vagabound

Beans, the Magical Fruit

2010-09-17T20:11:00.002-04:00

We live in a primarily vegetarian household, which often puts protein on my mind. Humans need complex carbohydrates to live well, but a certain lesser amount of quality protein is vital for tissue growth, immune system support, and hormone synthesis required for the body's countless chemical reactions. There are several ways to include plenty of protein in the diet without meat products, but my favorite by far is with beans. Beans eaten with about twice as much grain is an appropriate and delicious way to ensure you're getting a complete protein easiest for the body to use.

Combining grain and beans with varied seasonal vegetables and fruits provides a high-fiber, nutrient-dense diet linked with much improved digestive, cardiovascular, and immune system health. There is one caveat with increased bean consumption when moving from a diet with a majority of refined and processed foods to a diet consisting of whole foods, including beans: flatulence! When a body has become used to a lack of fiber, as in most western diets, it can have a healing reaction when high-fiber foods are introduced. My recommendation is to start small, increasing your consumption gradually, making sure to soak beans overnight and to include the seaweed kombu in small amounts to increase the digestibility of your non-pressure-cooked bean meal!

I am now very happy to share my three very favorite bean and grain meals! These meals are almost always accompanied in our home by several condiments the value of which cannot be underestimated in my opinion. These include: Ume Plum Vinegar, a salty delight; Jalapeño Vinegar, a mild spicy vinegar that I make by pouring apple cider vinegar over a jar of jalapeños and let sit for as long as it takes to get a little hot, then decant into a separate jar: an added benefit to this process is the preservation of the jalapenos which I pick out to use in two of the following recipes; Nutritional Yeast containing b-complex vitamins that tastes a little like popcorn or butter; Dulce flakes, a slightly salty seaweed packed with protein, and lastly hormone- and antibiotic-free (often found only as organic) sour cream. It just kinda blends the flavors sweetly.

On to the food! My southern influence shines through in my love of cornbread, tex-mex, and creole-style flavors. Oh, and butter! To best enjoy these meals, be sure to soak beans overnight to reduce gas and cooking time and simmer with a chopped up piece of kombu.

Black-Eyed Peas and Corn Bread

-Preheat oven to 350 for the corn bread and start on peas.

-In a medium sized pot, put peas on to heat and cover with water. Bring to a gentle boil, skim the surface foam and reduce to a simmer with lid on.

Chop or dice:

1 onion

several cloves of garlic

1 jalapeño

2-3 stalks of celery

2-3 carrots (optional)

½-1 bell pepper (optional)

1 6-in piece of kombu in pieces

-Add carrot, celery, and kombu to pot with peas.

-In olive or unrefined sesame oil, sauté onions until translucent, add garlic, jalapeño, and bell pepper if desired and cook until onions begin to brown. Add all to pea pot.

-Spices can be included at this point, but not much is required. I often add cayenne made from chipotle peppers, but wait until peas are almost done to add salt and pepper. Black-eyed peas are done in about 20 minutes, but can stand 5 or 10 more to blend flavors.

---

All right! Now for the corn bread.

-Place 6 TBS of butter in a deep baking pan or cast-iron skillet and stick it in the oven until it melts.

In a bowl, combine:

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup unbleached or whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

a pinch of cinnamon

In another, combine:

¼ C maple syrup (sugar may be substituted, just add to dry ingredients)

1 C milk, yogurt or water

1 or 2 beaten eggs

-When butter is melted, remove pan from oven. Combine wet and dry ingredients, stir well, and then add the melted butter. Stir until pretty well incorporated and dump the whole thing back into the baking pan or skillet, which should be pretty well lubricated from the melted butter.

-Bake 20 minutes or until the top is golden brown and the edges pull away from the sides of the pan.

Red Beans and Rice

-Prepare rice by bringing to a boil twice as much water as rice, then add rice, allow to return to a boil, then reduce the heat as low as possible on your stove. Will be done when you smell the rice – a cup of brown rice will cook in about 40 minutes, a cup of white will be ready in about 20 minutes. To be sure, remove lid close to time and gently tilt pot forward – if there is still water in the pot, cover and allow to cook until water is completely absorbed.

-While rice cooks, add red beans to pot and cover with water. Allow to come to a gentle boil, skim surface foam, cover with lid and reduce to a simmer.

Similar to black-eyed peas, chop or dice:

1 onion

several cloves of garlic

1-2 carrots

2-3 stalks of celery

1-2 bell peppers

1 jalapeño (optional)

1 6-in piece kombu

-Just like with black-eyed peas, saute onions in olive or unrefined sesame oil until translucent, add garlic, bell peppers, and jalapeño and cook until onion begins to brown, then add to pot with beans. Add carrots, kombu and celery. Spice with about ½ tsp dried oregano. Stir occasionally – usually done shortly after brown rice has finished if started before the beans.

-Be sure to taste test beans to make sure they're cooked through. Add salt to taste. This is definitely a meal that tastes best with sour cream!

Black Beans and Quinoa

-Add black beans to pot and cover with water. Bring to a gentle boil, skim surface foam, reduce to a simmer and cover with a lid. Allow black beans to cook for a half-hour or so before continuing. They generally take longer than most other beans.

As with most beans, chop or dice:

1 onion

several cloves of garlic

1-2 carrots

2-3 stalks of celery

1 6-in piece of kombu

-Saute onions until translucent, then add garlic and cook until onion begins to brown. Add this to bean pot along with carrots, celery and kombu. Spice with roughly ½ tsp oregano, ½ tsp cumin seed and ½ tsp coriander seed. Ready when beans are cooked through, make sure to taste test several to make sure.

-As beans finish, bring to a boil twice as much water as quinoa, add quinoa, cover with a lid and reduce heat to a simmer. Should be finished in about 15 or 20 minutes.

I especially like this last one as it has a sort of pineapple flavor that I find inexplicable and incredibly delightful. The best part about beans is their ability to absorb the flavors of surrounding vegetables and spices. It's hard to mess them up, and they are always hearty and filling. Just make sure they're cooked, or you'll pay for it at the table and in your gut!

With love,

Abigail

Mother Elder!

2010-08-24T19:02:00.004-04:00

Elder (Sambucus nigra) is one of my favorite plants for its plethora of delightful uses, for its incredible beauty in flower and fruit, and for its helpful and healthful relationship with garden plants in general, it "teaches them where to go and what to do." It's a tree of magic in european lore, being a guardian tree along with the Rowan. We chose to plant our Elder shrubs somewhat away from the fence to avoid it traveling and coming up in the fence, next to the drainage from the gutter. A few days later I noticed a shrub totally out of line with the staggered row we planted. This new elder was naturally occuring and coming up inside the fence - our neighbor whacked the part on his side and it started to grow lightning fast out in five directions toward our yard!

All parts of elder can be used for medicine or play. The older stems and branches can be cut and hollowed to make flutes and pea-chutes. Young Elder leaves can be dried and infused in oil to be made into salve that lightens freckles, brightens skin tone, acts as a moisturizer for chapped and cracked skin by helping the cells to bind, and is used for sprains and bruising. Elder flowers can be used as tea or tincture to encourage sweating at the beginning of colds and flus. This action of the hot tea with flowers or hot bath with tincture is effective if you get right under blankets. It causes viral infections to be eliminated directly through the pores, calms the nerves and brings up congestion. The most delicious ways to eat Elder berries are in wine left to age an entire year, jelly, and syrup - you can also dry the berries (they're tiny and can be dried in the sun) to enjoy throughout the winter sauteed with a little water and sugar and eaten over pancakes or baked right into muffins and cookies.

You can't go wrong using at least the fruit from this especially abundant lady plant. They're packed with procyanidins, flavonoids known to inhibit abnormal cell growth like cancer, to increase immune response, and to strengthen cell membranes against viral attacks. They are also potent sources of vitamin A and C, particularly important for long winters without fresh fruits and vegetables.

"... the tree itself is 'sambuca' - the pipe of Pan - and it is his spirit blowing through this most sacred tree that enters the world (and the sick body) to heal and teach humankind. In fact, elder is viewed in all ancient texts as a panacea, a cure-all. Pan is the sacred power of forest and animal, the Lord of the Hunt, Guardian of Forest and Animal. The exact meaning of panacea is 'to be healed or cured by Pan, the deepest sacred power of forest.' When the tree is used for medicine the sacred power of Pan is evoked through this, his most sacred healing plant. It has been set down in all ancient oral traditions that those who truly use the power of the elder for their medicine shall all grow old, becoming in their turn an elder, that, in fact, it will cure all ills that humankind encounters if one calls on its power properly." -- Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, Stephen Harrod Buhner

OK, so now you're so psyched about the amazing medicinal powers of Elder that you want to make something to preserve and use the Elder Mother throughout the late summer and all winter long. Awesome! First step, go find some! This can be tricky at first without some knowledge of the plant's look - make sure you correctly identify her by looking at photos and comparing the leaves and bark to them. Fortunately, once you know what she looks like, you'll spot Elder all over the place! Elder grows in poor soils (avoid roadsides up to 6 ft and ditches along them), along edges and in areas where water flows. The berries hang down in sometimes HUGE clusters that begin green, then become purple, and at peak ripeness are basically black. Clip the clusters, fill a few bags or a bucket, de-stem the berries (this year I watched the series Heroes for 4 hours and cultivated my inner hero healer while de-stemming), and you'll end up with a bunch of beautiful berries and purple fingers. The next step is to wash the berries by putting small amounts in water and skim off the floating stuff until they're all clean. From here you can either press the berries with a potato masher and strain for raw juice or smash and simmer for 10 minutes to soften them and make it a little easier to express the juice. You can also do this with purchased dried berries, allowing them to rehydrate in cool water and then simmering.

At this point, you have something so intense in color that you'll feel really good about all this effort and you might start to think about the incredible thing you're doing by taking part in keeping yourself well, and by limiting the cost of what you spend on cough syrups and time out of work this winter. You just might start pondering color and its ability to indicate density of nutrition from bright yellows and oranges to deep reds and purples, and maybe you'll imagine the healing photons entering your body through this medicinal concoction you're making for yourself and those you love. Maybe you'll feel, as I often do while making medicine, a deep and profound reverence for all the lives that will be assisted through this process, for the life of the plant and the earth who is ally to all these lives.

All right! Feeling good now, you'll want to decide what you want to make with this juice. We had a huge harvest this year (Fox Bridge Rd, northeast side of Bunn Park, untreated and up away from the road), so along with what I've put up in the freezer, I made jelly and syrup. Jelly is made with the addition of sugar and pectin, to varying degrees - I've seen recipes including half apples or crab-apples for pectin, and also sumac flowers to cut down the cloying sweetness of the finished elder product. For now, let's think about syrup because it can be made with honey if kept below 110 degrees F. First simmer the juice without a lid until it's reduced by half. Meanwhile, gather honey and clean jars for bottling and canning (if necessary). You'll need twice as much honey as juice by volume, preferably from bees several miles from GMO crops and never heated above 110 as this denatures the honey. If you've got 2 cups of juice, you'll need 4 cups of honey. Once the juice is reduced, add the honey and stir continuously over a low flame until the whole batch is dissolved and mixed. Ladle the syrup into jars, wipe tops, screw on sealing mason lids and process in a pot of boiling water for 10 minutes (or more at higher elevations). The canning part is unneccesary if stored in a refrigerator.

That's it! Now you have a incredibly special addition to pancakes, waffles, ice cream, or anything that requires a subtle flavor and a dose of sweetness. Send thanks to the Elder every time you and your loved ones enjoy this medicinal delight! Also enjoy the photos of the process by clicking on the photos at right!

<3

SURPRISE

2010-04-27T10:08:00.002-04:00

:insert cowgirl galloping into town to save the day tune here:

So, hey. How's it goin'? Good, I'm imagining, and hopefully you're sitting in a stream of sunshine as well. Things here are going pretty well, we're about ready to fix up the bathroom, and initial kitchen imaginings are forming as well. Not the most important news, but for me these things take one of my main mental stages. Another is occupied by the yard, which is looking fine indeed!

A couple of weeks ago we went to a native tree sale and picked up a couple of persimmons, an american plum (later reading they are not the best thing to plant... pfft), a witchhazel that Eli ate and I hope will one day return to us, a chokeberry, a serviceberry, and a river birch (betula nigra, hopefully this will produce those delicioso twigs). Also, for the land we picked up a couple of hazelnut shrubs, a weeping willow and a bald cyprus. In addition, we've put in a row of Elder where our gutters flow out, several peonies to distract from the little A/C unit, and our friends helped put in some raspberries from that lady Carey who is one of our lifetime allies and beautiful buddies. and! Yesterday I was cutting the hackberry and mulberry from our fenceline (too bad they haven't yet started growing In the yard where I could leave them!), and I found big thornless blackberry canes from our neighbors on the side of our garage that was nearly impossible to get to before the my hacking, and a wild grape vine with lovely new leaves growing up the fence on the alley side.

Yeah, the yard. It's nice-ish. It's a lot nicer now that I planted up the first Actual garden bed with broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, two kinds of motherwort and wild dagga for smoking mixes and bitter tinctures, some bronze fennel for beneficial insects, and garlic chives around the edges. I'm stoked to get to the next bed! Unfortunately I exhausted our supply of broken up concrete, so I may have to start lining the beds with artfully stacked red bricks. Should be interesting! I'm thinking of planting a lot of my little hopi red dye amaranths pretty much directly into the ground around the yard, hopefully causing it to self-seed and return FOREVER!! Ha HA! Food, beauty, grace, carbon, and dyestuff. Life is giving.

OK, so that's the yard update, the land is less clear. M thinks he could make a little house on our piece of property, but I'm afraid. I'm OK with the idea of a little house facing the woods, but unfortunately Springfield isn't the abundant forest of a place that I imagine in my fancy thinking. Plus, doing things to city code is laaaame. We'll see how that goes, we're in a slight transition mode at the moment, while attempting to maintain our foothold here. Nothing unusual.

Time for beets and eggs from the ladies!

with a body full of love, as usual,
abby

new photos and spring is here!

2010-03-30T13:53:00.002-04:00

Spring is in full effect, except that the trees are JUST on the virge of blooming. It's delightful every day to see something new flowering and leafing out. M and I have been cleaning/clearing for some time now, always more to do, but we're getting O, so close to getting most of what is least useful out of our house and garage previously packed to the gills with "antiques." I think we're hitting a stable point, though, now that most of the garbage is out. Our yard only very vaguely reminds me of a garbage dump at this point. :D

Our new additions, the araucana hens, are doing splendidly. Eli still wants to eat them sometimes, but he's coming around. It's hard to name them because they don't currently respond to a whole lot. I might just continue to call them by whistles and clucks. They're laying pretty regular, now, 2 or 3 eggs each day. It's the easiest of chores to collect them and care for the ladies. There's a good reason everyone used to keep at least a few. We're getting together a chicken tractor, or a moveable pen to keep them in with a raised laying box that we can just reach into. The idea is put the hens on one spot of earth for a month or more while adding straw (carbon to balance the nitrogen in their poop/fertilizer), or to wheel the whole structure to a new spot each day for them to essentially mow down new growth and lay richer eggs than they can on feed alone. M's particularly interested in raising bugs for hen food. :) If we can get enough worm production going on in the basement, I suspect we could feed them those little red wigglers pretty regularly.

M got himself a Hammond organ a week or so ago that plays beautifully, and he is highly enthusiastic about it. He likes to break it down in the garage. Now that the garage is a little clear, there's plenty of room for it, but I suspect it's going down to the basement sometime in the near future. I wonder what the neighbors think, and I think it's enriching the neighborhood.

We went on a nice prairie hike at the Sugar Grove in Funk's Grove yesterday to make our trip to buy maple syrup more worthwhile. I think it's a large preserve with a bid sanctuary and lots of ... prairie, but also lots of trees. The forests were filled with ramps, which are sort of like green onions crossed with garlic. Delicious! We didn't have digging knives with us to cut through the black, wet, clayey earth, but maybe we'll find some in the woods near our land. We did collect a couple cups of beautiful new purple and deep green stinging nettles, which I put into a rice and goat cheese casserole today YUM. They are incredibly sturdy and strengthening plants and one of the best herbs for eating. I read this morning they used to be tithed because of their multitude of uses from every part of the plant.

Well, that's about all for now!
love, Abby

spring.

2010-03-06T17:44:00.002-05:00

I've been thankful that the bus goes up and down 13th and 15th Sts and not mine, in the middle. I'm thankful today because I've come to realize that my neighborhood is ALIVE and vibrant, filled with people and pretty delightful. It's spring, and I'm starting to understand an experience I had upon my very first temperate spring. I moved in with my brother on Cape Cod one summer when I was 17 and had my first winter there. That's also when I walked up my first hill, acutely feeling it the backs of my legs. That first snowy winter I learned some things, like how great it is to watch movies at night and that you cannot expect much from an umbrella in a snow storm. In the spring I moved in with a boy who had grown up in Houston and Phoenix, and we had our first Grand Thaw together. The strangest thing happened that spring- in March, everyone had sour looks and many layers of warm clothes, but in April, one day, all of a sudden, EVERYone was outside in t-shirts. It was weird.

A few years have passed, and I've experienced springs in a few more places, after a few more winters. I'm reminded today of my bewilderment at the extreme and sudden change that first spring because today is that extreme and sudden day in my neighborhood. Sure, yesterday was pretty warm, and I bet a lot of folks were outside, but today it is almost 5pm and above 50F. It's Spring. :) I also saw a bunny hopping around in the field across from the house, just hopping, like it was frisky. The cherries and pears are beginning to make colorful buds, and M is getting worked up about co-op business ventures. The sap is on the move.

with love,
Abigail

holding a feeling

2010-02-18T12:02:00.002-05:00

I'm pretty much a mega-fan of making plans and deviating at the first branch. Looking at some of my choices, it looks a little like I might be obsessed with changing the plan. I love and fear and hate the plan, it makes me feel safe, but I fear the possibility of stagnancy and spiritual degradation and hate the feeling of being stuck. My charts are filled with water. :) Within Mayan astrology the boy and I have multiple hands in our charts. The hand is the sign of magic, it is the manipulator, the ability to give form and shape to ideas and elements. It's the holy damn spirit with a thumb. I consider myself different forms of water, a lot of times I feel like the middle of the oceans with the moon overhead. I can readily identify with the sky goddess Nut or Nuit, fantastically blue and covered in stars, stretching everywhere. I feel dark and wet and expansive, very kaphic.

