Believe it or not, this isn't actually about bees, even if it really is. If yesterday was largely spent on honey producers at the state level, today we were back to local, doing another turn at the "bee booth" at the county fair. Our shift ended about ninety minutes before closing time. I should have known better than to take our replacements at their word that we'd be packing up at six. By the time my husband and I returned at two minutes until six, everything had been packed up and folks were shooting the breeze before heading out. The hive-mind strikes again.
Yesterday's WHPA meeting was also a pretty solid demonstration of the power of small, committed groups--particularly as the meeting had to rescheduled on rather short notice. These people do so much with so little. Naturally, there's also the flip-side of that to deal with--namely the predictable small-group politics. All the same, I'm not convinced that it's possible to salary that kind of commitment and stretching of shoe-strings. I don't mean that rhetorically.
Which, if true, leads me to a similarly non-rhetorical question: How can we reasonably expect the carrot of a paycheck and/or the stick of unemployment to be the most efficient means of producing wealth? I'm not denying that it's "good enough." Obviously, it's served for millennia...when and where slavery hasn't been an option, anyway. Just don't try to tell me it's optimal, 'k?
