history – Vine Maple Farm

July 5, 2026July 8, 2026

Fifth-Grade Socialism

I published this piece on my Substack, Second Thoughts, but I like it so much I decided to post it on Vine Maple Farm also. I am enthralled that U.S. attitude toward the cold war of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s was very likely a reflection of the state of the candy industry in the 20th century. I discovered this when I researched a presentation I remembered from the fifth grade. We live in a fascinating world.

A candy conspiracy

Socialism, democratic socialism, and social democracy have been tossed around the last few days on the platforms I read regularly. On the 250^th anniversary of the U.S.’s democratic government, we are re-examining our freedom of democratic choice over the relationship between government and the distribution and acquisition of wealth and power. Socialism has been a loaded term for a long time. It may seem fantastic, but this discussion has been heavily influenced by candy wars in the early 20^th century.

In North Bellingham Elementary School in 1960, Mr. MacDonald, my fifth grade teacher, stood in front of our class next to an easel loaded with slick graphics that looked like PowerPoint slides 25 years before PowerPoint was invented. The packaged presentation, which circulated among classrooms in the Ferndale School District, gave us fifth-graders the low-down on the evils of Communism and the virtues of Capitalism with a side order promoting the domino theory that threw the U.S. into sad exploits in Southeast Asia when we fifth-graders registered for the draft. Separating socialist economics and authoritarian Soviet-style communism was far beyond Mr. MacDonald’s presentation.

Mr. MacDonald and the Ferndale School District board, which must have sanctioned the presentation, were well-intentioned, probably not well-informed, and likely the victims of a movement upholding the grotesque anti-communist McCarthy hearings a few years earlier. I won’t say explicitly that the John Birch Society’s hand was in the presentation, but I believe it.

The John Birch Society’s founder was a candy magnate, Robert Welch, the mastermind behind Junior Mints and Sugar Daddies, and veteran of cut-throat and conspiratorial candy wars.

Candy brands and packaging art can be legally protected, but ingredients, recipes, and processes, which are the real treasures of the industry, are free to steal without legal penalties. Candy factories, like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, are secretive fortresses against industrial espionage. The struggles of these intrigue-wrapped bastions mirrored Welch’s vision of the cold war against world communism and inspired the thought behind Mr. MacDonald’s presentation.

North Bellingham Elementary School is in a remote corner of the nation and national communications did not penetrate as deeply sixty years ago as they do today. In my fifth-grade days, only the loudest ALL CAPs, candy war-inspired voices made it all the way to the Nooksack River plain.

Amazing that we’ve made it this far.

February 12, 2026February 12, 2026

Voting

This week, I wrote on my Substack, Second Thoughts, about voting: not who is elected or what is voted for or against, but about voting as an event in our lives and communities.

December 13, 2025December 14, 2025

Floods

This morning, for the first time after several days of heavy rain and thick clouds, fog blanketed the fields. The fog gradually thinned, and the sun shone on Mt. Baker, Komo Kulshan, wrapped in glittering white snow. Flood waters have been retreating since yesterday morning.

This flood is said to be the product of an atmospheric river, a phrase my mother’s parents would have thought outlandish, even silly. Nothing like a river crashing down from the mountains laden with precious rock flour.

My mother’s parents owned a farm near the Nooksack River downstream a few miles from Lynden. They expected their fields to be underwater for several months in the year, which they gladly traded for well-watered and fertile soil for their crops.

Their house was on stilts until they bought a parcel of high ground for their dwelling, barn, chicken coops, and machinery shed. When my mother was born during a March flood, my grandfather fetched the midwife in a row boat, a mode of transportation he knew well.

My mother’s father was born on the polders of the Netherlands and grew up in the Dutch community on Whidbey Island where he learned to live on the water. This was before the Deception Pass bridge was built. He courted my grandmother in Lynden. To visit my grandmother, he and his brother rowed across the notorious whirlpools and tidal rips of the pass. I never heard what motivated his brother, but I like to stretch the point and say that I was born to the product of a daredevils in rowboats and spring floods.

I’ve gotten emails from all over asking if my family is okay in this much publicized flood. I answer that like most longtime Whatcom County residents, we have learned to live with the fall and spring floods that arrive most years; this year’s flood is was higher than usual but not unheard of.

Lest anyone doubt, I agree that the climate is changing, but climate is averages and statistical norms; weather is the events of a single day or week. Climate change can be detected with objective answerable questions, like ‘was the average July temperature at a give spot between 1950 and 1980 the same, higher, or lower than the same average between 1980 and 2020?’ Consult the records and you have an answer.

The folks who do those calculations say climate has changed. With all the changes I’ve seen in my lifetime, I’m not surprised, and I don’t think climate change is a hoax. However, a lot of the talk I hear about climate change is, in my opinion, uninformed and not as factual as I would like it to be.

We should all feel sorry for the sufferings of those driven out of their homes by the floods and do whatever we can to help, but I still enjoyed the weather this week: heavy rain splatting in my face and rising waters revealing the contours of the earth in ways that are unseen on lesser days.

The weather service predicts the atmospheric river will return for a reenactment next week. The meteorologists know more than I do, but this morning, looking at the sky and the mountain, I have doubts.

We’ll see. I’m used to being proven wrong.