So I need a little earth sometimes, and this is that, far away from the ocean or the mountain streams and close to the ground. It's something I've been afraid of committing to, but it's better to deal with the feelings that come up from all this - I feel like whatever and everything I do here in Springfield will make future endeavors richer. Gardening, building soil, being immersed in normal, everyday, repeating cycles, these are what nourish me. They make me feel delight and joy and the heart-like pulse of living beings. This is the feeling of home, and I carry it with me, but it has unfolded exponentially inside this new house where M and I live together.

OK, enough about that, happy birthday to me! A quarter-century tomorrow! Thanks mom, glad I came out easy and early on you! I'm afraid this means you're getting old, though. :D I'm going to have a french pastry and remember the story of the day I was born as told by my sister who ate ice cream with my brothers and dad and loves to tell the tale. I've always associated my birthday with my mom's because hers is in 2 days and my grandpa always bought a cake for us to share. To Abby(/ie) and Patty. :)

love, as always and usual,
Abigail

overjoyed! how I came to know beauty,

2010-01-21T10:23:00.006-05:00

and the spiritually progressive struggle to live with her in Springfield. :)

So! I'm really excited to share some photos of the house, which should become available shortly through the flickr page linked on the side there. -->
There should be more as soon as the sun comes back out, haven't seen it in 4 or 5 days. :/

I've mentioned my obsession with the new house, here in Springfield, with M and Eli, to a few friends. However, I need to let everyone know how thoroughly engrossed I am with this house. My compartmentalizing and always working brain knows most corners in and out. It's interesting that before I fell asleep in St Pete, (after we'd been through the house for about 25 minutes or so and looked around and put in the offer and went on down to Florida) I would run through everything I remembered of the house. Anyway, that's my house story for the moment. We have successfully gotten everything off the walls, the million knick-knacks the 97-yr old lady who lived here left us, changed the kitchen faucet, added a fancy under-counter water filter, and pulled up the carpets to find the beautiful, almost perfect oak hardwood floors. It feels so much cleaner with the old carpet up. It appeared on first glance to be beige, and then I pulled up a sill-plate or something and saw the color it was at installation. It surely was beige, but it was clearly gray where previously it had appeared beige. Ew. :)

I'm increasingly excited about a) getting out my books, b) setting up the kitchen in the basement, and c) cooking more and more. Lately we've had plenty of soup, something I have previously made infrequently, but something about hearing my brother-in-law's mama made soup all the time in the old country spurred me on this economical soup frenzy. It's brilliant- you add some potatoes and carrots and onion and celery (how the hell else do you use celery?) and What Ever else, and it's soup! I've been adding a handful or two or quinoa, and it gets stew-y, it's delightful. Miso is also a staple of late, have a ton of mung bean sprouts to throw in tomorrow. I feel relieved when I don't have to think too much about cooking, and soup is just so... immediate and warming and delicious. Thanks mama!

Thinking a lot about friends, life partners, family, after the trip south to my family and the return to friends and a couple of life partners. Keeping relationships in general fruitful and useful seems like a very delicate balancing act, connecting, reconnecting, and disconnecting. all three seem ultimately necessary and appropriate at different times. This seems clear to me at most times, but really, it is delicate, like hollow glass chess pieces on a marble board, maybe. I really think about it within the context of the garden, where each plant is a hugely complex and inter-connected being, where you decide which little beings you wish to assist to thrive, where the grass is also a million living beings, and the weeds (which are often such nourishing and sometimes potent medicine) also have to be thinned and/or removed- but! Everything in the garden is composted, which is returned to the garden to help all the other plants thrive! So these things are very mixed up in my brain, which I like.

with love, and more soon,
abby

Feb 19 1985

2009-12-21T14:39:00.002-05:00

I was born on a new moon on the first day of Mardi Gras, the last day of the Chinese year of the Rat, and the first day of Pisces. My birth number is 8, which is interchangeable with 11, and I gravitate toward opposites, like Virgos and otherwise generally incompatible persons/situations. Interesting.

the state where I live

2009-12-03T14:44:00.003-05:00

M and I are somehow addicted to anchors, what with the acre and now, on the 7th, a little 2-bedroom brick beauty about 5 blocks away from it. It has a nice little fenced yard for Eli and a long garage for M's jewelry tools. It has a second kitchen and toilet in the mostly finished basement, a toolbench, and a bar, as well as a ringer washer! I don't think the old lady who lived there ever used a modern washer.

So that's an update. For now we are living in my older sister's home with her husband and 13-year-old daughter. It's going well, and I'm hoping to get out into the yard very soon. Saturday we'll be out at the community garden hopefully putting little babies in the ground or tending what is already there, or helping install another garden across the road. I'm not sure what we'll be doing exactly, but I'm looking forward to working outside, considering it's mid-70's out there. We've actually had to run the air conditioner! It's amazing. There are great big culverts along the roads to take away water from the rain, and there are tropical-y birds in parking lots and along the roads. It's fun to look at all the plants that grow here in the sun, all the citrus and beautiful big tropical-y plants. I'm not sure when we're leaving here, sometime I suppose, to get back to the little house.

I'm getting into this Ursula LeGuin novel called the Beginning Place that I found at one of my favorite stores called Prairie Archives back in Springfield. It's about two troubled youths who are barely holding it together, but who emotionally support their mothers in the "real" world, but who somehow find, separately, a path between elder bushes into a mountain creek that runs up to a little mountain town. It's pretty good, and I love Ms. LeGuin. I bought some cheap secondhand copies of a couple of her paperbacks today. Yay books! Every time I read a good fantasy book I feel like I need to never stop, like I'm watching a good show on TV without the eye strain.

It often occurs to me that I can't really write about interpersonal relations, which are what make my world go 'round, which is I suppose why I don't write here more often. I feel like the world is a richer place without rehashing it, for sure.

from my heart,
abby

one acre

2009-11-16T12:04:00.003-05:00

1.05 acre in Springfield, IL, never built on, never farmed- connected to an unnamed woods with an unnamed tributary with an unrecognized yellow-colored liquid dripping down one slope into said unnamed tributary and eventually down into the cement overflow structure that leads deep under the surface of the land.

OK, so the good part is there is tons of space to grow food and medicine and trees, plenty of open space and wooded space within the acre M will own officially in a few days. It's exciting! We have a cherry tree, a pear tree, a crabapple, a hickory tree, and I don't even know what else because all the leaves have fallen, and my tree identification skills are limited. It's exciting, though, as it's near to some of our dear friends with whom I am very excited to better develop relations. It's also exciting because it does back up to the woods with a water source running through, with owls, birds, possoms, foxes, rabbits, cats and dogs, PLUS. I suspect it will not be hard to draw people to the scene to help and enjoy our quiet, end of the road location. It will definitely be a project in permaculture, considering we don't entirely plan to build a home there. M is excited to put up a storage shed/birdhouse with open space, and I keep thinking how great the wood-fired hot tub will be. I imagine prairie and flowering trees and shrubs all along the road, with more fruit and nut trees and so many haws!

In any case, this is the update. We'll be heading to FL early next week with a stop at our buddy's place in Birmingham- exciting! I'm happy to see my folks and grandma and sisters, and the weather just turned November yesterday. It was a happy accident that we were able to pick up two truck loads of composted manure and unload them on Saturday when the weather was balmy and hard to believe. Now it is icey-cold rain and greygreygrey skies. Yay snowbirding!

with love,
Abigail

Medicine is Magic

2009-11-10T11:07:00.002-05:00

As reminder to myself:

Magic is transformation, and in that sense our food is medicine and therefore magic, and all the air and water and emotions and electronic radiation are all medicine/magic/transformative. The words we speak effect our bodies and the bodies of other critical beings who comprehend and utilize the words as triggers and instruction for transformative acts, consciously or unconsciously. In this thinking space, the Good Word takes on an entirely new meaning.

puppy and change of plans

2009-11-01T01:13:00.002-04:00

Today M and I drove outside of town to a conglomeration of farm houses and every kind of animal milling about- peacocks on the porch, chickens in the drive, goats and cows munching on maturing thorn apples, and kittens lurking while a family of blue heelers panted around, going from one person to the next to be petted and loved on. We went all the way out there because, well, the other night we were drinking a bottle of wine in our bedroom suite here (it was so rainy and dreary, and you can't watch episodes of this American Life every night). Well, so, then we started looking at photos, banksy graffiti, and a tent overflowing with polyurethane foam as an art piece, etc, when I decided I wanted to look at craigslist in the farm and garden section. Turns out we got the last pup in the litter born on August 9, so he's been weaned and socialized out on the farm with mom, dad, and a year-older sibling. His mom is from Australia, has a naturally bobbed tail, and this may be his 12-year old dad's last season. The old farmer guy selling them has been raising them for a long time, and his daughter and granddaughter were there helping us out, granddaughter remembering when they last were wormed while grandpa remembered wrong. He's a beautiful little puppy, 12 weeks old today, so he got a lot of good farm time in. He's like a little little kid, hasn't slept all day, keeps waking himself up and grumbling at me. He likes to be physically connected, and he won't take his sleepy head off the crook of my arm. :)

He's our Halloween dog. Maybe we should give him a name reminiscent of the occasion. It's hard to name another being, and that's the first thing you're supposed to do for training I guess, and everyone asks that first. Blue Heelers are so sweet. They're super smart, love working and playing, have tons of energy, are super friendly, and they're cute as a button I think. This guy likes to be outside (duh), and he LOVES eating. and not once has he nipped at anyone.

On to the change of plans- well! The boy and I are leaning toward a little house of our own in the ghetto of Springfield, right between our friends at the real Little House ( lhintheghetto.blogspot.com ) and our newest Springfield friends, a couple who are really interested in living more sustainably in their $2000 tax-auction little house. That would mean a whole community of folks within a few blocks, including the guys formerly haunting the main LH and now living it up a couple blocks away. I don't know anywhere else where you can pick up a $6000 house in the middle of an OK and mostly habited neighborhood and be spitting distance from plenty of friends. It's like a little village in town. Besides, the pup needs a yard to run around, and we need a space to plant and tend chickens. M's pretty excited to have a footprint in his hometown, besides. I think that's really what made him want this pup so bad.

So, yeah, still heading down to the FL for the warmth and holidays, looking forward to that. The plan to move to NC is still tentatively on for a slightly later date, it's just important that we throw down some roots and make a place for ourselves here, since we end up here all the time. It will help my sanity here. :)

with love, and help me think of a good puppy name,
Abby

future thoughts

2009-10-11T11:35:00.003-04:00

It's been quite some time since I updated with anything significant here. It's a matter of the end of summer, a return to the harvest of the corn fields in central Illinois (my unlikely second home), and an odd mixture of stagnation/liberation. I'm doing OK, learning from and adjusting to... everything. :)

At the very beginning of October we drove down to NC for me to attend the SE Women's Herbal Conference, and he to pack up our remaining Stuff from the summer cabin. I had a fantastic time work-exchanging the $300 cost for the lovely ladies who put on the event from Thursday until Sunday evening. I camped out, ate beautiful and lovingly concocted local and organic foods, connected with about 600 incredible and brilliant women, and learned more than I can incorporate into a blog post at this time. :) There we were, intelligent, creative, passionate, brilliant women all in a lovely camp setting with the fall leaves beginning to change color in the mountains surrounding us around a 20-acre lake. I camped next to a dripping dam and shared the campsite with some great ladies. There were all ages, from tiny babies breast-feeding everywhere to old great-grandmas keeping pace with all the lively inter-actions. Everyone wanted to connect, there was zero catty-ness, everything flowed beautifully, and I had a free massage, acupuncture, and an herbal consultation which basically confirmed my own conclusions as far as an sustained health regime for myself. I went on an edible/medicinal mushroom walk, took a class on abdominal massage, listened to Susun Weed tell stories to a room of 500, and generally felt like a whole person for a full weekend. I feel particularly fond of this event because it ripples out, our interactions with each other, and our ability to communicate across so many supposed barriers. We who attended will share this information, this beauty, this healthful growing appetite for sustaining all the incredible bounty we've been blessed with for the future, for our children and their children for ever after. It was hard to feel bad about the future of our planet or our species in the company of these women.

The boy and I are looking at land in and around Madison county North Carolina, which is relatively close to Asheville, a thriving and beautiful mountain big city. It's a big city that acts as a crossroads for many kinds of people, especially those interesting in sustaining life on the planet and encouraging growth. Our goals are to build a similar cabin to the one that M built this summer in NC to live in while we build a fiber-adobe structure. First wood, then earth.

My hope is to go to herb school from March to October outside of Asheville, which is a big deal in my world. There is no legal accreditation for herbalists, except to earn your PhD and then to go back to school for herbs. While that doesn't seem even half-way reasonable to me in my life, I am very keen to learn more specifics and continue in the environment of the western NC mountains, a very bio-diverse and incredible place. One of my very good lady friends attended a particular herb school this year (http://www.chesnutherbs.com), and I was so compelled by studying with her on a few occasions that I realized I need to know more. This particular herb school meets twice a week for 8 hours each day, has multiple teachers, spends most of its time outdoors with three week-long camping field trips, and it studies anatomy & physiology, wildcrafting plants, nutrition, cross-tradition studies, botany, ecology, wild foods and medicine-making. It's a $4ooo course, but my hope is to work-exchange at least half of that amount. We'll see what mother God provides for the other half. :)

So, that's the deal for next year, but before that! I'll be re-connecting with my parents and sisters in FL for a few months, helping my older sister with her new home gardens and repairs while Mky gets back into silversmithing. Another goal is building his jewelry business, building stock, taking more and better photos, and making his etsy site better, as well as building relationships with retail sellers.

I'm excited. It's taken some time to even get around to approaching the "real world" from an angle that suits us both and doesn't seem completely insane. We've both had to keep learning, growing, adjusting, and shedding what doesn't work. It's all coming around, and for the first time in a long time we have almost everything we own in one room. We have to figure how to fit it all in a car, though! :D

Enjoy &
With love, I go now to feed my increasingly loud belly,
Abby <3>

Swine Flu

2009-09-25T14:20:00.004-04:00

Some really good information and advice regarding our newest pandemic:
http://www.areturntohealing.com/blog/node/6

Don't worry, here are the recommendations:

SWINE FLU PREVENTIVE MEASURES FOR CHILDREN AND ADULTS
Dr. Lansman has had excellent results in preventing and managing flu symptoms with a range of vitamins, supplements, herbs, and homeopathic preparations. Her basic recommendations include 1000 IUs of vitamin D each day for infants and toddlers, 1 teaspon of cod liver oil/day for all kids, and 2500 IU daily for older children. She also recommends Elderberry once daily and one dose of homeopathic Oscillococinnum each month.

Dr. Saputo’s recommendations for adults include the following:
• Adopt a healthy lifestyle: adequate sleep, good diet, regular exercise, avoid stress
• Get plenty of sunshine, or supplement to keep vitamin D levels adequate
• Wash your hands frequently with water
• Consider boosting immunity with vitamin C, beta glucans, echinacea, vitamin A, maitake and shitake mushroom extracts, minerals such as selenium and zinc, certain herbs such as olive leaf extract and garlic, and homeopathic remedies.

"Resistance to Tyranny is Obedience to God"

2009-09-24T16:05:00.003-04:00

*from Susan B. Anthony at the close of the court case caused by her attempt to vote

a gentle southern rain

2009-09-20T12:08:00.004-04:00

What better way to spend a Sunday morning than quietly appreciating the almost silent falling of rain from the seldom darkened sky. This may be one of the last warm rains this region gets before the autumn air sets in. At least, this is what I imagine, though in reality the cold could linger north and west of here into October. Winter is coming, and it makes my heart ache just a little, especially considering there is no solid space assigned it for the coming months. Mk and I are driving back to North Carolina from Illinois next weekend, approximately one week from today. I need to be in Asheville for the herb conference I've been mentioning. I'll leave my hopes and fears up in the air as much as possible until that day gets here.

Springfield is a spiritually moving place for me. I almost without fail find myself depressed after a short time in this place. First I'm bored, then irritable, then sort of empty feeling. It's not that there aren't wonderful people here with whom I'm bonded and for whom I care greatly. Somehow there is just not enough for me to do here. I pretty actively avoid taking buses or walking around cars/barking dogs, and I don't know where exactly I'd go or what I'd enjoy on those walks. My body tells me to do nothing because there's nothing exciting for it to do. I feel very connected with a general American feeling when I'm here. Anyway, I think this is somehow a good thing for me to experience, accept, and from which to generate some new feelings. It helps to appreciate more the beauty of where I live the rest of the time to come here and drown in corn and cars. I'm experiencing what I absolutely do not like in hopes that those things I do like will surface and be genuinely recognizable. This is in general how it's always happened. Thank momma god for her wild and chaotic sense of reason. :)

One more thing, I wanted to talk about coming to know a little better what my mission/purpose/career path could be. Whatever is in the future, I hope it involves keeping stock of something dynamic, something that changes with inter-action. I hope it keeps my body occupied most of the time, 'cause movement is what a body craves. I see these benefits in herbalism, or in growing, tending, harvesting, and preparing plants. Working with plants opens me to the dynamic and intense nature of life on this planet. It helps me to better see all that is sick or dying in my parts of the world. It also gives me a much more cohesive understanding of how what is sick and dying interacts with and forms every new life. I think I'll work and live with plants for my life, considering they are everywhere, even in this urban center- decay is bringing new life to every part of this place.

with love,
Abby

red clover, red clover, send it right over

2009-09-11T23:45:00.002-04:00

I am a really lucky gal. It's hard to explain, but it's true and pretty unbelievable.

Turns out that 95% of the bras in department stores are shaped like perfect round things with strange squashy bottoms that are more than a little disingenuous. 80% have hard plastic curves inside that push up the body they are "supporting." I had trouble finding a camisole with a piece of elastic inside for use in lieu of the bra. It was almost impossible to find anything not unspeakably tight and nylon. It's over now; I'm 3 pairs of half-bamboo underwear richer and about 3 1/2 hours older.

