In Memoriam: Ruth Fisher

To the Editor: 
In the words of her son John, Ruth was “A verbal gladiator slaying freeholders in the press.”
Yes, she was that aggressive and confrontational, but in contrast to those who now seek to be president of the world’s most powerful nation, she was never mean-spirited. How could she or anyone manage that paradox? By cultivation of a strong but non-toxic personality!
My favorite saying is, “the cause of problem is solutions.” How do you avoid solution-related problems? By avoiding toxic solutions! How did Ruth weed out toxic freeholder beliefs? With good humor, and she did her homework, got the facts right, prepared their homework, as did Weston A. Price, whose last words were, “You teach, you teach, you teach.” Teach, as also did Charles Walters, who over 50 years ago created Acres, U.S.A., my favorite “medical journal” for over 40 years.
Ruth was our prophet. How else can we explain her so early concerns over organophosphates over glyphosate? How else explain Bucky Fuller presenting in our county and not in one of 3,000 other counties in the era of the first Earth Day?
Bucky’s tombstone epitaph was “Trimtab” (a tiny tab on the rudder can in time radically change the course of a ship of state). What might be Ruth’s epitaph? People organize runs for life, dashes to the shore. There’s another kind of dash which concerns epitaphs. A late 20th century folksong says, “It ain’t the two dates that matter, it’s that dash in between.” With that in mind, a fitting epitaph for Ruth might be, “A, dash for the planet.”
Our prophet Ruth, our teacher, by her example, suggests that for our work we don’t need to make deals, pander to lobbied interests or swallow Madison Avenue-type propaganda in order to get elected and re-elected, and suggests that we the people are the ones most free to resist toxic influences, free to live and to teach truth, and that doing so needs be our commitment, our satisfaction and the joy which consumes us.