The Affected: Dancing Wind, Beyond the Moon

[kaijafon]

So here is the next part of Dancing Winds story. I have most of it on my forum but as someone wiser than me said: "go put on PAW" and I really couldn't argue with him. I might find myself dangling over a volcano or water churned full of sharks.

The Affected: Dancing Wind, Beyond the Moon

Prologue

I first met “him” in Washington DC of all places. Doc and I were trying to get some answers out of our congressman about a bill he was trying to push through congress about it being illegal to feed people for free. It had a nice legit name to it but basically the bill would stop my progress of school and community gardens projects. We figured that a certain company had paid big bucks through lobbyists to get him to support the bill.

Well I was a ways from Doc partially engrossed in checking out a cherry tree that I seemed to have altered when I was here last time. There was a waist high fence around it and signs that said “please do not eat the cherries, they are poisonous” which was ridiculous.

Anyways, security was beginning to hassle Doc and the congressman was beginning to vomit so I knew she was getting answers but he was resisting. Then this dude shows up. I mean how can I even explain this guy? He ends up getting hassled and threw something on the ground which I found out later was a whole lotta money!

Then he just disappeared and then reappeared by Doc.

Right away I thought about that bridge incident with the guy who disappeared with the man who jumped. I figured it was him again. That had been a while ago though. What was weird is that he and Doc started singing a song together. Doc had a smile on her face as she sang along with the dude. I strained to hear and began jogging over there but Doc and that guy just disappeared so I began to chew out the security people demanding they bring my friend back.

I guess the congressman snuck away during this time because I don’t remember seeing him anymore I was so engrossed in yelling at the men in front of me. I was just getting ready to call out to the birds all around when the dude shows up again.

Security pulled their guns and yelled at us to get on the ground. Dude started talking in some weird accent and then disappeared, popped up behind the security guys and then they all disappeared.

To say I was highly irked would be an understatement. I was royally PO’d! Doc was gone; to where, I don’t know. Now this Dude was gone with security and that representative of ours was nowhere to be seen! I had no one to yell at. Just as I was about to stomp off, he and Doc just popped back.

Yes I lit into him like he was the cause of all the mess. I won’t repeat what I said; I’m embarrassed now about it. Doc helped get me calm and Dude introduced himself as “Norman Osborne Body”. What kind of name is that? Not a real one for sure! Found out later the Dude’s name actually is Ben.

So here I am still kinda yelling at him and POOF! He disappears again.

By now my head is spinning with all his comings and goings. Just when I began to suggest we leave, there he is again but he has our representative with him and he is frisking the guy and taking things.

“What are you doing? Are you robbing him?”

“I'm taking these items for what I think is a fair trade.” Was his reply.

Then he asked what kind of food we’d like for lunch. Of course we said no thanks. But Doc got a funny look on her face like she just solved some puzzle and “Norman” popped out of there.

Doc and I were among the many who came to DC for the convention on GMO’s and other botany issues and it was our last day. I walked back to the cherry tree, hopped/floated over the fence, and grabbed four cherries. I began eating one and gave Doc one and kept two for later. They were delicious and about the size of an apple.

[kaijafon]

One

It was after I got nabbed by the Feds and Aunt Becca got busy suing the government that we had a visitor at the Ranch. I was away taking my final finals and who should show up but “Norman”. Kassie filled me in on the visit and had me laughing at them. That is when I found out his real name was Ben. He did show up a couple days later while I was changing a lightbulb in one of the greenhouses. One of the best things about my flying ability is that I never needed a ladder. Well he scared the snot right out of me when he popped in and began to sing that stupid song from Beetlejuice! Well I lost concentration and I fell like a rock -right on him.

Seems he popped to where I was about to land on my butt and tried to catch me. We both hit the ground but I landed on top of him.

“I’m not implying in any way you are fat or overweight, but would mind getting off me?”

How rude! After we both got up, I realized what he had done and normally I don’t cuss but I said “holy crapole', I saw you in one of my visions and you were the one who rescued that guy on the bridge in Frisco....and by the way, what other rescues have you done?”

To which he replied “I didn't do it, I wasn't there, it was somebody who looked like me and I wanna talk to my lawyer.”

He was SO yanking my chain. I just had to laugh and teasingly say “liar, liar, pants on fire” and of course, he jumped to just outside of the greenhouse. I could hear him shout “that wasn't funny, that wasn't funny at all.”

He was right, it wasn’t funny but it was hilarious!!