Just 3 weeks, now, until the Southeast Women's Herb Conference. I'm psyched to try to go to the session on Uterine Massage. I've been really interested in this Mayan uterine ligament massage that Rosita Arvigo has sort of made re-popular since she moved to Belize and studied with an old Indio down abouts. She wrote a book called Sastun about her apprenticeship and homesteading in the rainforest that's pretty danged good. I almost went to visit while I was down there! But I didn't. Also, Susun Weed's supposed to keynote the weekend, and I'm really happy about work trading the whole cost of the event and getting to know the ladies who run it a little bit. Also, my good good lady friend's herb school teacher is giving a workshop on medicinal herb gardening that I'm Really excited to attend. Those classes and being surrounded by beautiful, intense, brilliant women make me feel really good about going. I'm also trying to go to herb school with my gal-buddy for a coupla days after the conference. I'm redirecting my energy into dreaming about these events until they happen. Work is pretty un-stimulating to my brain, but o so needed for my body. I kinda have muscles now!

I also miss my home in the mountains. I just feel better down there. The air is different, the water is cleaner, the people think a little more, the trees grow a little more. I'm recognizing how things feel different and what helps guide my body to rest. It's difficult to figure what's worth commitment in this transient land. Even sedentary folk are able to go anywhere at all over their televisions and computers. That's what I do, too, and it doesn't help my brain make any decisions! I think perhaps our options are unlimited in theory, and it's our job to realize what's truly possible for ourselves in our own lives.

More on that at an earlier hour.

Love and enjoy,
Abby

urbana

2009-08-27T18:27:00.003-04:00

City life is interesting. It fills your time while you do nothing. That doesn't sound particularly good, and who is to say if it is or not. In short, I'm enjoying myself while not being terribly busy. I've been especially happy to spend time with my friend Carey, who remains peculiarly noble in this strange city. Lately she's been growing in profound ways, and I can't really articulate how that's helped me, but somehow it does. That's the thing about people you love and with whom you are connected- when they grow, you share the opportunity for growth. Equally, if they stagnate, you share that opportunity as well. I think that's something most of us seem to have trouble with in relationships (friends, lovers, children), sharing the opportunities for growth and transformation. May that be the ultimate goal of all relations in our lives.

This afternoon I spent a very pleasant few hours a little outside of Springfield on one of the only natural organic farms 'round these parts. I've been buying produce from these guys for three years now, odd as that seems to me when quantified. The gal-friend of Mike's brother and I went on out there to weed in exchange for produce, and it was good to talk with the two guys who grow there. They use 2.5 acres within a family's 22 acres, exchanging produce for rent and getting fresh goat and cow milks and cheeses from the family who live there. It's a really awesome set-up, and I'm glad to spend time there helping out. It's shocking how little of this there is going on in the midwest, but it feels great where it's happening.

So, yes, time has been passing with a few hours here and there doing some clean-up work for M's mama, hanging out with friends and generally relaxing, thinking of the future, dreaming of a future that is inclusive of all the beauty and friends here and everywhere.

with my heart,

abigail

love, it's who you know

2009-08-17T12:44:00.004-04:00

We're having a little Berry Bonus Time the last few days. It's been an interesting week. The boy and I started out last Monday south toward Nantahala National Forest in the more southerly section of western North Carolina. We've been living in the Pisgah where the highest US mountain east of the Mississippi is located, in what's considered the highlands. We wanted to get a better look at the rest of the NC mountains, so down we went south of the Smokies to check out the mountain towns that live in an ocean of protected forest. About two hours into our trip the old '84 Benz wagon started making a terrible sound from the back, and long story short we ended up in Franklin at a lube shop where a very kind lady told us our engine might be cracked. It really helped that she was so visibly distraught about telling us, somehow made it a lot easier to consider the car being wrecked.

In any case, we got a hotel room and put the car in the shop the next morning. They did fix the fuel leak we had, unfortunately they didn't lift the car to notice the rear axle (the Benz is rear-wheel driven) had completely worn out. This was the cause of our horrible sounds. We didn't discover the problem wasn't fixed until just turning into Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, an hour from the repair shop and out of cell range. To wrap this up, we somehow made it back down to Franklin and a 40-year Benz mechanic, stayed a total of three nights in two hotels, had a great time aside from the money spent and the hotel-confinement, and tomorrow the car should be all fixed up and ready to go. Joyce Kilmer was fantastic with huge old-growth poplars and newly dead hemlocks from the adelgid bug, just barely making it through the logging all around them to be purchased by the US gov't at a ridiculously high price. The car stuff was bothersome on the hike, but something about the partridgeberries, harvesting blue cohosh seeds and usnea on fallen trees, stretching a hundred different ways on the walk, and being in the middle of a vast expanse of wilderness was really quite healing.

Illinoise is next, and gosh it's been a while. I'm a little bit excited to be in a different space, just for the refresher, but I can't imagine I'll be too excited by the sound of cars at night or the streetlights for that matter. Those are two pretty big problems in the city, you know? The hotels reminded me.

Just an update for interested parties.

with my love,

abby

I was saved by the fire, it just took a while.

2009-08-04T11:03:00.006-04:00

It's funny that every few months Mike and I are mobilized by our brain commanders, simply pushed forward to the next place. So here we go, meandering back up north by way of mountain roads, scoping out land, locations, elevations, waterways, etc etc.

There's a quote from the Secret Teachings of Plants by Thoreau, something like one who simply goes into the woods will never see so much as the one who goes intentionally to see. I'm vibing strongly on those words, feeling especially glad to have come to this place in my life of being able to follow the plants and weeds, to know them at infancy, at middle age, and as they go to seed. I feel very centered and grounded knowing these beings, and it very easily translates in my mind to children, especially as the years pass and the little ones I know and have known grow another year, another year, another year. Time has become a very long-term thing (if anything at all). It's funny to remember so vividly what happened years ago, and it seems to happen more and more as I've become more connected to my surroundings. I can remember all these plants as tiny babies, and here they are so enormous and falling over. Somehow growing the plants causes me to be grown, making me feel so much more capable of relating to others, plant, animal and so many beautiful humans (most every one). My eyes are opened more to the complexity, to the beautifully infinite ways we all inter-act and assist, to the very hallucinogenic property of life in general. My buddy on the couch just now reminded me of something I said about death, roughly that our bodies have many methods of perception, hearing, seeing, touching, etc, and when we die all of those perceivers fall away and return to the earth while our spirit(s) are released from them and are again able to un-realize themselves, to become again what they always are. The land has a way of telling you these things without even needing hallucinogens (though they certainly don't hurt:).

On the agenda for today is rivering at the river, soaking up some sun in the privacy of the mountain stream. Must rack off mead, gather dewberries, tuck up around the cabin, pickle some chard, and delight in the day while the sun is out. We've had visions of fall the last few days with cold-ish nights, moreso than usual, and crispness in the air while the first leaves begin to fall from the maples and all the trees turn yellower and yellower. I feel like we've had maybe 3 weeks of strong summer so far in between all the rain. It's an interesting weather pattern, very moist, very moldy to anything enclosed, very dank. Most of the peaches have brown rot from so much moisture. It's an ideal place for being internal most of the year. I'm not sure I could handle it much into to the winter, when the wind returns.

Well! Time for master chef Mike's banana buckwheat cakes!

and again, as before,

with all my love,

abigail

a word about the car

2009-07-20T15:38:00.003-04:00

Two days ago Mike and I were driven to South Carolina by our golden town-mate/friend in order to view and purchase a car. Don't panic, it was very cheap and in good condition and big enough to hold most if not everything we own. It's a Mercedes Benz station wagon from 1984. It is older than I am, and somehow that's comforting. The couple we purchased it from used it to transport their babies who liked to eat cheez-its and drink chocolate milk in the backseat. We took it to a party the other night with Mike's brother, his lady friend, and our mf'n shipmates. Two of our group sat looking out of the backwindow from the third-row fold-out seat.

We picked up peaches from the farm along the way back from the deep-south of Charlotte. They're ripening up quick to this stage of peach ambrosia where every bite is followed by several seconds of sucking in order not to make a huge sticky drool pile. I enjoy mine bent over the kitchen sink checking out the trees along the river and the ridge beyond them. Summer is inexplicably good and hot. I can't believe it. Today I drank more ginger-garlic-turmeric-clove tea, and Jesus H, if it doesn't get the blood moving.

Drifting along toward Hindu spiritualism and along the path of stretching one's muscles, moving them, allowing them to flow so that your spirit can flow more smoothly and undisturbed... I can think of nothing more important than freeing your spirit to move more toward growth and love. The unbound heart is the most powerful tool in the struggle against destruction of our world, and it's in that vein that I find myself seriously attempting to heal my body, to bring it in line with the cosmic constant within which it is. One interesting path I've encountered on this waltz through so many traditions is an ayurvedic principle regarding the three main body constitutions. Most people fit within one, two and sometimes all three of the constitutions, or doshas. I most particularly have a kapha constitution, the type most closely related to water and earth. This puts me in the position of being generally cold, or with sluggish circulation. The water slows digestive fire, and tends to bloat the organs at times. Water and earth constribute to a deep receptiveness, a calm and patience, and also an ability to sink into deep fear. So these are interesting things to learn, and they affect how I consider what steps I need to take for better health. For this particular dosha, it's wise to restrict dairy consumption, to limit sugar only to not super sweet fruits (no bananas, but peaches, plums, cherries, etc), and to consume lots of pungent herbs and spices. In general, spices are helpful to digestion, and they move the blood around which can become stagnant and somewhat toxic/acidic like water in a pond. This brings me back around to the ginger-garlic-clove-turmeric tea. The kapha dosha is the only one of the three that needs stimulation in some respect, even to the extent that caffeine and coffee are considered occasionally healthful for this type. I'd consider the best sort of stimulation to be physical, whether stretching, working or riding a bike, swimming, whatever. However, foods that heat you up are also very stimulating and, as I said, purifying to the blood without adding more toxins (as with coffee). Our livers, as kapha type individuals, need attention and love. Mine, in particular, calls to me with yellow. I am highly attracted to yellow, it feeds my spirit. I feel calmer, kinder, more receptive, vulnerable and open, grateful, and free when encountering any shade that falls within the carrot-lemon spectrum. It was suggested by a clairvoyent in Guatemala and the psychic from Berkeley that radiant yellow is the color I should go toward. I find it interesting as someone so highly interested in plants that I should grow toward the color of the sun, just like so many others on this planet.

So my mind is working more in a healing capacity of late. I can't think of anything quite so satisfying to my spiritual, emotional, physical, and intellectual selves than figuring how best these all live together within us. When one is ignored, neglected or abused, we suffer, and it's as simple as can be. Heal yourself, and you're free. Live freely, and your health spreads.

with love,
abby

liver lover

2009-07-10T13:02:00.002-04:00

So I ate smoked trout from relatively nearby (nothing's too close in the mountains) last night in sushi. Wow. I have no interest in eating sushi in a restaurant, but it's damned good homemade, especially with pickled ginger and daikon and plum vinegar. Gosh, I didn't know. We had some with cream cheese and shiitakes fried in butter. Woah.

Plant illustrations are quite interesting to me, and I've been really considering where the interest lies. It struck me today, looking at this image of a dandelion on botanical.com (where they have most if not all of Maude Grieve's A Modern Herbal for perusal), that they represent a most complete plant, in fact a beautiful and unblemished version of a plant all by itself and in its entirety. Something in me is fascinated by getting so much information at one time about a plant in visual format. No words. Past a general understanding of plant actions, generally gained by a moderate ability to cook with foods that are not much processed past their living state, I think all you need do is to be with a plant for an understanding of how you can be of assistance to each other. Giving attention or awareness to anything, whether our body, our family, our friends, plants, trees, animals, any living being, elicits a response and inter-action. Moving right along with this concept, here is a beautiful essay on Anarcho-Herbalism by Laurel Luddite on the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine website. Read it and weep. Actually, I also want to say that she is so right on, and I've thought of this regularly- even here, in the highlands of the eastern US, in a tiny but vastly rich biosphere protected by law, where lights don't even show up on satellite imagery, we are still losing the struggle to keep our ecosystem thriving.

We live in one of the last remaining temperate rain forests on the planet. This is excrutiating for me to consider, thinking of the vast virgin forests that connected the south to Canada and on over to the prairie of the midwest that's nowhere to be seen today, despite being destroyed more recently than the forests. It reminds me of the largest remaining reserve of the long-leaf pine, the trees that held dominion in the south from coastal North Carolina down deep into FL and over to Texas, a deeply complex and rich ecosystem that today is alive only on Eglin Air Force base and is also one of the last in the entire world. But, in the style of our mothers who tend to absorb anything we might do to hurt or offend them or ourselves, the earth keeps pumping its love and abundance out towards us. That's a deeply calming image and reality that I experience each and every day. I don't know how anyone stays sane without it.

I just noticed the first flower on the Rose of Sharon bush.

It's raining. I put on my swim top this morning on waking, blinking at the sunshine that graced us momentarily, and now I'm simply more flabbergasted at the precipitation. My housemate is kindly playing some Moondog, after even more kindly making me tea with garlic, ginger, clove and fresh turmeric. I suggest you, whosoever you is, check out Moondog. Think oboes, think orchestra, think homeless. You're on the right track, now.

Today is a day for tincturing! On the agenda, reishi mushroom (adaptogen; broad-spectrum tonic), fresh dandelion from first-year plants (nourishes the liver, allowing it to function better eliminating toxins, which is what it does), and astragalus (strengthening, especially for young people; immune system tonic).

with my heart on this misty afternoon,
(sending some cool air on down from the highland to any of y'all suffering from the heat),
thinking more clearly after drinking too much gingergarlicturmericclove tea,
abigail

ps- Let me know if my wonder woman color scheme is alarming or otherwise bothersome.

revisiting music

2009-07-06T09:56:00.003-04:00

Hey, has anyone heard any music? It's awesome. I'm re-visiting my high school PJ Harvey fixation. The cover of Rid of Me, she's all flinging her hair and those eyebrows! Anyway...

I've been listening to Antony and the Johnsons, which is sort of making me explode with joy if only for the simple fact that here is an incredible transgendered musician playing with other incredible musicians. I've had this one song by Antony for two years with no idea who this guy was, so then I remembered someone telling me who it was in Guatemala. It was stuck in my head with Andrew Bird, also frequently on the media player these last three days.

It has been a media-filled few days, for sure. I've been watching Twin Peaks, I don't know if I've mentioned, and it's sort of occupying my thoughts from time to time. David Lynch is such a good weirdo.

All right, that is all.

:)

ps- Micachu is a sweet, smart little punky girl. Blueberry Boat is a great Fiery Furnaces album, and Devendra Banhart's Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon is just sweet. In case anyone shares my taste in music.

One More Some Thing:

2009-06-27T13:53:00.002-04:00

or, How I forgot to mention that life is best lived at a reasonable pace.

or, Slow down, there's a Lot to see.

I've been thinking more in verse lately.

Some Things:

2009-06-27T11:14:00.002-04:00

Summertime is special, very special. The elders continue to flower, and Mike is slightly fixated on curing everyone we know of the Swine Flu with the honied flowers. We've got about a solid quart of infused honey, I'd bet. The best part about collecting the flowers, though, is the fantastic river exploration it necessitates. We wondered down the South Toe a ways looking for warm spots to swim and more elders the other day. I can't really explain how it feels to wander downstream with your lover collecting medicine and splashing among rocks older than you can imagine. O, and Toby the dog came and swam with us in the deeper spots, he is such a good dog. The benefit of living with folks with animals is the ability to share the companionship of those animals. We have a lot of animal friends here.

In any case, yes, the rain has finally subsided, at least for the better part of the last five days, and I don't believe there's much of any being called for this coming week. That's good in that the sun is the best motivating force I can think of, but it's a little bit lame in that the garden will need more regular watering (which is totally fine), but the rain barrels aren't totally full, and I'm quite sure we'll run out before the rains come again. Ah, well, this is how it goes. I watered with nettle compost tea the other day, diluted to about 1:10 or so (very rough estimate), and I smelled like poop the rest of the day. That girl who lives here sometimes between herb school and travelling abroad said she likes the smell of it, kinda, when I told her she smelled like poop last time she used the nettle tea. Now I understand.. it sort of grows on you, plus the plants really like it! We have a Rhode Island Red rooster who sort of completely separated from the rest of the pack of birds (the other roosters do not like him), and he roosts on the air compressor we have on the porch. There's a metal plate beneath him where we collect his poop, and it's generally what he's free-ranged from the yard, plus a little scratch Mike gives him when he's around during the feeding hour. So far we've been putting it in the compost, or on the potatoes, but I think it is a good idea to make compost tea from it, manure tea for da plants.

The blueberries are getting quite blue, and I've eaten two! We hope to get up the ridge to collect wild berries (they're so much more blueberry-ish) a bit later in the summer. The daylilies planted all over the property are blooming with lots of crazy beautiful colors and patterns. I had no idea there were so many different kinds. The peppers and tomatoes are starting to make plump fruits, and the squash is just starting to form fruits. The broccolis are getting bigger, and yesterday I thinned the beets and chard for a third time and came in with another great big bowl full of greens. We had chard pizza yesterday! :)

I suppose that's all for now, not much more than that going down in Berrytown. Well, much always go on across the drive over at the big house, but it's a bit removed from the news of this half. Steph's garden is covered in flowers, calendula, borage, lilies, spirea, yarrow, firepinks, tomatoes, etc etc etc. It's beautiful over there, and a definite inspiration to see so many cultivated perennial medicine plants mixed with the annual vegetables. I love the self-seeding borage and calendula, so much. :)

with summertime love,
abigail

ps- Over at Little House in the Ghetto (which is linked in my links list), there is a good article posted called something like Definancialisation, Deglobalization, Relocalisation. It's pretty spectacular straight-talking, and I'm feeling it. The link is http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/06/definancialisation-deglobalisation.html , but still do go check out the Little House blog. I love those people.

<3

1 day 'til solstice

2009-06-20T01:08:00.004-04:00

Well, it is early this fine Saturday morning, quite early. In fact, it is not yet morning at all, for it is still night for me on Friday. The clock seems to've passed midnight without prior notice.

Me and Mike and my good housemate, Max, we all went to Black Mountain and Asheville today. Mike and I had to stop in Asheville to pick up this new laptop! It was on quite a sale, so in typically frugal style we have come up on this new movie box. It's amazing, really, that this currently decent computer is more than twice as powerful as computers that came out two or three years ago. It feels dangerous to spend very much money when the technology keeps pace with the plastic pieces embedded in cheap computers. So what if this falls apart in a year if another few hundred dollars buys something twice as nice later? OK, that is not how we felt on purchasing this computer, I can promise, but it is interesting to consider.

