(Don-the-Builder’s guys have finished the path where the famous Socotra Garden Gnome will soon take up quarters. Photo Socotra.)

Projects. Having more than one day in place at the farm was liberating. I was all over closets and crap that had piled up over the last few seasons.

The jumble was an affront to the ordered mind, though goodness knows I have been able to ignore it with equanimity this very strange year. There was a stockpile of paint-cans in the pantry, a hoorah’s nest in the closet, and several minor projects to be done. That included the diminutive form of the Family Gnome who has been standing next to the front door since he arrived from his resting place on the dirt of the crawlspace of the Little House on the Bluff in Petoskey.

He was in sad shape. The panes to his lantern were long gone, the cord to his light moldered away and this black boot badly patched with something that looked a lot like automotive Bondo body filling putty.

I had made half-hearted preparations in anticipation of his resurrection. I actually had the new panes for the lantern, new electrical cord, sandpaper and spray paint in two colors.

There the matter rested since about 2010. It seemed like the time was at hand, and I dug into the project while luxuriating in the delightfully temperate sunshine on the back deck.

I painted the glass, sanded the boot to a smooth unblemished surface, rewired and routed the cord from his lamp to the aperture in his nether regions and fitted the glass once the paint had set.

Not bad, I thought. The Gnome had first jointed the family in 1907 or so, and graced Bumblebee Way at the big house at 98 Sagamore Road in Maplewood, New Jersey. He has known four generations of Socotras in his time, maybe five. His repair was long overdue.

I don’t know what he was supposed to holding in his left hand. There is a hole in his palm that obviously held something at one time, but there is no evidence of what it was, unless there is an old picture in one of the boxes in the garage I will get through some day.

I thought it would be more festive to adorn him with one of the flags associated with the family, and I ordered a selection of them on the internet last year. Naturally, I had done nothing with them since. Once the dwarf was standing, I tailored the stem of the Michigan State Spartans to fit in the opening. Voila! The Gnome returns!

Then, basking in triumph, I mixed a drink and did a chore that did not require nearly so much digital dexterity.

I tackled the closet. I moved one of the dining chairs over so I did not have to stoop and was sorting out canned goods and ammunition from the weatherproof containers in the closet and thinking about what to cook for dinner when I stopped to check email. I have ordered my last stockpile of ammo, I think. Enough is enough.

This stuff drives you a little crazy. Part of it is preparation, and part of it is hedging one’s bets about the future. Some people say gold or silver is a good thing, but I suspect that a truly balanced portfolio includes the two items from the old joke about investments for troubled times: canned goods and ammunition.

At Willow the other evening former-Marine Chris recommended an outfit called “Georgia Arms” for bulk service. We had been talking about the sad state of availability of cheap, reliable ammunition. Many of the big retailers are out of desirable military calibers because of the competitive demands of private owners in the wake of Mr. Obama’s re-election and the vast buying spree of the Federal Government earlier in the year.

That is what is troubling folks out in rural area around Refuge Farm. There has been regular gunfire around the farm for the last two weekends, a function of deer season, and sporadic bursts of fire for proficiency the rest of the year. People here are serious about their guns- Randy at the Shed Store on Route 3 tried to sell me a nice shotgun in .410 when I stopped to inquire about the cost of a pre-fab gazebo for the turn-around island in the gravel driveway.

Anyway, I wasn’t in the mood to acquire another ammunition requirement, and satisfied my lingering investment needs from Georgia Arms for 9mm Lugar, .357 S&W, and .22 Stinger in long-term storage ammo cans. The Feds seem to have wanted the .45 and .223 and there just isn’t any around.

Anyway, times being what they are, I received an alarming note from one of my Eisenhower-era progressive buddies. It contained a very alarming introduction to the story flying around the internet. I sighed. It is the usual mix of truth and alarmism, just like global warming or the suitability of wind power. I opened the note with a certain jaundiced gaze. The header read like this:

“Is this the start of the private army of 750,000 men Obama wanted to create soon after his first election?????…….j”

(The inaugural class of FEMA Corps, the new hybrid DHS organization created from the ranks of Americorps. They do not appear to be a new Marine Corps. Photo DHS.)

Geeze, I thought. Here we go again with the Black Helicopters. I jumped all over it- besides, there is nothing to do outside when it is getting dark and the deer are on the move. Running around in the pastures is a good way to get shot. I deferred dinner and sorting until I had checked some of the usual sources and thought I got close to what the truth might be.

One of Mr. Obama’s pet projects from the get-go was the establishment of a precinct-based civilian volunteer organization. The idea has been around for a while and is a pet rock for Democratic Chief Executive and nothing new except for scope. His Americorps was intended to be the domestic equivalent of the Peace Corps. You know, helpful college kids showing up to show the locals how to dig wells or apply for government benefits.

This goes directly back to the Clinton Administration, and has its antecedents in the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program envisioned by John Kennedy in the days of Camelot.

Granted, there were some troubling military terms used when Mr. Obama announced his re-invigoration of Americorps and several similar organizations in a campaign stop in Colorado Springs back in 2008, before his first election. He said: “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set.

We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

He was talking about an organizational construct of around a quarter million people to do good works, but the scope was sort of breathtaking and the reference to the military unfortunate, since some of the organizations he referenced had been established by the Bush administration in response to 9/11.

Apparently some folks took him at his word. This is the brand new wrinkle, the creation of 1,500 paid positions for young people in what they are calling the FEMA Corps. It has some people hyperventilating.

In the wake of mutant storm Sandy and the attendant damage to New York City and New Jersey, you could say that FEMA’s possession of the equivalent number of ready volunteers in the numbers of an Army Regiment might be a good thing.

Or, you could say: “WTF? Who are these people and under what authority are they working?”

Like I said, it could be just another of the grab-bag jobs programs associated with the stimul that is going to be well-overseen and completely peaceful. The alarmist note went over the top, featuring pictures of armored vehicles, some of them painted black and adorned with the logos of the Department of Homeland Security, of which FEMA is a charter member.

The tanks in the pictures are all indeed military-spec and heavily armored, but they are clearly labeled as being subordinated to organizations with charters for deadly force. Regulated deadly force, mind you, and that is the other component of the response to this wonderful initiative.

If they had made this program subordinate to the Governors of the States I imagine there would not be such hysteria about it. But it is part of an Executive Branch agency, the Department of Homeland Insecurity, and thus to the President.

People simply do not trust the government. I used to be in it, and I don’t.

This is not a threat, or better put, it is just another manifestation of the National Security State we have decided to establish. I doubt if we will be seeing any of these young people down in Culpeper County unless thing are really screwed up.

But still, the reaction to this apparently harmless event is enough to make you turn the lights out on your lawn gnome and maintain standard vigilance, you know?

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com