I was laughing so hard I could barely get out that my abilities were flying/floating in the air and make plants grow bigger/faster, but NOT setting people's pants on fire.

We talked about all kinds of things. I did not go into the details of my vision with him at this time because that was just too personal for now. NO! It wasn’t anything ‘nasty,’ so get your minds out of the gutter. I’ll just say this: it was more about my role in his “great plans” and our friendship. Maybe I’ll write about it later.

Anyways, that was our first official meeting and over the next few years is when he began really implementing his vision for feeding the hungry. And this was before my Aunt got her first settlement, so he brought us a few bags of money and some satellite phones to get in touch with him. Aunt Becca didn’t want to take the money but then considered it a loan, Ben didn’t want the money back so we all agreed on a “pay it forward” type of loan. Hence the botanical gardens by the college benefitted from us paying it forward when Aunt Becca did get the settlement for us. More about that later.

Since Ben mentioned cherries, I decided to show him the trees that grew from the cherry pits from DC and how they were amazingly strong and bug resistant cherry trees that already were blossoming. I had them in one of the greenhouses way out back. This is when he really got serious about “The Plan”.

[kaijafon]

TWO

I had begun our campaign for gardens for schools and communities which Kassie named “Let’s EAT”. The schools were slowly but surely allowing us to help them. They were very hesitate at first but after the first few were huge successes, more and more began to request help.

Did I mention how my Aunt Becca got a settlement from the government? Well it was a lot of money and we agreed to also “pay it forward” so I took some and set up a full ride scholarship program at the college.

As I went through my masters and phd program, I developed an ethnobotany program. There was a huge chunk of land that suddenly came up for sale next to the college and I bought it. I put up all kinds of greenhouses and a huge atrium. It made the one in DC look puny. And I set up gardens, lots of gardens.

So as I went through the courses, many of which I designed, ideas would come to me as to how to make the degree program better. I set up gardens from “around the world” all over the land I had bought and let me tell you, it was hard to get some of those plants. My favorites were the Native American gardens. I tried to get representatives of all the Nations and what plants they used.

But after Ben and I became friends he helped me greatly add to the gardens. I even began to seriously look at buying the land that was around mine since my gardens were expanding so well.

I ended up with the lot which was a total of 47.5 acres which included the 37.5 acres right next to my land and went to about 10 acres on the far side of the river. Ok, it’s really a creek that runs year long. The college kids love to go swimming in it during the summer sessions; even some would swim during the latter half of the spring semester.

I couldn’t find out who owned the land with the creek on it, but then set my Aunt on the hunt. Well it turns out that the land was held in an estate trust that was about 60 years old. The bank that held the trust had gone out of business during the economic downturn and all the trusts and assets got divvied up among some “government” bail out thingy and this land trust fell through the cracks. Even my Aunt couldn't find any family members. (reminder to self: have Aunt Becca look for more of these “fell through the cracks” kind of land)

Long story –short: Aunt Becca got the land for a song, it had fell so far through the cracks that it hadn’t been taxed and she made a deal with the county that she would pay the taxes on it for the past five years and it would be hers free and clear. The county said they would need all 60 years of taxes and she just got up and started to walk out. She turned around and then held up the deed and said, “I can just go and file this and be done with it. I am willing to pay five years of taxes, which is more expensive than doing an Adverse Possession but I’m trying to do the fair thing.” Well the person sitting in the desk representing the county decided that would be fair also and the deal was made. I don't know what Adverse Possession is so I'm not sure exactly how she did it. I just know she did.

Kassie and I had a blast renovating that land. Besides all the new gardens; we built a daycare with edible landscaping and a huge playground with tree houses and rope bridges and all kinds of stuff for the kiddos. All meals and snacks came from the grounds.

We made a spot in the “river” into a swimmer friendly beach retreat. We even snuck in a few good fishing holes. Since it was private property, no fishing license was needed and we had a little shack where people could borrow fishing equipment.

There were small little parks all throughout the gardens where those from the college and daycare could have barbecues. Every plant was labeled with what it was and how it was used. People were encouraged to “graze” all they wanted to but asked to not take the whole plant.

It was the honor system but we had so many people helping out in the gardens that vandalism was never a problem. In fact, the problem was that no one wanted to ‘disturb’ the plants by picking anything. So the helpers were there to teach about the plants and encourage ‘tasting’ many of them.

It also helped that the whole place was surrounded by a very tall and study brick fence so no one could just come in. College students had to swipe their ID card to get in through the gate on their side and Townies had to go through a check in and a gate from the back side. There was no public parking lot so those who came to visit had to either ride a bike, for which we did have many bike racks; or walk. The buses ran by and eventually had to make a bus-stop there.