Our garden is looking might fine these days. I fish-emulsioned everything but the broccolis the other day. I think the potatoes grew twice as big in the four or five days since. It's strange not to have to water the garden with as much rain as we've had. Really, it hardly gets dry before the rain is on again. I've never experienced so much moisture. Steph is over battling the slugs in her garden everyday, she's tried beer traps, gravel around the bases, and eggshells broken up around the plants, but she's still out there with scissors chopping them up by hand several times a day. There's just not a lot you can do if you're trying to mulch for next year during a wet season, at least as far as slugs. In the big garden our biggest issue is a matter of two hens with a pretty good ability to fly, they are the ones that lay blue and green eggs, and they're kind of evil. They love to pull all the straw from the potatoes in the morning looking for bugs and worms. Everything is getting big without any time passing at all. The blueberries are starting to turn into grape sized blue-ish berries, the apples and peaches are getting bigger, the grapes are starting to form after the death by mid-may frost, and today we harvested a bunch of elder flowers which I think I'll put into honey. I've honied sage flowers/leaves, lemonbalm, garlic, and lemon-thyme. It continues to be a fruitful year.

Mike's got a jewelry desk built around a counter/sink area in the cabin, and there're lots of shelves with clothes and books on them. I like this place a lot, and there is so much room. The mountain laurels are finishing up blooming, and now the rhododendrons that are so tall and thick in front of our house are starting to bud up very big, getting ready to bloom. I'm also excited because I saw pink fluffy mimosa flowers blooming down in Marion today, which means that within a week or two we should be having them bloom up here. A flower so pink and fluffy just has to be good for the spirit. The mullein flowers should be coming on strong soon, too. I'm also pretty stoked because Mike is seriously planning and beginning to put together a solar dryer, which just makes me want to go crazy collecting and drying plants. It's amazing what there is to dry and preserve when you have the ability to do so.

with love,
abbi

beautiful mountain rain down

2009-06-04T13:56:00.002-04:00

A few folks came by to sleep in the mountains last night, friends of the friends with whom I live. These folks hitch-hiked from Atlanta to Asheville. As I recall, she's studying in an ashram and is an expansive, light and beautiful being. Those should probably be words I use more in person with the people I enjoy (and perhaps those who I don't). I think he rides bikes a lot and is a quiet, kind, and gentle creature. Thank Mother God for speaking through people in passing.

This has been, let's say, a thoughtful 3 weeks living alone in my bed. The rain has come down almost continually, even when it's not coming down things are just drying out. It's true that I can't focus, but really it's a good thing. It has been a gift to feel so able to be expansive and trusting of what I'm receiving, that I'm not going to wash away. Even if I did, it'd be OK. I guess this is related to that guy not being around, too, and my feelings as they relate to relationships. I have had a very difficult time trusting people, I think from growing up with so much love between people who hurt each other and being so filled with love for people I couldn't trust. I've definitely had to learn from observation how it can be possible to live and love with people who don't cross those physical and emotional boundaries if they can help it. This has opened a door for me in the last 3 years. I feel like I can actually look back now and see that long and beautiful path through the door has taken me into an overgrown forest where my heart is so much more free. I can breathe and cry and grow and heal, gardening and being called to from the trees and the incredible flower that blooms on every plant.

OK, so I'm feeling very spiritual and heart-ful of late. That much is clear. I'm pretty excited for Mike to come home tomorrow. My body and heart feel so good when they're near him. I'm glad to be reminded of the difference when we're not together. I think it's a requirement for full appreciation to spend time apart.

My companions on the property here and I had a fairly stressful few days this week. We came to the consensus that we had to ask one of our roommates (and consequently his girlfriend, someone we all appreciate very much) to leave. It's very hard to know how to be a good and decent human being when I'm stressed out to the limit trying to figure out just the right approach to everything with someone I'm trying not to hurt. The thing is, I was angry with him and frustrated by his manipulation, both very clouding and coloring emotions. It was so hard to try to keep a clear head and to speak directly, with my brooding heart. I feel like we all came out of the bad situation feeling a lot better, though, having cleared the energy of the space. It was really pretty past time to ask this person to leave, and our home feels so much more safe and integrated now that everyone is on the same page.

In other news, we have planted the entire big garden with tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, chard, beets, onions, basil, ashwaganda, and carrots. Over in the other garden there are chard, kale, mustards, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, chervil, basil, beets, turnips, radishes, and other little babies. I'm planning to fertilize this weekend after the rain abates with kelp meal and fish emulsion for most of the little planties. The peonies and rugosa roses and poppies are all blooming, and it is so summertime, despite the rain and shade. Three weeks from the solstice and we had a freeze two weeks ago. What a place to be a gardener! Fortunately this is a super-abundant place for free wild edibles. Too bad you don't often run into wheat on the paths through the wild spaces.

I am so ready for the sun, for Mike's return, for thinking on future plans.

with love,
abby

ain't nobody's got the shine like you in this world

2009-05-21T00:07:00.002-04:00

I watched a nice movie tonight about a woman trying to record southern Appalachian music. Very lovely voices and old folk songs. I want to pretend my mother's mothers came from this place, and I'm just coming home. It's not true, but what is bioregion? What are we if not travelers across the many continents of this earth? I am a nomad by genealogical record and by my amazing human abilities to adapt and co-evolve. So here I am, in my home nestled between the world trees, the white pines, fittingly struggling against their predator beetle. We have baby oaks and birches, trilliums, pink lady slippers, partridgeberry, suffering hemlocks, jack in the pulpits, and so many rhododenrons. I get to pretend up here that I'm as isolated as those mountain folks who've actually been here through the winter. It's pleasant.

Today I made a lot of bread and granola bars, after weeding the raspberries for a bit. It was a lovely day after two late spring/early summer freezes, and tonight I can feel is warmer. The solstice is only one month away! What if we get an early freeze, what if there are only three or four months of non-freezing temps? You gotta pay the price for the extended mountain spring and incredible falling of the leaves a few months later.

I made plantain, comfrey, chickweed, and burdock seed oils yesterday. It was very pleasing, after all that rain, to finally catch these plants on a dry day. I also started some garlic honey, which is fantastic and amazing medicine, as well as some mandarin orange honey from a delicious mandarin's skin. I've read that infusing something into honey captures all the volatile oils and water-soluble nutrients from the thing, so lavender, rosemary, mugwort, all good volatile oil herbs that you can't really capture through tincturing. Honey is also a lot nicer than alcohol, I find. I'm excited to make herbal syrups. I miss medicine making. I really just want to grow a varied and planned vegetable garden and use most of my time growing the plants who like to be grown by me for medicine, particularly the ones who flower. ..A moth just died in my candle.

Been eating ridiculously well lately. Greens every day, nettle infusion every day to hopefully help my body cope with the cup of coffee in the mornings, eggs from the chickens every morning, boiled beets, miso, raw garlic, seaweed, etc. It's fantastic. I made apple cake last night, and it was great! I made corn bread the day before, and I discovered that corn bread is really good with too much butter on the bottom. I also have to say right here that I'm in love with black-eyed peas and corn bread. Addicted, even. I've also been eating these tortilla chips salted with powdered kelp and dulse, and they are the shit. Thank you, Amazing Savings. I actually feel really better, but I think the sun certainly helps.

Well, with love, and hope that our potatoes and beets and collards and brassicas are all doing well and getting their roots down deep at this waning of the moon, sending all that energy into the ground,
abigail, in love with mike :)

mother's day plus 3?

2009-05-13T11:34:00.003-04:00

I have found it difficult to focus lately. For whatever reasons, it's been hard to really consolidate my thoughts and desires. I have sort of been floating along this spring which is very shortly summer.

Mike and I are living in our cabin, now, behind our friends', the Berrys', home. It's a beautiful place that Mike built, looks like a bird house with 3 large, double-pained, sliding glass windows framed into the south/front wall and framed screen above that for the seven feet to the peak. I should have some photos soon on the flickr. It's been raining almost every day now for 2 weeks. The 1000 gal rain barrels Jason hooked up a few weeks ago have been filled, and one was emptied and re-filled from just the rain falling down the gutters. It's been interesting trying to fit in garden time between all the rain.

We went to Linville Gorge and Falls yesterday. We climbed out on jutting rocks and took photos of the falls which is so intense! It's a big, powerful waterfall between giant rocky cliffs with rhododendrons and mountain laurel azaleas growing and blooming all up and down them. Also, as it's a difficult place to log down in and around a gorge, there're giant old-growth, virgin hemlocks, with an incredible style and grace among the pines. They are like redwoods, maybe, on a less grand scale, but gave me a similar impression, staring up high with my head thrown all the way back just to see the canopy of these majestic and dying trees. I wonder what it would look like if these hemlocks where not like ghostly skeletons so much as full grown, Christmas-y trees that you could stand under during rain showers and not get wet. In any case, the gorge and falls and hike are all fantastic, so many incredible rocks to see and climb on out in the river. I left feeling fully oxygenated and peaceful. Even the hour long ride was good up and down the Blue Ridge Pkwy with so many blooming wild purple irises and huge pink and red (and even salmon colored) flowers on the trilliums, with white apple-like blooms under all the may-apples and more of those blooming mountain azaleas, with the occasional orange and red azaleas around people's homes.

The Appalachian bounty persists here, where the apples have finished blooming, the peaches are forming little fruits, the cherries are getting pruned, the poplars have to be close to making blooms for all the bees to freak out on, and I am just trying to make brain space for everything that is happening here with people, events, birthdays, different cities, Mike leaving and car going, food stamps and food gathering, co-housing and house responsibilities, moving into the cabin and cooking in the shop, etcetera. I'm trying to just take it all as it comes, but I fear I have certainly been putting things off in an effort to adjust. Fortunately, at least I have continued to water the little baby plants through all this rain and extra tilling, and with Mike finally leaving tomorrow I think I can focus enough to get most of them in the ground during this partly-cloudy week. Hopefully I won't get too drawn into herbal stuff before the plants and planting can get taken care of! We still have lots of organizational issues to sort, too, but I think everything is coming along. I moved 6 blueberry bushes from Steph's garden to a newly tilled berry patch, but the goats eat them while pasturing on the weeds. Gotta figure that out, and I have a bunch of elderberry cuttings I keep putting off putting in the ground.

Katie and I went out the other day and filled the back seat of her car with foraged goods. We harvested pedicularis canadensis, or lousewort or wood betony, over by Mountain Gardens and a bunch of black birch for beverages/tea from a tree that had just fallen at a slightly higher elevation than here, so it was just budding leaves. We de-barked all the birch, and it's about dry by now, and the pedicularis was particularly good yesterday after steeping in a mason jar for 4 hours with boiling water and after our hike- it calmed and soothed tremendously with its nervine sedative actions. We also filled a giant basket with nettle tops from the Celo community garden's giant patches, as well as a bunch of flowering ground ivy, which I've read is good for stagnant chest coughs (much needed by me), as well as some cleavers that Katie put in apple cider vinegar- it's a lymphogogue, and I just love them for unknown reasons, maybe because they grab your hands while you're harvesting. :) We also picked up a ton of violet leaves and mugwort, atemesia vulgaris, the common plant of Artemis, the wild moon goddess. Violet leaves are particularly good for breasts, also, being very demulcent, moist, gooey, and tasty.

Because I'm decidedly incapable at this time of calling or emailing folks and family, I want to say I love you, I most likely think of you often, I love my mom and am so glad she's going to see someone who can help her care for her beautiful and previously so capable body so that her incredible soul can go on getting healthier and happier. !! My niece will be either 13 or 14 this week, on the same day as my friend Stephanie who lives here with me, and I'll be celebrating them both with my heart and good thoughts. It's quite interesting, too, because Stephanie and I are both rats in Chinese astrology, I'm a rat in the next cycle after her, and Karis is a rat in the cycle after me, we are all 12 years apart! It's cool to me, I guess. My sister I hear is moving into a house, which is bad-ass. Please email me about that and the garden. My brothers I think of often, and maybe I'll get to see them this summer if I'm able to go visit my friend, Badger, in Nantucket. Badger! Springfield friends and family, you are certainly in my thoughts, and Mike is coming soon with his part of my heart to be shared, and maybe some birch bark, too! :D

One more think, I'm imagining going to herb school in Asheville next year for full-time work-trade at the all-outdoor, changing teacher, awesome herb school Katie is going to this year. She's thinking about being a full-time paid intern next year in her teacher's herb nursery, and that sounds so great. I'm thinking it. I'm also thinking I'll probably go to the SE Women's Herbal Conference this year, special guest Susun Weed, also work-trading. I went to the conference a year and a half ago to vend for Joe, since it's a women's only weekend, and it was incredible. All these women just being women and learning and being open and compassionate and doing silly things en masse! I want my sister Angie to go with me this year. :)

with l o v e,
abby

mountain update

2009-05-02T21:12:00.002-04:00

So, it's getting really damn green around here.

Mike and I went to Penland (the school of crafts, about 40 mins from here), with Zach and Molly last Wednesday to see Bread and Puppet from Vermont perform for free. It's really good to see people playing multiple instruments, making weird noises, and using basic puppetry to make the story-telling more powerful. I really liked it, and afterward there was a cheap art sale, which was mainly prints with words like Resist with a block-print of a carrot, or the word Rise with a print of a stalk of wheat. They served homemade sourdough before and after the show with a really nice garlic sauce and goose wine, making everyone think they were drunk on water. I'm hoping we'll get to the circus on Wednesday in Asheville.

We also got out to the Asheville Herb Festival yesterday on a beautiful mountain spring day with the sun out and shining through all the new vibrant spring green leaves still moist from mornings thunderstorm. I picked up wasabi, dang gui, a slippery elm tree, gotu kola and siberian motherwort from Joe Hollis, and rosa rugosa, archangelica and wormwood from my friend and land-mate, Katie's herb teacher, and a pennyroyal that was screaming to me, as well as a celandine poppy and some wild irises. The slippery elm, dang gui, rosa rugosa, celandine poppies, and wild irises are for around the cabin that Mike built.

O, the cabin! It's so beautiful, there's a loft 7ft from the ground floor, and because the walls slope outward it is ridiculously big for only covering half the ground floor. You can stand up in it, I think the peak is 7ft, and Mike put in a vertical window that's about 10in wide and double insulated in the middle below the peak. The north wall doesn't have windows outside of that window, so it's sort of a compromise window to let in some light. It's really great. Our bed is right in the center of the loft, and we look out the completely uncovered front of the cabin, the side without a wall and there's a white pine that lines up perfectly with the peak. It's a special place, and now we have room to share sleeping space with visitors, like my big sister who came last summer and had nowhere decent to sleep. It's quiet, and you can hear the birds and the rain falling on the tin roof. It makes me very happy to sleep up there, even if the bed is just made of some old foam. Jason essentially bought us a water pump to bring water up from the springbox- he found a guy who's living off the land, farming and selling water pumps out of his garage in the spare time, and this guy needed his generator's circuit board repaired. So Jason fixed a circuit board and we got our pump made from plastic produced down the road from the guy who makes the pump. Hurray! Mike salvaged a deep cast iron and ceramic sink from the abandoned houses by Joe's, so he's planning to hook that up before heading back to the Springfield for his summer break.

The field below the shop house here has been totally tilled and cleared of the sod, and Mike is halfway through putting up the new fences for the goats, chickens, and around the garden. Over a hunderd onions are in the ground, with 2 or 3 hundred more to go, and there's a 50 pound bag of potatoes just cut up and dried off for our planting pleasure. We're going to plant also in the new field corn, squash and beans. I'm excited because I started watermelons and cantaloupes, and they're germinating under the lights- also lots of morning glories for covering up the giant rain barrels Jason hooked up the other day. The corn and melon varieties I've chosen have really short growth periods, and the melons produce lots of small melons, so we should get some good eating this summer. :D

Good night and enjoy,
Abby

access to music and internet

2009-04-18T18:41:00.002-04:00

This will be the first season I've lived in North Carolina with access to the internet and a wide range of music. It's different. I'm listening to Joanna Newsom from Molly's computer while everyone is out to Asheville for some mescla de debauchery. Today has been day 4 of beautiful sun and ridiculous amounts of solar-powered joy- Zach and Matt (one of Jason's chillin's, aged 16) tilled a bunch of area where to plant potatoes and garlic, today Jason tilled more space, and the lovely Molly aided to some extent by Zach cleaned the whole kitchen this morning. I've been over obsessed with cleaning the whole thing every morning before anybody starts using it. I'm working on deciphering which routines to cultivate, which with which to relax, etc etc etc.

I have like ten little messages in my inbox from my mom, and I don't want to delete them because they seem like precious little capsules of my mother's words. Don't know how to describe that better- I don't like deleting messages from any of my family members, same reason.

Sick all day today, got the no energy blues. Some kind of sleepiness, coughing, sneezing, dry eye cold thing. It's fun to let your body sort of sink back. Thanks go for my ability to not have a long-term job and to be surrounded by incredible, loving, concerned and supporting human beings and about 30 dogs. I've been ripping into my new Between Heaven and Earth Chinese medicine guide with a fierce 3 page per hour speed.

Not much going on, I guess, but it feels like it.

with love,
abigbail

coffee high

2009-04-13T10:52:00.003-04:00

I've decided it is impossible to write full-length blog entries without coffee. Also, it feels much like the late afternoon, the sky is a bit dark, and it's sort of impossible to imagine that it's 11am and there is actually a day ahead of me.

It's been difficult to organize my thoughts or to plan accordingly. We have been sleeping on the futon in the Berry's dining room, which is nice, but it's also very much a part of the open house layout. Our clothes are in the car in a giant bag. Our food is in the shop, the house across the driveway where all the computers live in harmony with the kitchen. and Tonight I think we're going to start sleeping in the loft of Stephanie's studio in the woods until Katie gets back from a long journey. It's scattered, and I feel like I can handle it, but definitely scattered. It's good for me to be able to pay attention to lots of different things and people, I like it a lot, but yeah. I can't wait for all my stuff to be in one place- it's tough otherwise. I need less stuff, maybe? Most of what I have is chosen for practicality and the ability to move somewhat easily. Except my treadle sewing machine, which has been sitting in the same place since we purchased it.

