Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Matriarchal Society

 

Going, going … gone

Matriarchal Society

Point Based Solutions

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

 


 

Mr. Patrick McGinty, an Irishman of note,

Fell into a fortune and bought himself a goat.

Says he, “Sure of goat’s milk I’m goin’ to have me fill.”

But when he brought the nanny home, he found it was a bill!

                                                       ~ traditional and ribald Irish ballad, ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat’

            The actual real-life Paddy McGinty was the war hero, Major Roy Farran, who adopted the Paddy McGinty moniker as his nom de guerre (war name). As many who fought behind enemy lines in World War II, Farran used the name to hide his identity to the extent he could from his enemies, the German oppressors.

            Those men (and women) were a different sort of mixed characters. Largely at Winston Churchill’s urging they were assembled, trained, and inserted behind enemy lines to lend support to the native partisans who were trained and armed to raise havoc in the rear and ultimately support the eventual Ally breakthrough in the push to rid Europe of its cloak of contrived darkness.

            Very few individuals were cut from the cloth that constituted one of these warriors.

            Their selection was based largely on being known by the network of the brothers Stirling who became famous in the North Africa campaign as leaders of what became known as the Desert Rats, the British 7th Armoured Division. They were an independent lot crowding on antisocial, risk takers, adrenaline junkies, loyal to their cause, self-starters, brave beyond the pale, inventive, and nearly always sigma type personalities who demonstrated little concern about climbing any social ladder.

            If there was a counterpart today in our industry, it could well be the modern dairyman and … certainly the rancher of yesteryear.

            Going, going … gone

            I view the departure of the participants within dairy row south of Las Cruces along the I-10 corridor with great sadness.

            Last year, 2021, witnessed the departure of two more of those long-time operations with nary any concern or sympathy from local government. In fact, a quick review of news records will reveal a continuum of antidairy sentiment. They stink, they pollute, they use too much water, and they do this, and they do that to the point of ad nauseum. These enemies of a real world and the implications of food and fiber services have little idea on what thin ice they are treading.

            It takes more than fortitude to run much less own one of those milk factories. The constant demands and the intensity of daily responsibilities would leave the tenured professor, the schoolteacher, the government official, the retirees, the trust babies, the casual passersby, and the leftist environmentalists who now govern Dona Ana County speechless. So would signing million-dollar hay checks for keeping the operations viable.

            Another hint of the pressure these operators face is the review of the dairy wage orders that are heaped upon them. There is no leap to recognize it’s not what they can do to keep their businesses viable it is what they can’t do to satisfy the social implications of their existence.

            There is little wonder that they are closing. The downside is huge. Gone are the millions of dollars inserted into the local economy. Gone will be the product itself. Gone are the entry opportunities of young managers, and gone is the mindset of assuming the helm of these cow pen, symphonic behemoths.

            Ranches are no different, and farms face a similar and yet expanded set of growing concerns. Labor has become the overpowering constraint. Indeed, there are people, people everywhere, but no citizen wants to report to work. His societal endowments are too bountiful and cosmopolitan.

            Several years ago, we did a survey to review the status of young managers waiting in the wings of Dona Ana agricultural operations. It was revealed that only 17% of current operations had a young steward ready to assume the responsibility overseeing management. Less than one in five operations had a planned path of succession.

            The most common response among the various operations was that there just wasn’t enough margin to allow opportunities. Likewise, the mounting bureaucratic and social constraints on the operations were being manifested by departure from the businesses. The modern Paddy McGinty is serving notice he’d rather go to the pub and share a brew with the lads.

The fight is no longer worth the odds, and Paddy is getting tired.

Point Based Solutions

There remains the theory the Mimbreno people of our Southwest up to about 1280 had become a matriarchal society much like our own, growing tendencies. Theirs was a society in the clouds of localized docility. Civilized is a word that can be inserted. Something happened about that time, though, and they disappeared. Drought (global warming?) could have had a hand in the departure, but so could the arrival of the Athabascans, the Apaches, who were operated very much like the Germanic invaders of WWII.

The pincer movements of those folks were executed with zeal and civilized standards in their surroundings weren’t necessarily high on their list of essentials. They were undeniably successful, though, and filled the vacuum of the departing Membrenos.

History will never know what would have happened if a group of partisan warriors would have been inserted to stem the tide. Likewise, our society has yet to recognize the condition of sigma oriented and dominated men and women who strive not for grand societal control but for resolution and discovery of point based solutions.

            Their presence and usefulness may well be the key to continuity. They could well be the supremely important component of perpetuity, but enough of that. Another verse of McGinty’s ballad is probably more pertinent for the insightful.

The Germans retreated, hurriedly they fled.

Holding their noses they tumbled over dead.

‘Ach’, says the Kaiser, ‘There’s poison gas afloat.’

But it was only the effluvium from Paddy McGinty’s goat!

 

               Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “A little stink never hurt anybody.”

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