SPEAKING A SECOND LANGUAGE

America is undergoing a distinct demographic transition. Starting a microenterprise side hustle, I’ve waded into this social sea change.

I helped to form, and work seasonally for, a cooperative microenterprise with a half dozen Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants, unimaginatively named La Cooperativa. I met these guys at my job as a coordinator of New Brunswick, New Jersey community gardens. We rent land and grow strikingly beautiful, pungently scented giant, school-bus-orange marigolds that we sell to New Brunswick’s many Mexican residents to celebrate their Day of the Dead at the beginning of November. Also, people with tiendas come, in vans, from Philadelphia, Manhattan, Freehold, Trenton, Asbury Park, Passaic, Atlantic City y otros ciudades para comprar multiple bouquets for resale.

The muchachos and I—me llaman Marcos—split the work, decision-making and proceeds equally. We hire some of their family members for our busiest days of planting, harvesting and selling.

Demand for our flowers is strong. We could make semi-serious money if we were a little more focused and if the various Co-op members didn’t all have other jobs with unconventional hours, as landscapers and warehouse workers, and didn’t do things like wind up in Robert Wood Johnson Hospital—again—during the flower sale after going on another drinking binge. Or disbelieve frosty late October forecasts and, thus, fail to plastic-cover all the hoophouses on the cold nights.

Cultural differences are sometimes intriguing and enriching. At other times, they’re vexing and inefficient. The same is true of collective decision-making. Thus, given La Cooperativa’s egalitarian structure and its diverse membership—namely Marcos—all of that stuff squared.

Today, Halloween, was, as it is traditionally, our busiest sale day. We began working before daylight. The other Co-op members arranged and sold the flowers under a lighted pavilion. We jointly decided that I would go to one of our rented fields four miles away and cut additional flowers in the rain, alone. Normally, we work together on such tasks. But today that division of labor made sense.

Cutting was pleasingly primal, especially with water falling on my face, t-shirt and bare arms in a rare warm wind. One could see and feel the seasons changing. I was harvesting the product of both nature and hard work that had begun expectantly with a dozen people under a hot summer sun. As I swung my machete, yellow leaves fell, goats bleated and black chickens roamed and pecked the nearby ground. A time to sow, a time to reap.

As I worked, an unfamiliar, dressed-for-outdoor-work Mexican man in his early forties called to me from the edge of the field, his voice muted by the intensifying rain. I beckoned him to approach. He, and a friend now walking with him, had seen the bright flowers through the mist from the semi-rural road alongside the field and pulled their pick-up truck onto the field’s edge.

They asked me in broken English if they could buy some flowers. I answered them in Spanish and we continued thereafter in their language. They were surprised and pleased that I could understand them and they praised my Spanish.

While some gaps remain, I have a decent Spanish vocabulary, can conjugate verbs competently and, therefore, can pull off a long discussion. I don’t have any special Spanish training. I took three years of public high school Spanish. I didn’t study hard. But while many of my classmates seemed disengaged and took a language only to qualify for college, I paid attention for forty-five minutes each day and observed patterns. I liked the idea of someday being able to understand and speak with people in other countries.

I had no idea then how useful Spanish would become in my daily US life. With the aforementioned Spanish rudiments, I’ve surprised, and shared laughs and goodwill with, hundreds of Latin Americans, both in New Jersey and abroad. This experience still hasn’t gotten old. When it does, I’ll know that I’m tired of living.

During the farm field discussion, the rain-soaked men asked me in Spanish how I knew about growing marigolds. I told them that Mexicans taught me. Exaggerating for fun, I told them that Mexicans were mis jefes (my bosses). They seemed to think this was some combination of surprising, if true—and my presence in the field at least suggested that it was—amusing and great: their own Mexican hermanos bossing around a gringo. Que bonito el pais! (What a country!)

I cut an unpackaged batch of brilliant orange, strongly scented, bigger-than-baseballs, damp flowers abundant enough that the carrier had to wrap two arms around them. One of the guys handed me two wet, crumpled twenty-dollar bills plus a ten. They thanked me and I thanked them. I was pleased to put fifty dollars inside the elastic ankle of my white sock. They left happy to have spontaneously found large, fresh-cut flowers to commemorate their forefathers and mothers on the altars they construct inside their homes. The flowers’ strong fragrance is said to represent and evoke the souls of the departed.