Roots are certainly on my mind during this time of waning moon, they were there before the climax, though, as well. I like the feeling of being connected to a space for a long period of time- working on those dynamics, what situations will assist in that, how help can be distributed, etc, etc. It's highly important to live with folks, that has been the best lesson, I think, for me. Everything works differently in cooperation, and it feels certainly more satisfying to share responsibilities, everyone gets to do more than if they had to do everything themselves, and responsibilities shift to where they fit best. It's just a really good lesson in relaxing with others, asking open questions, trust in each other and expressing boundaries or concerns. It's just really, really good for feeling human.

Zach is making perfect eggs from the chicken house for us all while beatboxing, which is sort of pleasant, especially the egg part. Zach and Molly live in the pentangle that was originally built for the eldest Berry child. Zach works for Jason, Molly works for AMS, and we all work together for no good reason except it's pretty fun.

So, it's a little cold, our last frost date is May 15. We set out some cabbages that did not make it on our last clear night, two nights ago- I think we may have had another freeze this morning. It's interesting, like it's still pretty early spring, but it's good. Plants!!

lovels,
abigail

conservative blues

2009-03-26T11:12:00.003-04:00

I'm intrigued by how well my subject line fits the times in my own life, as Springfield has a strange grip on my internal landscape. It also reminds me that last night I went with my friend Sarah to the university for a lecture by Bay Buchanan. I have to say, a conservative discussion on a university campus is BY FAR more interesting than any liberal discussion on anything. This is especially so when the woman speaking has LOTS to say about her position on abortion, marriage, divorce, and how the feminist movement has hurt women and children far more than it has helped. She did give them credit for getting relatively equal pay on a job for job basis, with education and experience factored in. I certainly don't have a political side, as most conservative issues seem to hold water, and many liberal ideas seem often to be commonsense. I recognize the value of listening and trying to understand a viewpoint that could very well be valid and previously unconsidered. So when she said that a small study showed 100% of women who'd had abortions before the age of 18 with a history of breast cancer in the family had breast cancer by the time they were 35, I perked up. My friend Sarah did, as well, considering her personal history and the fact that her mom had a breast removed last year, she spent most of the night feeling queezy and weird.

In any case, there was that. It's been wine madness at the house lately, or it feels like it. Mike received a bottle of delicious homemade apple cider wine from our very lovely friends, D&C, for his assistance with shelf construction in a home with seemingly no studs. and I came to realize that I had four bottles of mead on a shelf for ageing, so we popped open one of those the other night with joy, though it's still young at 5 months, needs another 7. It should be quite good, I imagine. I think the one we tried was lemonbalm, red clover and borage. :D Then last night J&S brought over a bottle from a winery outside of Petersburg that they'd been saving for a special occasion that tasted really strongly of cloves and cider spices... it was delectable.

I'm geeking out on seeds, really and truly. I don't have access to the garden, yet, but my beautiful friends, Katie and Badger, have broken ground on the plot for this summer in the NC. Two more weeks, and I'll be breathing deeply that moist, crisp, springtime, dark and lovely air that calms my heart and strengthens my spirit. Love, love, love... Yep, so I'll have too many seeds to plant this season, but that's perfect because they will be left over for next year with a decent humidor thingie for the moisture. Some people use plastic tupperware, some use cedar boxes, some build them giant, some buy old cigar boxes, some even put them in vacuum sealed containers for the apocalypse. I'll keep some like that and hope that seed saving staves off the need for apolalyptic protection. Also, horizon herbs is a spectacular source for herb seeds, and I recommend to every gardener to really start to get to know the local weeds, first, then get to know whatever herbal traditions exist in your area or in other areas of the world with a similar latitude/elevation. Plants are our companions on this earth, and it's damn good to know them, love them, and interact with them. Nothing feels more satisfying, except maybe having children, but that's my thought. Heirloom seed varieties, some very old: http://www.rareseeds.com/ ; high quality herb seeds, does a lot of exchanges with Joe Hollis at Mountain Gardens, where I also interned with someone who interned with the owner, Richo Cech, and vouched very highly for him and his business: http://www.horizonherbs.com/ ; a gardening supply co-op, as used by Joe Hollis and the Wild Fermentation master, Sandor Katz, a really fantastic source for organic growers: http://www.fedcoseeds.com/

One other thing, I've been watching fewer videos, but the ones I'm mostly interested with are from the library, and it's a series called Connections, it's the bomb shit. Sub-named, An Alternative View of Change. O, it's good, from the early '80s, describes the interconnected events and inventions that have brought us to this perilous place on the planet. Just watch them! The other thing is, the John Adams movies put out by HBO, they really did the work of helping me to envision this country's beginnings a little differently. But, fuck Tom Hanks. I don't know why, but I don't like him. That's really the only down side to that, and it's totally unfounded in logic. But, from the perspective I've been hearing from Jonah Lehrer who wrote How We Decide, logic has very, very little to do with it.

with love,

abigail.

my message is limited

2009-03-18T10:35:00.003-04:00

So. Springfield is Springfield, and I don't want to ever mention that again. Today is ol' man Justin's talk on bioremediation at the Food Not Lawns meeting in the library, which should be ridiculously interesting. What can I do with all that silly fungi lying around my garden, and what's so important about it, anyway? As a previously mentioned plug, one of several of Justin's sites is http://www.brainsturbator.com/ where he is, as usual, ridiculously interesting. I'm done wondering why he lives across the alley, especially since I know his lady friend is a very special lady, indeed. and he claims that Mike's brother, Nick, is also quite special, but I just don't know about that one... :D (bekah, they are dragon and rooster!)

I want to add this, it is so integral to the understanding of my man-pal's mama... I'm sitting in Betsy's living room, staring at this little computer, trying to avoid looking at the big screen that buzzes at very high frequencies across the room. On the table next to me is an old spaghetti jar filled with bubbly water, presumably from sitting for so long with the same water. Betsy has seen what the bleep do we know, and she's looked into the guy who does the water experiments where he writes on the jars and photographs the water molecules, so she's doing her own experiment. In the evenings she sits in this exact spot and plays internet poker for a while, no telling how long. On the jar of water is written in green sharpie, "I, Betsy Rxxxxx, immediately attract large sums of money to my bank account free and clear of loans and lawsuits!"

Luck is a funny thing.

In any case, I've been watching a movie almost every night to try to forget the stunning boredom of the day, and it seems rather impossible to find a pretty good American film. Seriously, I watched Knocked Up the other night. and it just seems too high tech to get on the netflix bandwagon again, there's way too much transportation going into that, o PLUS, I forgot! I found my library card, it's good until the end of the month, and I am so hitting up the dvd section. I've been pretty perturbed to notice videos there that I've waited forever to get on netflix. and not having a computer of my own definitely puts a hitch in the downloading arena. I'm so thrilled to get free movies, I can't tell you. Really, there are no words. I think video watching is like a pasttime of Springfield, it is sort of the art of Springfield- everyone seems to have the itch (not everyone, this is exaggeration, but close, if not television or internet).

The problem is I haven't been able to spend enough time outside since getting back, and whereas we rode in two cars while in Guatemala, we can't seem to get down the road here except by vehicle. It's like my brain doesn't work here, my senses become immediately dulled, and my actions turn to colored latex and harsh household chemical treatments. I try to spend time with friends, but once there of course I'm so relaxed that all I want to do is sit still. and I thought my mind would be very much on gardening, but it feels like a sidenote to the stresses of making money enough to garden, getting to the garden on time, and getting to the garden at all or by which means.

We accidentally caught a broadcast on saturday on npr, which in Springfield means 5 days per week all classical all the time, and on the weekend somehow allow the national programming to slip in, but only for a few hours!!don'tgetyourhopesupforinformationspringfieldiansgobacktowork

anyway, it was about the brain chemicals of decision making, and I found it really interesting to know that certain chemicals I'd come to believe had very specific purposes, really some of them have very broad, however very important purposes. also, our brains can handle quite a lot of information, but not all at once, and we really have to focus to make decisions. I don't know, it's just that Mike has this very serious problem with decisions, and I'm not much better, which many times has led us down great and fantastic paths, but is not always useful in the day to day, in fact very much not useful in the day to day. Anyway, I mention it in the hope that someone will find that program on npr *coughangiecough* and send me the link so I can listen to the whole thing. I also need to find some spanish language podcasts, but first! I have to wiki "podcast" and figure out where to begin.

Nos vemos, mis amigos,

abigail <3

back in town.

2009-03-11T15:13:00.002-04:00

For the sake of information, I've arrived back in los estados unidos, safe and sound, and we even slept a good deal in our very comfy bed, despite arriving in Springfield sometime between 2 and 3 in the morning.

Hurray! I'm uploading photos, so look for them! <3

news-ola.

2009-03-05T21:58:00.002-05:00

Well. After our language classes finished in Xela last week we went on to Fuentes Georginas, which are lovely and very hot volcanic pools where we stayed the night. The ride is through the Mayan village of Zunil, nestled in a valley between old volcanoes, including Santa Maria. Along the drive there are so many little fields packed out with cabbages, onions, and other such delectable treats. On the ride up we saw lots of these greens, and the next day on the way out was market day, and so many folks were out in the fields Way up in the mountains harvesting. While I was hanging out the shuttle window photographing en route, the smell of onions was delightful.

From Xela we decided to go straight away on to Antigua, but there was a stop in Pana on the lake where we were staying for several hours of which we were uninformed. It was OK, we had capuccinos and eventually got to Antigua some time after dark. Ended up in a little hotel with a tiny kitchen (really just a sort of closet with a little fridge and a camp stove the staff used most of the time).

After a day collecting ourselves from the long ride (6 hours in total, without counting the stops), washing clothes, etc, we headed on toward Coban, another 7 hours north. The shuttle there was OK, but from Coban to Lanquin for the last 2 and a half hours seemed a little packed (o, little did we know how much space there really was... until today). Arriving in the small town of Lanquin, we stayed at El Retiro after going through a desert part of Guatemala (it's still the dry season in the south and west), and then into a lush, more tropical part of the country than we'd yet experienced. We came to these parts for two reasons: one, the Lanquin bat caves, and two, Semuc Champey. I'll be able to get photos up sometime after Wednesday, when we return to the states, but they're both fantastic! About 2km from our hotel (really a sort of gringolandia of young people listening to Abba along a private section of the Rio Cahabon), we took a guided walk through the extremely humid and large bat caves. They're actually mostly unexplored, but there's about a km of lights and slick paths through the first parts. I visited the Mariana caverns in FL, and I have to say that these were just about ugly after having that experience. The stalagmites in the tour part of the cave have all been touched way too much, and they're all turned a rather black color, but they are still very impressive, and some are SO BIG. There's a part where people have chipped off a whole lot of this quartzite section. We even came to an area covered in black from candles used during Mayan rituals in the cave, including chicken sacrifice! Around about 6 or so, when it was starting to get pretty dark, we sat in the opening of the caves and the bats started to pour out. I definitely felt two go right by my head, but it was cool to watch them get only a little close to something and then shoot in the other direction. I wonder what all the camera flashes do to them, but now I can share the experience! :/

The next morning we got in the back of a pick-up outfitted with a sort of metal cage designed specifically for folks to stand up and hold on to (you see them everywhere in Guate), and we headed to Las Marias, our hotel about a km from Semuc Champey. The ride is really bumpy and about 8km, but it was worth it for the lovely view of the hills planted up in corn (it's a weird feeling to feel good about seeing corn after so much frustration with the IL corn desert). The hotel was pretty lame, and we got about a million bug bites, BUT, it was worth it to walk to Semuc after the tour groups had pushed off and get the place more or less to ourselves. It's hard to explain, but Semuc is part of the Rio Cahabon where the rio goes underground in a violent rush (four people have died there, and someone told us one of the bodies didn't come out the other side for fifteen days, and all the bodies are missing limbs when they come out). Above the cave where the rio goes under have formed these beautiful turqoise pools, some warm, and all lined with plants and flowers. I picked up all kinds of pretty tumbled rocks, some very smooth and all quite lovely. There's a 1 1/2 km trail to a mirador where you can see the whole of Semuc from above, it's pretty strenuous, but absolutely lovely at the top. There was a tiny orchid with two blooms just on the tree next to us, and there were more epiphytes than you can shake a stick at (plants that grow on the trees without soil, collecting water from the air). Toward the end of the trek down we saw... TWO MONKEYS!! Yes, it's true. They were jumping around in the trees, and it was very special. :)

Next day we decided to break up our long trip back to the lake by stopping at the Biotopo del Quetzal about 3 and 1/2 hours south of Lanquin. We stayed at a little hospedaje about 200 meters from the entrance called Los Ranchitos, and within an hour we heard a little knock on the door. It was the little girl who is the daughter of the cook, and she said, "Quetzal!! Muy bonita!" So that is when we saw TWO QUETZALS!! They were beautiful, but maybe they were female because they didn't have the long tail feathers. They were sparkly green with red on their fronts, and when they flew from limb to limb (in between sitting EXTREMELY still for relatively long periods of time while Mike whistled songs to them) their black and white tail feathers spread out like a fan. So pretty... The next morning we trekked for about 3 and 1/2 hours through the Biotopo (no quetzals) and saw lots of little waterfalls and one rather big one that was very lovely, indeed. There was a 450 year old tree that was Big, old as the Spanish conquest of the area. We saw one bird that had a red and yellow stripe on its head and hopped around, and something that looked a lot like a chicken, but it was all black and had a bright red waddle like a turkey. Mike whistled songs to these birds, too, and some of them whistled back. :)

The last part of my story is today, after we (by which I mean I, Mike laid in bed awake for several hours, he claims) slept in until 8:44, and after we ate a delicioso desayuno de el tipico huevos revueltos, aguacate, queso, frijoles, platanos, naranjas, pan (no tortillas esta manana, no se por que) y cafe, we went out to wait for our bus coming from Coban. On the way from Lanquin to Coban before we got to the Biotopo, we decided we'd spent too much on shuttles and chose to take public transit a little more, so we hopped a minibus (just like a shuttle, a little sort of minivan, but they shove about 15 people in it) and got into Coban with the rain and cold (rain!!). From Coban to the Biotopo we'd taken a bus that I swear, much like the chicken buses are old school buses fitted with racks and longer seats, they are old greyhound buses, and they (just like the chicken buses) still have signs in english like don't come past this line or don't push the window or whatever. The difference between this bus and the newer greyhounds is that these only have two seats per side, very comfortable plush seats, there isn't a cage around the driver's seat, the windows open, it costs 10Q (about $1.25) to go an hour away, they leave on time, they have a computerized seat assignment program (fuck Greyhound...), and they smell a little like corn chips when the bus is stopped.

So, when we were waiting for this bus to come to catch it back to Guatemala City, a little minibus showed up and threw open its door for us to get inside. So... I thought it would be cheaper than the bus (it was the same price, maybe a little more). They didn't have a rack like almost every other minibus on the top of the van, so we had to shove Mike's giant bag onto some poor guy's lap, and I had to climb in the front seat between the driver and the guy who takes the money with my smaller backpack and my big basket stacked in my lap. It was OK at first, but eventually the driver pulled his drink holder onto my lap, fumbled with the stereo and at some point the air conditioner for a while against my knees, and started seriously shifting into my leg. It was OK, like I say, until they loaded a cute girl in between me and the money guy in the front seat. There was no room to scoot more, so instead I ended up pulling my legs in as far as I could and pretending I was in ninja training to deal with pain and situations one can do little about. The shifting continued, and once we were in Guate, we were lost and I was grateful to move my feet again. After asking lots of people which way to the Antigua buses and getting pointed in the wrong direction over and over again with complete seriousness, we grabbed one of the ubiquitous taxis and paid 30Q ($4) to get to the chicken bus of our dreams... the one going to Antigua! We paid Q16 (about $2) to get to Antigua, and it was thrilling, those drivers don't take shit, and they don't slow down. The sign above the looney toon stickered rear view mirror said, "Your Children's safety is our first concern." :D

So here we are, and I highly recommend the Yellow House hotel. We got a room with lots of windows on the roof surrounded by tables and chairs on the terraza, and we even got to watch a movie on the TV! A much needed respite, this place, close to the market, breakfast included, kitchen access, and only 130Q for two. Plus, as with most hotels, you can book cheap shuttles from here, and I can do my laundry right down the road for a discount. It's sweet, and the showers are solar powered. You can't beat the price... or I'll kick your ass. :D!

Four more Guatemalan nights to go, then back to the good old US of regulation/great depression/extremely expensive shitty foot. Weird, but I miss it. It sure takes leaving the country to feel that.

with LOVE!!
abigail

today is my mama's birthday.

2009-02-21T11:09:00.003-05:00

I love my mama!

The show on my birthday was Really good! I danced like crazy amidst all the gringos in town, most of whom it took at least an hour to start moving. I kept thinking, ¨It's my birthday!¨ It was good. The fliers said it started at 8, but it actually started at about a quarter after 10, and then only after two rather young women dressed in tiny, tight clothes with the Gallo logo all over got on stage and skankily danced for about 15 minutes. The gringos did not like this part of the evening. It was great, though, and there were loads of folks salsa dancing between everyone. I really enjoyed it, felt so happy and smiling the whole time. It was a great birthday. We left at the break, since it was almost midnight, and we knew we´d have to wake our host family. At the bottom of the stairs from the show, I got to tell Ignacio many thanks, and how beautiful the music was, and he very graciously bowed and thanked me in return. It was the perfect ending, aside from the lovely long walk back to the house.

As an aside, I´m doing rather well at the school. I hope to make a complete sentence by Wednesday! :D

addendum

2009-02-19T10:38:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, after finishing up my last blog entry, Mike lost $250 to an ATM, we got in a big argument because he blamed me for telling him to take money out of the ATM, I cried a lot, we watched a man across the small street (more like an alley) have a seizure, crash into a moving truck, then fall into the street seizing and bleeding while no one knew who to call for an ambulance, and then Mike's shoe busted a strap.

But equally good things happened, I suppose. We got to our homestay, which is really quite nice, and the international coordinator who was bringing us to the home took us also to the bank to explain in good Spanish what happened at the ATM (maybe that'll get resolved, but I'm not holding my breath or worrying much).

It was stressful, yesterday, but I slept well, and now it's my birthday! Mike and I pretty well gave each other space last night, so things are a bit smoother today. Off to buy tickets to the show tonight... <3

Xela

2009-02-18T14:34:00.008-05:00

Tomorrow I will be 24 years old. I admit, that means very little, but I want to enjoy it, so we´re going to see Ignacio Perez Borell from the Buena Vista Social Club with his new group Buena Vista Corazon, with Ignacio busting it out on the drums. This is my hope, and for 100Q each, it´s a fairly economical birthday extravaganza. You only have one a year, my friends.