Yes we did start charging a small fee to help with maintenance and upkeep.

But I am digressing. Where was I? oh yeah, about Ben…

I was never really sure when he would pop in and take me for an adventure, so I just kept adding the ‘normal’ way to the gardens during the times he was busy.

Did I mention how he called me Dini for some reason? I think that was his way of shortening Dancing Wind. I tried to tell him it was “Dani” but he said it sounded too… well just not right for me. I got used to it but I didn’t let anyone else call me that. After that he would switch and call me DW sometimes.

So by now, you probably think I never had time for friends, let alone a fella. Well I do have a lot of friends and I met a guy in college. Matthew and I were getting pretty serious towards the end of my PhD degree and the day I walked and graduated, he actually proposed. But I knew I wasn’t ready for marriage just yet and neither was he. He finally admitted that he was carried away by the romantic thought of it all. We agreed we would wait at least two years and see how we felt then. Sadly it was only about four months before he fell out of love with me and in love with Charlene Weatherspoon. Her daddy owned a feed store in his hometown. Oh well. I survived. I never told Ben about it because I was afraid Matthew would up and disappear and I was actually happy that he was happy.

Kassie was growing like a weed and her brain was just soaking up information like a sponge. She was actually entering college as I was graduating so she became the first ‘real’ recipient of the "Back to our Roots scholarship". That full ride was from undergraduate to doctorate at the college in ethnobotany I started. Since she had been into my own studies, she ended up going through the program in record time. She was a full-fledged Doctor in ethnobotany before she was 20. Between her and I, we published about 1000 papers on plants and their uses. We were able to dig up some really old timers who would talk about how they and their ancestors used plants to survive. It makes me sad to think about all those we were not able to get to and how so much wisdom and knowledge was lost. Some of the other sources we found were old diaries and journals. Kassie was great at ferreting out estate sales and even had an online site that was set up requesting copies.

It was about the time that Kassie was in her master’s program that we decided to check out GMO’s. So much of the food grown was GMO’s and we had a sneaky suspicion that the companies, or should I say “company” since only one was in business anymore; were going back on what they had agreed to with the government.

Remember Doc and I had gone to DC years ago to fight the bill which tried to make it illegal to feed people for free and for some reason it never even came up for a vote. Instead there was a huge public press conference with the company backing the government and saying there were not going to genetically modify any more food plants until a thorough study of the effects was done. They allegedly did and suspiciously almost everyone agreed that “all was good” and “safe”. They even said they found a safer way to modify the genetic code for even safer results and that they would begin a new program of GMO’s.

Well I had started getting really antsy so Ben and I had a special vault built under the biggest greenhouse on the Ranch and another one under one of the greenhouses on the lot by the College. Ben was very generous with his funds and since this was interlinked with “The Plan”, he didn’t even hesitate in that generosity.

Inside these vaults I hoarded seeds. Heirloom seeds from all over the world. Thousands and thousands of them. With Doc’s help, I hired a few people to look after them. Once inside the vault, there wasn’t much to do. And everyone who knew about them was sworn to secrecy and of course vetted by Doc.

And I decided to check out the new GMO’s that were being marketed. I redesigned and altered one of the greenhouses on the Ranch so that nothing would escape and forbade all the critters on the place to come in this greenhouse. I’m so glad I did that.

I set up four sample sets of soybeans, four of rice, and four of corn. Each set contained: a control where I was using gloves of course, one that I only touched the seeds briefly before planting, one where I handled the seeds and then the plants once when they sprouted, and finally one set that I handled the seeds and then touched the plants every day after they sprouted.

Since there were no insects to pollinate anything, I did it all by using several paintbrushes. I was careful to keep each sample set isolated from the others.

Every plant bore fruit. (Please remember that “fruit” is the mature ovaries with seeds being the ovules within; grains are a type of “fruit”) The last set growing quicker and bigger first. This did not surprise me since I touched them more.

The results were horrifying.

[pbbrown0]

Uh Oh! Horrifying???

[pbbrown0]

Our 'selective breeding' over the centuries of naturally occuring mutations in crops has created some dietary and health issues that we are only beginning to understand. When we start messing with forcing mutations on a mass sale into genomes that we are only recently discovering, that cultivates an environment rich with possibilities for Murphey's Law and the Law of Unintended Consequences to join forces in most bizzare ways. You think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are bizzare? Ha Ha Ha.   Look out Gregor Mendel!