enough to
take care of my incidental expenses and pay for an occasional lark, like a
weekend in New York or Atlantic City. Strange as it might sound today, many
of my schoolmates would regularly pack up their dirty laundry in aluminum
cases and mail it home for their moms to wash and send back. Postage was
cheap. As I recall, a first class letter back than could be sent for three
cents. Have costs gone up, or has the value of our money gone down?

Before leaving Buttonwood I fuel up at the Arco station. The regular grade
gasoline-ethanol blend is priced at $3.39. Regular gasoline at the other
nearby stations is advertised for $3.51. That’s forty five cents more than I
paid when I filled up yesterday in Tucson.

The morning air is crisp and fresh, but tainted by the odor of cattle from
the nearby ranches and feedlots. I’ve seen many of those feedlots, both here
and in Texas, where hundreds or thousands of cattle dot the landscape with
nary a blade of grass in between them, just the dark brown muck of their
excrement. Feed is brought to them for the final stage of fattening before
they become steaks and hamburger.

Under bright sunshine I head northward on Interstate 5 through California’s
central valley, a broad expanse several hundred miles long nestled between
the Sierra Nevada mountains to the east and the Coast Range toward the west
that protects it from the Pacific winds. I’ve been this way many times
before, and I’m always amazed at the mile after mile of cultivated lands
that stretch out towards the mountains - orchards, vineyards, fields of
vegetable crops, alfalfa, cotton, and even flowers. There are, of course,
irrigation canals, and every so often there’s a big sign along the highway
that reminds, “Food grows where water flows.” That water comes mainly from
the melting snow that accumulates each winter in the mountains, and the food
that grows is shipped to every corner of North America and beyond. I’ve
heard some numbers but don’t recall them, only the impression of how
dependent we Americans are upon that snow pack and upon this valley for so
much of our food.

I’m excited to be headed for my new home in a town opposite the northeast
corner of San Francisco Bay. My good friends Sergio and Gaye Lub have
graciously offered me the use of an apartment in the building where they
have their business. I’ve known them for more than ten years, have seen
their children grow up, and have been taken into their extended family. Such
blessings as these are never deserved, they can only be appreciated.

I’ve come to write and be in a place where different opportunities seem
likely to present themselves. California is fast and intense. It seems to
vibrate with a different energy. As a young man starting out on my
engineering career, I lived for two years in the L.A. beach area. I worked
for Douglas, which was then one of the biggest, most successful aircraft
companies. Many years later, when I organized the Fourth World Assembly and
New Economics Symposium, I spent several months near Santa Cruz, and
Oakland. Since then, I’ve been back many times, staying for brief periods. I
wonder how it will feel this time around.

Still a nomad after spending more than half of last year traveling through
Asia and spanning the globe, I hadn’t planned to stay in Tucson quite as
long as I did. After seeing my friends and taking care of some business,
what kept me there was the need to rest up and find a way to feel better.
I’ve had to resolve some medical issues, mostly some discomfort in my gut.
Doctors will give you plenty to worry about - your cholesterol is too high;
your PSA is elevated and rising, so you’d better have a prostate biopsy; you
have a family history so you ought to have a colonoscopy; you may not have
fully recovered from the Lyme disease you think you had years ago or the
typhoid you caught last year in India, so you should have some more tests.
What’s a person to do?

I’m someone who takes responsibility for my own health. I won’t abuse myself
and then expect someone else to “fix” me. I think I know my body pretty well
and I pay attention to what it tells me, but I’m not inclined to be panicked
into invasive procedures when I’m feeling relatively well. Modern western
medicine can perform some astounding feats, but I think there may be
something wrong about its basic assumptions and attitudes. That has been
partly addressed by what has come to be called “integrative medicine” by Dr.
Andrew Weil and others who have looked beyond the orthodoxy that pervades
our medical schools and clinics.

The “slash and burn” treatments of surgery and chemotherapy, for instance,
seem to be based upon fear and a war mentality, rather than an understanding
of the root causes of illness, most of which may be psycho-spiritual. By
that I don’t mean they are psychosomatic, but rather a departure from right
living, or an inability to let go of negative emotions, or repression of
that “small still voice” that comes from within.

The conventional medical attitude about cancer is one of constant vigilance
and “zero tolerance.” Find a few cancer cells? They must be rooted out.
Never mind that the “best” available treatments often kill the patient in
the process. Is there such a thing as peaceful coexistence or reformation of
errant cells?