Mike´s folks left Pana last Monday, and since then we headed to San Juan, San Marcos and San Pedro before coming here to Quetzaltenango, or Xela as it is generally called. In San Juan we visited several women´s weaving cooperatives, and I bought two scarves and an awesome purse all colored with natural dyes, one scarf from an 84 year old woman, and Mike bought a warm scarf. Í dig San Juan for that, there aren´t any tourists at all, and there is also a women´s collective of communal midwives who grow medicinal herbs and sell the preparations to make money to pay for their activities. It´s really an awesome place to go specifically for naturally dyed, traditional collective textiles.

We then headed to San Marcos where we stayed for two days. We searched and searched the first night and eventually found this really pleasant little Japanese restaurant where we had all you can eat sushi and miso soup for 50Q (about $5.75). Two folks let us join them for dinner, and it was all rather pleasing, and at some point a live band started playing guitar, flute, drum, with a little stray dog drumming action. The first night we had an amazing view over the lake and the mountains, and the second we stayed in an ecologic hotel with incredibly beautiful stained glass with recycled bottles, compost toilets, and cool alternative constructions. San Marcos is sort of a hippy commune, where you can eat fresh food from the garden, natural local foods, and see a body worker or tarot card reader. Our second morning Mike went to a hypnotist to help him connect to subconscious murmurings (Mike says it was a little unsuccessful), and I had my first ever professional massage, a full-body massage that about blissed me out.

Unfortunately, we had to leave San Marcos immediately to (fortunately!) meet up with our friend Josh who we interned at Mountain Gardens with and his gal-pal, Lisa, in Panajachel. Since Mike´s folks left, and his brother sort of disappeared (he´s now in Honduras), we had two extra rooms, so they stayed with us for about three days ´til the rent was up, which was great. There was a giant, delicious meal for every dinner, and Josh made coffee in the moka pot before we even got out of bed! It was really nice having friends around to share the journey with a bit before finally heading out of Gringo-landia, Panajachel. While they figured out where to go to find voluntary work and free housing, we readied ourselves for leaving Pana. We also drank a bit too much wine, but it´s always fun to have a few days of something different. We also went to this meditation class over the bridge in Jucanya with a clairvoyant. It was OK, but five hours in the first day, and it was mostly in Spanish. The woman knew we weren´t understanding. The second day we decided it was best not to go back, for many reasons, mostly that we had a crap load of stuff to do to ready for this trip to Xela, so Mike tried to get us a little refund for the day we didn´t go. He actually tried to show up before class, but it started early, and we didn´t know! In any case, the clairvoyant told him no, that he had some blocking energy about the meditation, and that´s not how it works, rather Condescending. So, Mike asked for a short reading in exchange for the $40 worth of time we missed, and she said she didn´t know, she´d have to have a long think about that. For whatever that´s worth. It was too weird, which is why I´m recounting it.

Yesterday morning we went to the coffee shop at Crossroads Cafe for the last time before leaving town. They are closed on Sunday and Monday, and we found out when we got there that Mike (the ownder/barista) and his buddy had gone several hours away to pick up about 200 pounds of organic coffee from the area around the highest point in Central America, which is an old volcano. It was the entire harvest from this farm, owned by an 89 year old man, and his wife sells cinnamon from their cinnamon trees. Made in the drip-pot, it´s the most mellow coffee I´ve ever had. It´s got no bitterness or anything, and so we bought a pound for 95Q, which is about 40Q more than most all of the other coffees! It´s super rare, though, and delicious, and Mike and his pal risked their life getting down the mountain roads in the dark of night to get back in time to roast it early yesterday morning, just before Mike and I got there. He had his daughter take a photo of him giving us the bag of coffee and exchanging money and change, as it was the first pound sold of this exclusive coffee. It was fantastic, perfect for our last morning in Pana. It´s weird that coffee was my favorite thing about Pana, but quite fitting for Guatemala in general.

So! We split on the shuttle yesterday around 11 for Xela, which is west of Lago Atitlan, the second largest city in Guatemala, with tons of Spanish schools. The one we chose is called El Nahual, and it´s quite involved in the community, as well as having a small organic garden using the compost from all the local host families with whom its students stay, a bike shop, a very active volunteer program, and an entire first floor devoted to kids, art, english, and super cheap english classes for adults. It also has other programs, but I can´t remember them all! They´re just outside of town where the cows and goats begin. So that´s exciting.

We had this really long plan to travel to Semuc Champey, Tikal, and Rio Dulce, but we just kind of decided we needed more language to make it more enjoyable. I think we´ll maybe still end up travelling a bit after this week of classes, but maybe just up to El Remate near Tikal and over to Rio Dulce. It´s a bit hard to say at this point. We seem to always have a bit of trouble coming to a quick decision, and when we think too hard the plans seem to fall apart. It´s best to flow a bit whilst travelling. Otherwise there´s a bit of arguing, a bit of bickering, a bit of shut the hell up-ing... :D OK, so Mike and I are still kind of working out the frustration thing in regard to decision-making, since neither of us is so great at snap decisions, and we seem to be faced by them regularly. We´re cool, though, just keep reminding each other about our mutual frustration.

So that´s it for this transmission. I miss the states, but I know it´s gonna be really hard to pay the money for food and everything else when we get there after paying so little down here, and the rules of everything are so much more relaxed down here, and there´s so much adobe, so much farming, so many kind people. It´s inspirational, yes, but it gets conflicting to be leading such a different life down here than the one I have set aside to come back to up there. It´s all starting over again and again. I think next time it might be easier to set up volunteer work beforehand, or rent a place in one spot for a long time. I have no idea. Who knows if I´ll ever come back here?

For now, in a bit of confusion, but general great spirits,

Abigail with love

ps my new favorite youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

transmission

2009-02-07T11:40:00.004-05:00

Though I am still coughing in a way that does not sound very good, I am much better than yesterday. It has been a looong time since the only thing I wanted to do all day was lay down. It felt so good on my poor body. We had incredible winds for 4 days and nights here in Pana, especially along the Rio where we are staying, and it seemed to bring me a very runny nose which, as usual, brought on a very nasty and painful chest cold. I am definitely through the worst of it, thankfully, with partial thanks to hot toddies. Last night as I was laying on the couch staring out the window I noticed the first star of the evening and a tiny little spot of a star right next to it which may have been my blurred out eyes, and I wished that if it were in the best interests of the area and my body that the wind would stop today and I would get better. Both happened, and I am Quite grateful. That kind of wind really does something to your sense of stability.

Since last writing, we met a great German-Guatemalan gallery owner named Tomas who reminds me of Bill Hannaford, but willing to listen just a little bit more. Brilliant guy, really, with great priced prints of fantastic work by a woman who goes by Angelika and lives around the lake here. Also lots of other beautiful things, really good work, and it feels good to be able to actually purchase something, anything in a gallery. He claims his is the oldest gallery in Central America, and I believe that, for no other reason than that I like Tomas. He is also a carpenter of sorts who does things in the best way he knows how, using materials that last, some that are actually extinct now, and he owns a sort of wood working shop (more like a hole in the wall with a door that leads to an open area about the size of two shops here) where he employs rather good carpenters and pays them accordingly. Also, after the civil war he employed several ex'soldiers and trained them to be good woodworkers in a hundred thousand dollar program. He is definitely a cool dude, an anarchist by claim and action. He filled us in on the lack of real government, the ability that affords to do things yourself, the fake police and what woods to use in construction. It was quite good.

Then we met on Mikes birthday last Friday night a guy who sails boats across the Atlantic for a living, and he was pretty fantastic. I dont know what else to say about him, but we talked all night, me and him and Mike and Nick. It was a good night, wish I had more to say about it. He told us about Morocco, travelling through Mexico and what it is like to travel across the Atlantic. Made us all want to be sailors to varying degrees.

There is a hole in the wall restaurant in town here called the Cordon Bleu, which is this old ass guy who employs one of, he says, the best cooks of her generation in town. The food is very good, quite reasonable (which is asking a lot in Panajachel), and the prices are phenomenal. The room is pretty crap, but fresh double pina coladas for 10Q is something. Actually, the food is great, but the drink prices are really the winner about this place, there is an entire page of drinks for around or just over a dollar, some just under. It is like happy hour all the damn time.

Also, Crossroads Cafe, another one like Cordon Bleu which is not in the Lonely Planet guide. It serves the best coffee I have ever had. The guy who runs it, Mike, is incredible, funny, entertaining, and quite love-able, his wife, Adele, makes delicious pastries upstairs, and they homeschool two kids. I highly, HIGHLY recommend the coffee, which you can have shipped to your door for 11 dollars per lb (www.crossroadscafepanajachel.com). These folks pay up to twice fair trade prices for coffee that is sometimes moved by mule from the farm over the mountains to the closest airstrip. They buy the heart of the harvest from the same farms as the UN in NY, Virgin Atlantic, and Starbucks. and Mike roasts them better than anyone, I say! They are great people, and it makes no sense to buy from anywhere else if you pay the same cost. Also, some of his coffee is organic, but he says he doesnt care about that marketing label, that the best coffee is always shade-grown, bird-friendly and raised with very good farming techniques. Buy it.

What else, hm... Maya Traditions, Tradiciones de Mayas, they are great, too. But I think I already blogged them. Look them up if not.

with love,
abigail

one quarter has passed

2009-01-28T14:54:00.000-05:00

Loads of new photos on the flickr, linked on the sidebar...

So, did I mention I´m quite fond of Guatemala?

The cross-dressing party on Saturday night was quite nice, pretty laid back, but we should´ve been more aware of the happy hour before dinner! La Iguana Perdida is a hostel with private rooms, one of which we stayed in with a beautiful view of the Volcan de San Pedro and Lago de Atitlan (the lake!). A great big dinner is served with everyone around the same table, and as soon as it´s over (it´s delicious, by the way, vegetarians got giant beet falafels/burgers) the shots are pressed upon you! Teams mix shots and compete to sell their particular mix first. All fun and games coming from folks dressed in drag. I realized that it´s really more for the men, cause all I had to do was paint on a mustache, put my hair up and wear jeans and a baggy shirt. Mike wore a lovely outfit, a flowy skirt with a tight skimpy spaghetti-strap shirt and a rainbow-strapped bra stuffed with my socks. He also brushed his hair all down and to the front, o so cute, and he tied the cord in his shorts (worn under the skirt) above his hips to look like thong straps. :D

Sunday we came back to Pana on a very slow lancha across the lake, where we´ve been resting since. We´ve been playing cards a couple of nights with the parents, which is pleasing. Mike´s mom is funny with a few glasses of wine, her highly competetive spirit, and a certain amount of herbal influence. Ha! It´s fun to be her partner, for the most part... I´ve been enjoying kitchen access, making ginger/rosa de jamaica tea and making yummy free-range eggs. The yogurt here is pretty dang good, too.

Yesterday we went to the Solola market about 20 minutes up the cliffs which is not a tourist market at all, but a place where lots of people from different places come twice a week to buy the things they need. Lots of cheap beads for making tourist stuff, belts and jewelry. So much beautiful food, spices, fruits, yarns, breads, yellow and blue corn tortillas, shoes, clothes, cloth, housewares, etc, etc. Mike bought a headband to carry things across the forehead made of deer skin with the fur on the inside. It´s pretty cool. Other than that, we didn´t have much need for anything else. A very interesting experience though, especially riding the chicken bus there and back. A chicken buses are all school buses from the United States that get re-fit with longer seats, a badass stereo system, bag racks and a fancy paint job. I was actually quite impressed by them, just like riding a school bus (cause it is), but with good tunes and tightly packed. For 5Q a person, it´s the shit. 5Q in town only gets you a ride from one shop to the next in a tuk-tuk, which is like a super fast golf cart equipped with an insane car alarm/siren.

Today was quite interesting, as we visited the medicinal herb garden across the Rio Panajachel (a very small river this time of year, more like a creek), about 10 minutes walk from where we live on the Rio. I went into the book store here where we´ve been using the computers yesterday and was asked what I was looking for by the young lady at the desk. I´ve been on the look-out for a native plants book, so I told her, and she asked if I´d been to the garden. Apparently she works there half time volunteering with the three indigenous gardeners and other gringo volunteers. She gives tours and has gotten more into actual gardening, according to our tour today! It was a lot of fun going through the garden, as it´s set on a mountain side quite reminescent of Mountain Gardens, and we all three just shared a lot of information about plants. We talked a good piece about herbal smoking blends, Mountain Gardens, and certain plants we use for different things than is traditional here. It was great, and then Jennifer walked us to the office of the project to look at the fair-trade woven goods from the women in the villages around the lake. Back-strap weaving is a very old tradition here, and a lot of girls are taught how to weave from a very early age. Guatemala went through 30-some years of civil war, and a lot of men died or disappeared, so there are loads of widows, especially here in the highlands where there is the highest concentration of indigenous peoples. Some of these widows have formed cooperatives to make and sell weavings, and this particular project called Maya Traditions (mayatraditions.com) supports these groups with marketing, strategies, new designs for world markets, good quality materials and some funds. The garden is an extension of the support provided for the women by providing traditional information passed on from medico Mayas (the head gardener was taught by his grandmother), as well as plant starts, information booklets with recipes/preparation methods/identifications/glossary, and workshops in different towns. It´s all part of a prevention campaign in order to deal with the high cost of prescription drugs and support of tradition.

All this and more, my friends.

Hasta luego,
Abigail <3>

2009-01-28T14:13:00.003-05:00

San Pedro a Lago de Atitlan

2009-01-22T16:37:00.002-05:00

I´m watching the lake, listening the continual routing sound of home construction in the street below, and seriously considering the $13 massage in San Marcos about 10 minutes across the lake. Volcanoes and mountains are delicious, I guess is how you say it in English.

Mike and I are studying at La Escuela de Espanol Collectiva, where they guarantee the teachers fair wages, and the locals whose home we´re staying in is also appropriately paid. Maria y Jose are hosting us, super kindly and patiently, along with their toddler, Felix. Maria cooks in a local restaurant at night, but she makes our breakfast and lunch, while her sister, Angelica, makes our supper. Questions Mike and I were most asked, why are we vegetarian (la maiz en Estados Unidos es muy mal, los animales con la maiz es muy mal!), how old we are, how long we´ve been together, and where we´re from, in that order. Most noticeable differences in the home - the sink is under the stairs to the roof, and it´s two huge cement basins with a flat space in the middle to wash clothes and dishes, and the kitchen is on the roof in a basic, slatted wood room with a tin roof with thin pieces of cardboard nailed between the slats to keep some of the wind out.

The school is great, a lot cheaper here in San Pedro, and we share a rather good teacher. We study outside under thatched huts for four hours with a great view of the lake and take breaks throughout to refill our free local, organic coffee. It´s quite pleasing the whole experience.

We´ve been spending quite a bit of time in our off-hours at this bar called the Buddha, which is first floor bar, second floor table area, third floor/roof the place with the big Buddha shaped cob pizza oven that they run on the weekends and Friday surrounded by cob wrap-around benches. There are also cob benches throughout the other two floors. It´s quite pleasant, the roof is a good place to be alone and for other various and sundry activities (liking splitting a litre of Gallo while you do your Spanish homework and catching the second-hand herbal smoke of the folks around you).

We leave San Pedro for Santa Cruz on Saturday afternoon to stay overnight at La Iguana Perdida- they have a famous cross-dressing party every Saturday night with a room full of clothes and costumes, barbeque, and music. Exciting! Mike´s brother Nick gives it very good reviews.

Well, with love and well wishes, I´m off to find another quiet place to study for tomorrow!

all my heart, dear fellas,
Abby

guatebuena

2009-01-17T20:53:00.002-05:00

Ahh, Guatemala...

Delicious food, kindly folks, beautiful textiles- it is treating me well on this fourth full day of our journey. I bought white calla lilies this morning and avocados for 1Q each ($1=7.79Q), that's 7 for under a buck! Same for garlic. Every third vendor at the market in Panajachel was selling fresh chamomile for 3Q per big bundle, less with bargaining, and dried linden blossoms or hibiscus blossoms. $2 for a beer, though. Weird.

Had an incredible reading with a Mayan astrologer in Antigua, trying to decide if I should take her up on the offer to apprentice, actually trying to find a good reason to pay however much it costs or if I even should. Maybe I need to go across the lake to San Pedro to study Spanish, but the astrologer reminded me kindly that these people have roots- the white people need a lot more help. So there's that. I suppose I am only here to look, listen, hopefully learn. Work off some ego and connect a little more bluntly.

Mike reminds that that this country is more wealthy than the United States because it grows all its own food, and it knows where it comes from, where it's going. Unfortunately, we blancos are lost on those counts. It's beautiful, though, seeing the mountainsides planted in small diverse plots, some with calla lilies dividing the plots. It heals my soul a little just to see it.

More later, as usual, my beautiful friends.

Buenos noches,
abby <3

moving to Guatemala

2009-01-07T18:15:00.002-05:00

So, I've been working on this house in Springfield, caulking, priming, painting, etc. The house address is actually 444, but http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7GFRD&q=476+chenery+st+springfield+il&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=title is a fun photo of it. Thanks google! Thanks to this work, which I've been doing for Mike's mom and stepdad, I've been able to visit my parents and sisters this Christmas, buy some nice, light-weight thermals, and get my teeth cleaned, which was highly needed after 15 years. Also, I should have a nice chunk left, enough to pay for at least one week of Spanish language classes with a homestay in a Mayan family's home, possibly two if I can find them a bit cheaper when we're there. In any case, the house is pretty cool, it has a hitching post out front from way back when it was built and horses were the transportation norm. It has pleasing trim, old-time pocket doors, a steam furnace with radiators in every room (I <3 radiators), and a very nice wooden staircase that goes up from the front room where you enter and joins the second story kind of loft-like into the first with a landing and window 3/4 of the way up. It even has a lion's head knocker on the front door. :)

We're heading off to Guatemala next Tuesday, the 13th, which is less than a week away, now. I don't think we'll really have that much to bring, either. I'm packing light on clothes, hoping to find them rather cheap once we're there, and there's not a lot else I really think I need. I went to Munich and Amsterdam about 5 years ago, and I couldn't figure out how backpackers did it- now I can't even remember what I brought that was so necessary that I needed a giant suitcase and a huge backpack. Well, it was a little colder there, especially in March... I learned today that Mike's mom went ahead and booked us and his brother, Nick, at this hostel called the Black Cat in Antigua for 3 days once we get there, which I suppose is a good thing. I believe it's one of the more touristy towns, but there's supposed to be really nice German architecture (a little odd, I admit), good markets, and something else I can't remember. After that I guess she's rented a 3 bedroom house in Panajachel, which is on the coast of Lake Atitlan, across from the volcanoes. It's nickname is Gringotenango, which is to say, place where white people flock. It will be beautiful, though, and I'm quite looking forward to low-cost visits to the acupuncturist and tasty vegetarian food on the cheap. Look: http://z.about.com/d/gocentralamerica/1/0/H/-/-/-/Maya.JPG

The place we're planning to volunteer with the second month, after the folks head back home, is called Maya Pedal, where they make bicimaquinas, or bike machines for indigenous agricultural use. and here you can see lots of what they make. They're situated in a town called San Andreas Itzapa, which also happens to be an area where local shamans can be found. or so I hear... I'll keep ya updated.

