Urban Pagan Harvest

Now I hear a lot about how pagans of the urbane must be cut off from nature. Concrete and divided highways we may have, but we also have something else. An expanding crop of ragweed.

I snagged the May issue of National Geographic to read about the Gospel of Judas, and found myself skimming through the allergies article. In the caption for a swagger of ragweed on the side of a highway near Washington D.C., I learn this:

Higher temperatures and rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide make ragweed grow faster, flower earlier, and produce stronger pollen. According to USDA plant psychologist Lewis H. Ziska, pollen production could double by the end of the century.

Some crazy farmers even grow ragweed as a crop to sell to the pharmas to be made into allergy vaccines. So there's a real urbane crop we drive by every day, that we can harvest and make into our own burning men or a slain god of the harvest. Although a scattering of pagans might not make a difference, does stopping by Giant for a few ears of corn connect us better?

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