I leaned over and slashed more chest high stalks for another hour until I had enough flowers to fill the bed of a large pick-up truck.

Then I returned to the gardens where my business partners were packaging and selling flowers under a pavilion. One of them, Andres, told me that while I was out harvesting, a Latino wholesale buyer with an empty van had stopped by and requested a deep discount for a bulk order of bouquets.

Cooperativa members look unfavorably upon discount requests because we know the expenses we must cover and the hard work we did to produce good flowers. When that buyer hit an impasse with characteristically stubborn Andres, the customer applied the old “let-me-talk-to-the-boss” strategy, asking Andres, “Where’s the Americano?” i.e., me.

While I didn’t know who Andres was describing, I guess the same buyer had also stopped by last year to inquire about the flowers, had remembered me and figured that, because of my Northern European complexion and my possession of a wallet full of cash, I was the boss and that he could negotiate a better price with me.

The buyer didn’t know that that wouldn’t have worked: I take an equally hard line against discounts. I often remind Mexican bargain hunters that their paisanos worked hard to grow the flowers and that workers’ labor should be respected and fairly compensated.

Plus, I was raised not to bargain. “Take it or leave it” is a broader theme in my life. It might be my epitaph. It might be what kills me.

In order to end the negotiation, Andres told me that he told the buyer, “We fired him,” i.e., the Americano/me.

The buyer asked why.

Andres responded, “He was selling the flowers too cheap.”

—

I’ve met with dozens of readers and spoken with dozens more on the phone. Doing so feels like we’re mutually speaking an alternative language. Lockdown, mask, test and jab opponents know the past 56 months have been a massive, intentional overreaction. Interacting with them, i.e., you, has kept me sane.

Thank you.

From questioning and exploring, readers know the statistical misattribution of “Covid” cases and deaths was enabled by the highly manipulable and misleading PCR tests. They know what an IFR is, and how low it was. They know about the distinctly age-limited risk profile and how leaky masks are—and about the studies that showed these. They know about the legions of hospital-induced deaths of 2020-21 and specifically, how these were caused. They know of the hundreds of thousands of excess, “vaccine” driven deaths and jab injuries since 2021. They know about self-care, boosting immunity and using off-label meds, and the perils of “vaccine” spike proteins and adjuvants. They know the names and sub-specialties of various Covid dissident writers and speakers. They know about the government’s/Big Tech’s Corona censorship and the politically-motivated Pharma-bought media’s bias. And more.

They think critically and independently and thus, have perceived the government/media Covid conspiracy. Though governments, media and celebrities mock the notion of doing one’s “own research,” my teammates have done their own research. That’s why they’re better informed. When I speak with such people, I feel as if I’m among my kinsmen and women.

In contrast, most Americans didn’t—and still don’t—know they’ve been lied to throughout. I know this because I’ve talked to many people who bought the Scamdemic. When I observe some of the Scam’s obvious elements, give examples of some of the statistical chicanery, e.g., defining those who die within the six weeks following vaccination as “unvaccinated,” and use words like “iatrogenic” and “shadowban,” most peoples’ faces go blank. It’s as if I’m speaking a foreign language to them.

Despite extensive censorship, all of this information was well within reach of anyone with a mildly inquiring mind. As with learning high-school Spanish, anyone who applied themselves would have seen that the Corona doom and dread they were fed on TV didn’t square with what they saw in their daily sphere. And that the Covid response was raw political and economic opportunism.

When the world changes around you because of open borders or closed public settings, you can act as if these changes aren’t happening. Or you can ask yourself, “Why is this going on?” and “How do I react constructively to it?”

Instead of seeking information about something as profoundly disruptive as the lockdowns, closures and injections, lazy and gullible people wasted time watching Netflix, getting drunk or high and consuming junk food and biased media. They believed a torrent of implausible lies, when the truth was right in front of them: multitudes of healthy people weren’t dying from a virus and many lives were being ruined by isolation and injection.

Just as learning the basics of a second language enriches lives, learning a few Scamdemic fundamentals would have enabled the Covophobic to perceive the rampant lies sold to them. Rejecting the false narrative would have greatly enriched their lives and those of many others.

It wouldn’t have taken much effort.