My tired bones need resting, now, and I'm pretty distracted filling up my new ipod, free from a friend, who got it free when his downstairs neighbor moved out and didn't take anything. !

Have you ever had 3100 songs to choose from? I am in joy-ing.

Send your blessings for our trip, my wonderful friends and family!

all my heart is filled with your names and faces (which I regularly go over in my head so I don't forget how much I have freely been given),
abigail <3

umbelliferaea

2008-11-24T11:54:00.002-05:00

This was up on the screen when I got here from an article called "Anarchy is Here," from http://www.newswithviews.com/Daubenmire/dave135.htm : Ben Franklin said “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

Also, support a leftist radical group in Berkeley, buy a slingshot:
http://www.microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/zines/2604/

I'll be in northwest Florida from December 17 to the 31st. I joyfully return for my once a year or two visit. It seems like I was just there, since we visited my family a lot over the winter until February this year, during the time of the tangerine grove in Citra. I suspect it will be warm and pleasant. I guess it's pretty nice having family in Florida- you get to visit without having to stay! It's enough like a vacation to balance out any minor form of obligation.

Springfield is transforming me, as it usually does. This time, however, I've had a much better grip on how to be here without losing my spirit completely. Breathing, sleeping, cooking, eating as well as possible, spending time with friends and family who are to some extent aware of my life away from here. Only taking baths, and soaking in herbs and clay has really helped, I think. It's allowed me to spend time with my body that I don't always get otherwise, at least not in the same way that I might if I were still gardening. I like gardening more than cooking simply because the garden is so much like my own body, interacting with everything around it, growing, sunning, breathing, stretching, being.
Cooking, however, allows the mind to focus more on transformation. I feel that I've really retained a (mostly)local diet of fruits and vegetables (apples and squash, mmm), whole grains, local cheese (some from raw milk!) and eggs. Also, lots of dumpstered bakery bread! At its best, cooking is an extension of the garden. It allows us to harvest (my favorite thing, after long nurturing!) and bring the fruits of our labor into the kitchen to be blended and transformed into delicious experiences that pass the life of the garden into ourselves, our friends and family. That is how I've most deeply experienced and enjoyed life.

In any case, I'm finally transcribing a notebook full of notes on lots of herbs, spiritual entries, recipes, sketches of useful garden trellises, a Susun Weed talk from Gainesville, contact info, urban orcharding, good shrubs, trees, and vines for western NC, etc, etc. My hope is actually to get them together with some other fantastic things from the loads of books I've been reading and put together a zine. I feel like the likelihood of that happening is high, as a project to stay busy for the next 3 weeks. When I return from FL, there will be 2 weeks before our flight from Chicago to Guatemala, which is a 2 month trip. I look forward to time slowing down a bit around April. It's a little strange to have plans up to then.
OK, so about Springfield- it is a little numbing, a little dulling, especially in the wintertime, but it's also humbling in a funny way. There is a much more concensus idea about reality here, so there is a slight need to conform in mostly social ways. It's sort of nice to go between worlds of complete freedom of expression, and places like the midwest, where thoughts flow in more of a stream. It's easy enough to provoke thought here, if not to sustain it. I guess it's easier to not talk about something different, as if mentioning anything different is a one time thing, as if talking about what could change is thought-provoking, but ultimately forgettable in the flow of house, TV, car, job. I say it's helpful in getting a more rounded understanding of people, and let me tell you, that seems to be my area of interest.

More about that and leaving the country in the next installment.

with l o v e

falling into winter

2008-11-06T11:31:00.005-05:00

The leaves are falling fairly quickly today, have been since the first frost a couple of weeks ago. We had two freezing nights that I know of, before which most of the leaves were pretty green, after which most of the leaves sparked into an incredible array of yellows, reds, and oranges. The last week or so has been beautiful, sunny and quite warm. Today is the first day in a series of forecasted gloomy weather, with freezing temperatures at night and very little sun. The next warm and sunny day and night, I think a day-long hike along the Sangamon River or Spring Creek is in order. Sleeping outside will make me so much more at ease.

Time in Springfield is interesting. It's a lot easier to recognize the differences between rural and urban lifestyles. I continue to be amazed at the perpetual choice we have to flow with negative or positive energy. I mean, Springfield gets me down, way down. I find it hard to smile as much as I'm used to doing, hard to not be constantly distracted from myself and soulful interaction with others by just about everything. You can't walk outside and not here industrial sounds or dogs barking. I have long alleys to walk down, but they are mostly fenced, and there are many, many dogs. However, I've been pouring what energy I have into anything I can think of that will offer me returns on that energy, rather than putting it all into destructive behaviors (which I will admit that I continue to do). We only have a bath tub, so I've taken to herbal baths, soaking in chamomile, lavender, rosemary, bath salts, and bentonite clay. It's been endlessly amusing for me to wash my hair with mud, as well, a kind called rhassoul clay. The clay absorbs pollution and yuckiness from the hair and leaves most of the oils intact. Just soaking my head takes away the sweat, and rubbing the clay into my scalp a bit has the same delicious effect as letting it dry on my face, which is also part of the process. Isn't it awesome that mud cleanses and improves skin and hair? Just incredible- and soaking in the tub eliminates much of the need for anything outside of light scrubbing to get really clean.

Chamomile tea has also been endlessly helpful. I pressed out my holy basil, mullein, and goldenrod tinctures the other day- hurray! The biodiversity in my neck of Illinois is rather limited, so the tincturing has been put on hold, though we did gather a bowl full of hawthorn berries from Lincoln Memorial Garden across the lake from the coal plant. Unfortunately, I'm not so sure I want a tincture of anything across the lake from the coal plant. :/ I did purchase some amendments for making slightly better quality and faster fermenting mead, and it will be nice to get a lot more of this pile of honey of ours into process. I decided that herbal infusions or decoctions are better added to mead just before it's bottled for a better tasting mead. I think perhaps having alcohol to begin with helps to preserve the taste and quality of the herbs.

This morning I pulled my first yogurt out of the cooler! I had to special order seven stars yogurt for the culture, but the actual yogurt making process was pretty super easy. I followed the directions from Wild Fermentation, and it made a thick, quite mild-flavored yogurt that will be so yummy with maple syrup. Also poured off some rejuvelac this morning, and capped my fermented ginger carrots, both instructions taken from Nourishing Traditions. Rejuvelac is pretty OK, especially if you mix it with some apple juice!

with love

you sound upset

2008-09-22T09:50:00.003-04:00

A message to my family.  A message to share.

---

So I wanted to write this email to y'all (and please feel free to forward
this on to other family members for whom I don't have email addresses)
because I think it's important to share my feelings about the direction of
change in this country, on this planet.  With the bail-outs of Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac, AIG, Bear Stearns, and who knows who else tomorrow, each
family in this country could owe something on the order of maybe 70,000
dollars- to whom, I'm not sure.  There is a toxic debt pile building up
that I hope you are all aware of, and this is very dangerous.  From what I
understand, there is little to no precedent for this kind of economic
irresponsibility.  Banks are collapsing, being bought out by larger
corporations (thanks JP Morgan) who are then being subsidized by the
Federal Reserve, which prints up so much unbacked currency it's
disgusting.  One friend of mine wants to call and ask for a pittance, a
million and a half, from the Fed- you know, just to pump up his bank
account.  Another good friend has pointed out that property, at least in
her neck of the woods, is at ridiculous lows, and she can't understand why
money isn't being put into land trusts for growing food, especially in
poor areas, where the houses are being knocked down as we speak.

This is a very precarious moment, economically, socially, and family-wise.
Our country has been sucked dry, our fields planted in soy and corn, if
planted at all, our food filled with palm oil and corn syrup, our banks
inflated like floats in a parade, our legislature packed with corporate
ambassadors, filling our ears with backwards talk about war and terror,
our televisions flashing us with images of beautiful mountain streams
before inundating us with meaningless names like DOW, BP, HUMMER,
MICROSOFT, SPRITE, etc, etc, etc.

Our children will have no future here.  That is the truth.  At least not
the way things are right now, and the changes to bring things more into
order are not easy, by any means.  We have little infrastructure for the
rapidly approaching time when food must be grown locally- fortunately, we
have movements like Food Not Lawns who are at least trying to remind
people that we planted this earth for thousands of years before industrial
agriculture decided to start poisoning us, draining our aquifers, and
destroying biodiversity.  It will become very necessary to grow our own
food, or participate in local cooperatives who produce enough natural
foods to sustain us, specifically our children whose brains depend on
healthy food to make the kind of decisions and leaps of faith into more
sustainable alternatives that their parents simply did not realize they
could make.  Our energy, our fuel consumption in electricity, heating oil,
gas, all of this energy will soon be so scarce as to hardly be available
to the vast majority of folk (not just the desperately poor).  Again,
fortunately there are poor people the world over who depend on Drastically
less energy than do we and whose example is more and more being turned to
by people (hopefully myself included) to live more sane, more connected,
more simple lives, without the beeping, humming, vibrating,
compressor-kicking-in -ness of modern homes.

So I'm writing this hopefully not to sound preachy, but to express that I
am genuinely worried.  As someone who spends much of my time exploring,
learning, researching and paying attention, I am telling you, my beautiful
family, that I am greatly concerned about the very-near future.  We are
looking toward a sea-change, and which direction we take it really depends
on how informed we are.  Are we capable of making decisions about our
lives, about the lives of our children, our grandparents, our mothers and
fathers, decisions that will allow us to enjoy the time we have here and
hopefully leave at least Something for the next generations?  Or will we
simply continue to flow with this current, to accept constant corporate
branding, a culture that is not our own being pumped into our brains by
the television, education that preaches irresponsibility, permanent
adolescence and selfishness?  Are we willing to continue to accept our own
discontent and hollowness, our own loss of soul, because we want to keep
driving and working like slaves, and owing more and more debt to
institutions that themselves are being bailed out by the federal
government (that is to say, by us)?  We are in control of every aspect of
our lives until we give that away, which we are generally forced to do
quite early- but we are adults, highly capable human beings who have the
most to fight for, our lives and the future.

I realize that you all know the worst of it because we all operate in a
cash economy where we must pay for everything, even the most basic human
rights (water and food). We all know things are bad because it's so
blatant, I mean the price of everything is rising rapidly.  I'm just not
satisfied accepting that I Must pay to drink, to eat, to travel, to exist,
to stay alive.  I mostly can't accept that because I have had too much
exposure to low-budget lifestyles.  I know that I can take care of my own
food and water needs without money- I know this because I do this.  I want
you to realize that your life is profoundly beautiful and complex, it
includes every moment, and our souls have longed to be here, to occupy
these bodies which are capable of so much more than any of us realize.
Our bodies were not meant to be given away from birth from one institution
to another, to be traded, made into a commodity, beaten into submission
(http://www.submedia.tv), jailed (through school, work, prison), and
confined to our fancy boxes filled with heat boxes, cold boxes, water
boxes, wheeled boxes, etc.  We live in completely unnecessary confinement,
and it's making us completely insane- why else would be disagree with but
accept a military-industrial complex that is costing us trillions?  Do you
even know how many zeros that is?

I wholeheartedly invite each of you to try to be aware, as you move
through your day, of the feeling you get each time you fill your tank,
write a check, pay your bills, hand over your card at the grocery store,
or deposit that check that can't possibly be worth what you put into it.
The only way we can move forward is to turn off our televisions, to focus,
to put our own immense energy (physical and mental) into our own
happiness, our own joy, our own children.  On a planet that might not
allow us to live here much longer, we have to enjoy ourselves now.
There's no more time- our stock market will crash, our jobs will be lost,
our planet will change.  Get to know your neighbor- you might be more
dependent on each other than you think.


With as much love as I have, and as much heart as I can give, I am yours,
each of yours, through and through.  Let's stop trying to put up with this
crazy world and start envisioning our own lives becoming fulfilled and
abundant.  I promise that we can do this, we can truly build our lives
differently, and it doesn't take change from the top down.  Change You,
and the world changes.  Remember the sun, the moon, the plants (who all
have names), the face of your mother, your daughter, your son, anything
that is authentic, is real.  Forget your car, your TV, your microwave,
your refrigerator, your couch, your computer- these are no good reason to
give your life to any one or thing else.  What is more dis-heartening than
being on your deathbed and realizing that your grandchildren may never
know they had a heart because they are born in well-organized,
concentrated urban centers, where there is nothing clean and they are told
every move they can make in order to be fed and watered, like cattle.
Please, let's not let this planet become a farm.  We are not captives,
yet.  Talk to each other.

OK, I'm done because I think this took an hour, and I really should go
eat- I made apple scones from the yummy apples getting super-sweet
everywhere up here.   I mostly want everyone to move up to the mountains
with me and grow this garden with me.  Do y'all know how good food is when
you have to wash off the dirt first?  :)

lapsong souchang

2008-09-17T14:30:00.004-04:00

Stephanie really likes caffeinated tea. This is admirable when it comes to introducing others to well-crafted beverages of the actually tea plant, like the smoky black tea I am steeping at this moment. This stuff is kind of like crack when you add honey and milk. It is going to help me make it past the next 20 minutes while I wait for the veggie lasagne to finish. I acquired quite a lot of produce from Joe Hollis' place that was all going to rot. Big chard, medium-sized beets and smalls, sungold cherry tomatoes (the ground was littered with perfectly ripe, orange beauties), two great big daikon radishes that I was very impressed to find (Mahra uncovered them from weeds just before she left, and now these forgotten root vegetables are thriving), and several bell peppers. All but the beets and daikon went into this lasagne- mmm.

I have to recount this story because it was a beautiful synchronicity:
I've been reading this Robert Moss book about dreams and Native American shamanism, and within it there are instructions for active dreaming and soul-recovery using various "techniques." By techniques, I simply mean time-honored ways of healing our spirits, such as finding, nourishing, and being aided by power animals, or spirit allies. This is kind of touchy for me, mostly because I was raised without animals, without pets, without even stuffed animals by and large (aside from two pet fish and a stuffed Flounder from the Little Mermaid, perhaps cosmically-inspired Piscean symbolism; I don't know what to consider the stuffed ALF...). I haven't had a connection with animals for very long, and only recently have come to appreciate cats and dogs. It has become my intention to find an animal ally and figure out how to nourish that being connected to myself.

Yesterday I was walking toward the cabin-site after reading a bit from the dream book in the cool moist morning, and I said aloud, "The next animal I see will be my spirit ally." My intention was that the next unfamiliar creature whom I encountered would help me in any soul-recovery I might wish. I saw a mosquito, the dogs, a rooster, but these were not the beings to help me. Later on in the day, I decided to walk to the mail box, thinking about this spirit ally thing, wondering if I would see a squirrel or a bird. I wasn't expecting any mail, but I went, anyway. At the end of the drive I heard a bird call overhead, and I wondered if this was it- I turned to look up at the bird, and there were a doe and her fawn. The stood still and watched me for a minute, while I watched them, and then they each walked slowly into the woods along the river, nibbling as they went.

So here is a powerful ally, indeed- Deer Woman and her offspring. She is the being of compassion, love, and truth. I have decided to nourish this woman and child in myself, and perhaps Deer Woman will join me for some soul-recovery in our dreams of each other.

---

Goldenrod tincture is good for sinuses and allergies, its oil is great for swelling and wounds. Make sure y'all catch it quick, if you wish to be aided by its generous spirit.

Handlebars

2008-09-09T09:32:00.001-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuK2A1ZqoWs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD5WlQ54Sg0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9FApvqS-3k

rain

2008-09-08T22:09:00.002-04:00

It's suddenly raining very heavy, lightning started around 10, and thunder is echoing slightly. We haven't had too much time between rain lately. Fay came through and brought us maybe 2 feet of much needed water, then there was more rain after those three days, and the ground might have just been drying on the top. The air running along the floor feels so cool to my feet after being so hot and humid all evening. I hope the humidity helps my throat stay moist through the night- I'm tired of my body being sick, first pouring sinuses, then clogged sinuses and pouring, then sneezing and coughing, and today mostly just a righteous croup remains.

I have been reading White Noise by Don DeLillo, my first DeLillo novel. I'm perhaps halfway through this book that is one-third set-up for this middle-class, white family made up of children from previous marriages, insecure parents and the "white noise" of everyday materialism. One chapter the main character just decides he wants to go shopping, and his wife and daughters become caught up finding him things to buy at the mall, and he just basically has this pseudo-religious experience with his family while spending money without care. He actually says he comes to realize that he is above money, doesn't need to worry when spending it, has credit to back him up! Anyway, here is a quote, as it relates to the other book I'm currently working through (Dreamways of the Iroqouis):

"The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream."

This other book by Robert Moss is called Dreamways of the Iroqouis, in which he explains the cosmology of these specific Native North Americans, as well as active dreaming and a return to the dreamworld as our connection to the rest of reality. To the Iroqouis, dreams are communications from our souls to our thinking selves, to our bodies- they are meant to help us, heal us, to show us what we really desire and need. They are reminders of things we already know, and our ancestors speak to us through them. The Iroqouis practiced dreaming religiously, and all dream wishes and desires they attempted to fulfill as a means of keeping the community in harmony as much as fulfilling each persons needs on this planet, on this journey, in this life. They dreamed deeply and often spoke to animal familiars and ancestors. Adept dreamers found deer in winter and acted as sort of psychologist/healers.