I once met Ivan Illich. It was 1989, I think, during the time when I was
President of the School of Living and one of my colleagues had organized a
Fourth World Assembly in Toronto. That was a historic event with Illich,
Leopold Kohr and John Papworth all on the same program, each of them
thinkers “outside the box.” Illich was an iconoclast of the first order.
Among his major works were Deschooling Society (1972) and Medical Nemesis:
The Exploration of Health (1977). When I met Illich he had a large cancerous
growth on his face. He had already had it for several years, and lived with
it until he died in 2002. I’m not sure I’d be willing to do that. Was it
mere stubbornness on his part? Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about that
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich) : “At an early stage, he
consulted a doctor about having the tumor removed, but was told that there
was too great a chance of losing his ability to speak, and so he lived with
the tumor as best he could. He called it “my mortality.”

For most of my time in Tucson, I took a room in the house of a long-time
friend, Marie, who happens to be a nurse practitioner. Besides access to her
extensive library I had the advantage of her considerable knowledge and
experience with the kinds of health concerns I had to deal with. I was
particularly taken with one particular book she passed along for me to read.
It was Stomach Ailments and Digestive Disturbances by Michael T. Murray, ND.
That book describes all kinds of gastro-intestinal disorders, their
symptoms, possible causes, and natural as well as conventional treatments.

One situation that Dr. Murray highlights is conventional medicine’s
“obsession with the infectious agent rather than host defense factors.” He
describes the origins of the germ theory following the discoveries of the
nineteenth-century French physician and researcher, Louis Pasteur. But he
also tells of another French scientist of that time, Claude Bernard, who
argued that the pathogen was less important than the person’s internal state
or milieu in determining disease, and how Pasteur on his deathbed
acknowledged that “Bernard was right. The pathogen is nothing, The terrain
is everything.” So, should we be compulsive about avoiding germs, or should
we put the emphasis on healthful habits and building up our natural
defenses?

I delayed my departure from Tucson one more day so that I might get to see
another good friend, Spencer MacCallum on Saturday, March 15. Spencer,
accompanied by two artists from Mata Ortiz, had come up to Tucson from his
home in Chihuahua, Mexico, to put on an exhibition and sale of Mata Ortiz
pottery and handcrafts, and to give presentations of his Mata Ortiz story.
Reports in both the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Weekly provided the
bare facts but could hardly begin to convey the richness of this amazing
story of genius, discovery, devotion, and success, which Spencer managed
admirably with wit, humor and his characteristic thoroughness. He had told
me before about how he had discovered some of Juan Quezada’s early work in a
Deming, New Mexico junk shop, then went to find him, help him develop his
art, and sell his work in the United States. But that was a mere preview
that gave hardly a hint of the remarkable sequence of events and
circumstances that over the past 30 years have led to the transformation of
the village and its people from poverty and obscurity to artistic mastery,
fame, and widespread acclaim.

But it was another of Spencer’s remarkable achievements that led me to
contact him almost thirty years ago. I think it was in the School of Living
library on one of my early visits that I first came across a copy of E. C.
Riegel’s book, Flight From Inflation. That book had been compiled and
published long after Riegel’s death by, you guessed it, Spencer MacCallum.
What shines the brightest in Spencer’s character is his knack for
recognizing true genius and his willingness to dedicate his prodigious
talents and skills to making sure it gets the attention it deserves. So it
was with both Riegel and Quesada.

I have said many times that I have learned more about money from Riegel than
from any other source. It was Spencer who rescued Riegel’s legacy from
oblivion. Spencer, during his student days at Princeton, had met Riegel
through his grandfather. Recognizing the importance of Riegel’s work with
regard to money, banking, and democratic government, Spencer kept tabs on
him. When Riegel died in 1954, he left his literary estate to a couple who
had been close friends and supporters for many years. About ten years later,
only the elderly widow remained, so Spencer negotiated with her to acquire
all of Riegel’s books and papers. He eventually went meticulously through
all of it, cataloging and transcribing, publishing and republishing, making
it available to others like me who might be able to build upon the
conceptual foundation that Riegel had so elegantly laid. You can read
Spencer’s own account of his discovery of the Riegel legacy, his exploration
of Riegel’s writings, his publication and propagation of Riegel’s message,
and the text of the book itself at:
MESSAGE

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GRECO

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