I will now attempt to tell the story of creation among the Iroqouis, as I recall it from my one reading of the oral history in writing, and once telling it all the way through for Mike. This may be long. :)

Long ago, there was a village of folks who dreamed. The father of one woman had died, he may've been a chief, and she dreamed that he was placed in the branches of a tree. When she woke, they did this, and his soul inhabited the tree. From then on, she spoke with the tree as her father, and he spoke to her with the moving leaves and branches, in the swaying of his trunk. He told her to go and prepare food for her husband-to-be, a very powerful being in a far-away land.

The and her mother painstakingly made a perfect loaf of bread, and she set out on the journey, remembering her father's words that it would be a long, treacherous journey, and that she should stay strong and remember not to express any pain or suffering. She moved from the hip, running across the land, and she quickly arrived in the place her father had described, much more quickly than she ever got to the berry patch outside her village, so she went back. Her father said, yes, you arrived in the right place, and you are coming now into your true powers.

She set out again, once more arriving very quickly, and found this being who was her husband-to-be. He was the most beautiful wild cherry you can ever imagine, not unlike the Tree of Life in Kabbala, he was a tree of Light and so old you could no longer tell if he had any gender at all! He was unimpressed with the woman and her dinky loaf of bread after having lived so many years and having had so many wives, said she must make him corn soup, enough to feed a mid-sized village. She set to the task, finding all the chores of harvesting and pounding the grain to be easier and easier when she put her thought to it.

She made a giant vat of corn soup, chunks flying out and making huge wounds in her arms and legs- but she did not wince, not once. The Tree of Light was a little impressed by this, and he told her to strip naked so that his servants could heal her wounds. She did, and men like dogs, dog-headed men, came out and began to lick her violently from head to toe with their sand-paper tongues. Eventually this became a sort of voyeuristic experience for the Tree of Light, perhaps, as the dog-men healed her wounds and moved onto more intimate licking. When the orgy ended, he made her a bed and did not touch her, only breathed deeply on her.

The next morning, the Tree had the woman fill a magic deer-skin bag with dried and quartered deer meat for her people. This she did, herd after herd of deer going into the bag, and when it was close to full, the Tree had her push hard down on the contents. When she did, they slipped back down to halfway, and she continued to fill. The Tree told her before she returned to tell her people to remove their roofs that night. When she returned, extremely tired from lugging the mountain-heavy bag, she told the people to remove their roofs. Having seen the enormous gift from the Tree, they did, and that night the stars seemed to come down and hover above their homes. Those stars began to fall softly into them, like light hail, until everyone's house had been turned into a grain silo filled with the most beautiful white corn kernals.

When the woman returned to the Tree of Light, her husband, his leaves had begun to turn yellow, and he said, "You are carrying the gift of life inside you," and he went to dream. When he awoke, he said he had dreamed the most preposterous thing! and he started to dig around the roots of the Tree of Life/Light, and his dog-men began to help, as the woman stood and watched in disbelief at the beautiful tree being uprooted in front of her. It followed that she began to help dig, and eventually they arrived at an opening! The space was not unlike a tunnel, midnight blue and empty. He told the woman that she had to jump into the hole beneath the tree. So she did, into the void, carrying with her the baby she had already given birth to, but returned to the amniotic fluid of her mother's womb for this journey.

She fell a long, long time, and for this we'll call her the Woman Who Fell From the Sky, or Sky-Woman. A long, white light helped her for most of the fall, a white lion being, who assisted this beautiful woman being. Soon she came to Earth, where all the creatures of the water already existed, like beaver and otter and turtle. She asked the creatures if they knew where to find any earth, and they asked her what the hell that was. She motioned as if picking up clay and forming it into balls, then patted her stomach and grabbed her breasts. Beaver and Otter both said their ancestors had each once gone so far under the water that they'd come to something they couldn't identify that seemed like this thing called "earth." After several attempts to dive down to the bottom and a few near-death experiences, I believe it was Beaver who came up, almost dead, with just a bit of clay lining his limp hands. Sky-Woman took this earth and asked where it might go so that she could build land and grow a child. Turtle said, "Use my back, as you're using it now to stand upon." She rubbed the clay on his shell, then danced a beautiful, spiral dance, quickly making land spread out before them.

Here she raised her daughter, who became ripe and harvested many things. This woman was one day visited by a cloud-being, an enormous and charming being, who rightly seduced her with two very capable penises, making her body explode with pleasure. From then, she was pregnant with twins - one light, one dark. The light one said one day, to the dark one, "It's time we left this place, I think I see a river out of this amniotic ocean where there is a waterfall at the end- I'm pretty sure that's the way out," and he left. The second on, the wily, crooked one, with shards of glassy ice circling his head, not to be outdone, decided he would just break right out of this place by boring a hole from where he was. This worked, however his mother was dead on his arrival.

Their grandmother, Sky-Woman, asked who had done this horrible thing, and the dark twin said it was the light, Elder brother who had actually taken the right path out. She believed him and coddled him from that day forward. However, the Elder twin was the Light brother, the Sky-Holder, the one who remembered where they had come from, from the sky, and he was thus endowed with the gift of Life. He created valleys and fields, deer and humans of all colors, while the second twin could only create fucked up shit, and needed to steal the gift of life to give life to his warped creations. They, however, led to the increasing complexity of life.

To sum this up, the Light brother eventually kills the Dark through a sort of too-much-righteousness thing in conjunction with a request that they duel from his father (who turns out to really be turtle/the cloud being!). The Light brother gives life back to the Dark eventually, and they end up being married in a sacred ceremony where they realize that they are actually one being, and the source of all their disharmony came from the separation they mistakenly felt.

This is the first part of the story. The story of the Awakened being and Hiawatha waits for another day.

The aim of all religion seems to me to be, by and large, the spiritual freedom of folks. Let's remember that and strive toward this freedom in the deepest parts of our souls and psyches. We are free, and that is what Jesus and Hiawatha came to tell us.

a new link:
http://www.submedia.tv

democratic national convention

2008-08-25T12:05:00.003-04:00

ha ha- this ain't about the DNC.

Part of my reasoning for listing meads and tinctures, etc, is so that I have a record outside of my log book. Sometimes I lose those things. So, yesterday I made calendula, dandelion root/burdock root, and lemonbalm tinctures. It's fun. I also found another half gallon of moonshine. :D

It's raining today, in other news. I thanked the sky.

A very good book I'm reading is called Ancient Futures, it's about a Himalayan culture called Ladakh that is similar to Tibet where they live around 10-11,000 ft and pasture their hybrid dzos (yak and cow, I think) at 15-16,000 ft, away from their small fields of barley. The dzos love it up there, but the land is fairly barren, so they eat the vegetation that grows around the glaciers and high mountain valleys. The Ladhakis collect all the dung and use it for cooking fuel. They live in thick mud and stone houses on basic diets of including local "weeds," barley, yak butter, apricots, and a lot of chang (barley beer). They get very little rain, as they're in the rain shadow of the Himalayas, so they have intensely managed canals and shared irrigation canals that are small enough to allow just enough water onto each field. The women are strong and independent, and all are allowed to choose not to have children and/or leave their children and join the monastery. This usually means living at home still, but as a Buddhist nun or monk. The families are important social units where the children are given loads of affection and tender attention, and they take responsibility at a very young age for whatever they can, including younger children. They have beautiful smiles, and 95% belong to the same class of subsistence farmers without any money. The worst transgression within their culture is to get angry, and they often respond when one inquires why they aren't angry about anything, "What's the point?" Cooperation has been necessary and paramount to survival in their harsh surroundings, but in 1974 their thousand-year-old culture was opened to tourism by the Indian government in an attempt to bring them more into the fold as a part of India. This has caused great problems. Television and movies have entered the culture, luring young people away from farming and training them in English and giving them poor quality "educations." They leave their villages to go to school, finish school, have no idea how to farm, then have to move to the city center in Leh (a town of 10-15,000 people) to find one of the very, very few jobs in the region.

Anyway, the book is great, gives a very accurate and complete view of the "global village."

I would like to also say I feel very odd about the passing of Masanobu Fukuoka. The man is a sort of folk-hero, and I refer all of y'all to the zinelibrary.net website to read "On Green Mountain," which pretty quickly summarizes his ideas and integrities in regard to natural farming, no-till and balance.

I surely hope so

2008-08-21T12:19:00.004-04:00

Women in the United States who are spiritually free to move about could change the world by expressing their disapproval of this farcical machine to their children. They could continually discover ways not to participate, thus providing for their children's future spiritual freedom (which guides all of our body through its own energy) and for the freedom of more in the future.

I think mothers can become very serious about spiritual freedom because we as women can be acutely aware of he emotional shackles that come with corporatism, globalism, market economy, school, jail, church, television, and other conceptually similar confining institutions and standards within our society. Hopefully, we as mothers, who are supreme artists by virtue of our task as mother, can offer our children freedom, love and hope for the future. Or there will be no future. We have to set our children's mind alight with wings we weave for them, and in turn our spirits will be set free.

Why do we not think of our children as future? Or do we, but we are too busy to consider the future? If we don't care about ourselves, we don't care about anything else. Why are we so ill? We are the future, because we are the only example our children have. If youth is always at the lead a few years down the road, then our lives lead them. We must continue to act our part as mother to the future, to lead in the manner of the strong heads of family who have led us to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (May we all be fed.) More than lead, we should listen and learn by example.

The television is not an example. Let us recognize tradition, again. The oldest tradition is that of a mother feeding her child, in honor of continuing the cycle. She did not question the cycle, had no need or desire to alter or interrupt the cycle. She fed, and in turn all of the children who fed us have been fed.

This continues in my mind about home, children, future, inspiration and hope. I see the progression that comes with letting go of fear, opening your mind, settling into a space, and moving forward. Lately I can't stop thinking about the motivation that a child gives a home, the responsibility she or he requires of another, the constant humbling and frustration and joy they inspire. They are our path to somewhere, wherever we decide. This may be a good way to describe our interactions with the earth. We are children, she is mother, providing so much abundance and allowing us to live. We are the future of the earth, and we must also act as stewards of that ultimate gift, or we'll lose our home.

~~~

In other news, I've started white peony root, angelica sinensis root, red clover blossom, and schizandra berry tinctures, blueberry jam mead, and red clover/raspberry leaf mead. I've been trying to use up the moonshine and wildflower honey... down to half a gallon of moonshine, 1 1/2 gallons of honey.

Stephanie, Mike, Denali and I went on a hike yesterday to Singe Cat Ridge and checked up on the elderberries for future mead/tincture/syrup/wine/jam. They've got a bit to go until they're big and fat. The hike was nice, though. It's always beautiful here, and hiking always feels great on the body when you get home afterward.

Pray for rain.

set the pace

2008-08-09T10:16:00.004-04:00

To the left is a Hemlock Varnish Shelf, the type of ganoderma/polypore mushroom I found yesterday on our little wandering with Lee behind the Berry compound yesterday, staking out the boundaries. Lee took us up toward a few creeks along the way, and I wandered into one without much water but tons of jewelweed filling the bed where the water is right below the top, and when I turned around there was a dying hemlock and this crazy mushroom. It has tiny, very slow-moving beetle things inside of it, eating it from underneath. To the right is a goldfinch, which I've been seeing a lot more often these days. I love them because they always make me look again, grab my attention. Focal point.

This morning waking up in the tent to the sun, I had the very pleasant experience of realizing I certainly am continuing my education, and furthermore I'm gaining work experience in the profession I choose to follow for perhaps the rest of my life. I'm deep in it, now. I know volumes more than I did two years ago, and this life provides me the opportunity to inter-act very deeply and soulfully with the entire world, people and plants all included. Walking through the woods I'm able to orient myself with the trees, and my ability to recognize seems to me a more valuable skill than any you might learn at the university.

And now a word about education. I thank god for the poverty I was raised in for all the bullshit it's allowed me to acceptably ignore and with which I've not needed to participate. I feel as if the shaky, fearful ground beneath me all my life, the grasping need to find something to hold on to that would deliver me from the drowning feeling of me inside this televised society, has led me directly to here. and how fully I am here. I have no need for a degree, no need for a job, no need for a car, no need for a television, no need to impress my parents for the funds they might provide ('cause they ain't got none), no need to wrangle me a man with money. I just don't need anything like that while there is this Great earth beneath me, raising me up like a beautiful cash crop, one stalk of maize amongst the weeds, fully supported by their presence, needing no addition. Thank this beautiful earth for overgrowing empty commercial and residential lots and providing me a million options for work and food. I don't need a degree to plant seeds, don't need a paycheck to eat.

I don't need any man or woman in a suit to tell me anything out of a book. and I thank all of them that might try for making it economically impossible for me to even begin to be convinced that they could teach me anything. I thank this earth for continually providing me the most whole education I can use, for allowing me to know what real fear is for and how to let go of the imposed fears of our culture, and for allowing me to to recognize the incredibly solid ground beneath my feet, all without one single word.

i was born right in the doorway

2008-08-03T12:01:00.003-04:00

I have had too much good coffee this morning- what better way to find the headroom for blogging?

Making the transition to the Berry's, moving our little boxes and trying not to think too much about the sadness of leaving Mountain Gardens. My home has been this beautiful little garden in which I've had the opportunity to play out my beautiful green fantasies, been willing to be open more to everything, have had room to love my incredible co-working rock star community pardners. I've fallen in love six times this season, a few times for the second or third round. It's amazing how green will do that to you. We spent our last week at Joe's cooking beautiful lunches for his Peace Corps reunion/yurt workshop with Bill Coperthwaite. I am now in love with Bill, and I'm trying to think of reasons to go to Maine and hike the hour through the woods to his house after getting there by canoe. Anyway, it's a beautiful little round wooden structure with a big skylight circle in the ceiling, cedar shingles and windows all the way round. I whittled the top shingles with Bill's really good knife, and they fit perfectly, I hear. Mike did a lot of work on shingling and putting the boards inside the walls, and I hammered so much! I also sawed singles (which is nothing) and contributed significantly to the meals. I am beginning to realize how great it is to make delicious, nutritious food for folks and have them compliment and appreciate it. You don't get that so much with room-mates.

To report on recently practiced foodways, I've got almost a half gallon of blueberry jam preserves made with a little bit of raw wildflower honey stocked up now, as well as a half gallon of watermelon rind pickle preserves, a pint of pickled purslane, half gallons of dried red clover, a mix of red beebalm flowers and dried mountain mint, dried raspberry leaves, a gallon of mountain mind mead, 3 of red clover/lemonbalm/borage mead, and I spent all day running the still over the fire on the deck yesterday for nearly 2 gallons of 92% alcohol for tincturing. I guess this runs over into medicine, but if I've learned nothing from Susun Weed it is that medicine and food necessarily blend. I suppose I've also picked that up a little more strongly watching and tasting Jesse's beer brewing- I've never had "Wood Tea" Chinese tonic cider before this season. In any case, this season I've made tinctures of black haw, motherwort, goji/schizandra/licorice, borage and mimosa flowers. With the alcohol we made I'm planning to tincture siberian motherwort, california poppy, maybe more mimosa flower, holy basil (if possible), more borage, and more I have not yet decided. The fact that I have so much alcohol hadn't hit me until the still finished running yesterday. I'm still a little in shock.

Plans for the future! Me and the boy are going on back up to the midwest for October for wedding, birthday, end of the harvest, working, etc. I think from there we may head to this fella in Tennessee's abode, a kind older man with an orchard and berry production. Joe Hollis thinks highly of him, as the Hidden Springs nursery he began specialized in unusual varieties. I'm actually pretty excited to meet him and his wife, to spend time with them- we'll most likely be stopping to meet them on the way up to Illinois. I'm putting my eggs a little bit in that basket, as I'm not so keen to experience the North Wind through these great big mountains this winter. Perhaps we'll leave the country to visit central America beginning of next year, perhaps I'll make some money and somehow arrange to go to the Chestnut herb school in Asheville next season, maybe we'll work in the piedmont biofarm/biofuel coop for a bit, maybe we'll stay with the Berry's a bit this winter, maybe next spring. This world is our little oyster clammy.

I miss my friend Katie. Worth mentioning. She is in southern France enjoying the Mediterranean and doing it with her long-haired Frenchie boyfriend. :D Maybe she'll come back to go to herb school with me, then stash me in her luggage to go to Nova Scotia. O! We'll meet Jesse there in his little yurt mushroom paradise. Also! We can go to Bill's place and look at his incredible yurt in the quiet forest and check out the fjords. I think I just made a life plan.

To finish this up and shoot off this little missive, we went to the Permaculture Gathering drum circle/ritual/Goddess dance party last night, and it was nice to see folks I've taken workshops with and from, as well as conference folks, and a few neat people I met last year at the gathering. This year was much less intense for me- for one thing a middle-aged couple didn't smoke me up with herb too good for me this year. We stuck around 'til the end, the boys explored their inner depths with some sort of fungi, I held the stray puppy Mahra found and hung out with a little girl who walked her around a lot, and we made fun of the white people dancing all funny. It was pleasing. The after party was fun, too, but I was too tired to repeat details accurately, and for the protection of certain fellows I won't attempt to recall.

Good day, and be well, friends.

home land

2008-05-25T17:47:00.009-04:00

I have been reading a number of books lately, and they have come to an interesting intersection. I have this past 6 months been reading through the 10-ish Little House on the Prairie books, and in them part of the whole story is moving around to different frontier lands and building stick-frame houses. They use pine, and they are on the edge of white settlement, at the very tip of the railroad at the time that was rapidly being built to cross the continent around the 1880s. So, everyone is building from pine, talks a lot about the smells of the pine resin and the changing colors from yellow to steadily more grey. These folks live on the prairie, which is a vast open land of grass and flowering herbs, and part of their settling of this place is to plant trees, break up the sod and plant large crops of wheat and oats. They essentially move in and start destroying immediately, but the stories are good for reading about frontier life, typically the woman's role is what interests me, the cooking and housekeeping and caring for each other.

Another book I've read is Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, which is about growing up poor in the south in this century, after the devastation of the long-leaf pine forests. I did not know that such trees existed, although I have learned from this book that one of the largest reserves of long-leaf pine is on a reservation within the Eglin Air Force base, right down the road from the little city where I grew up in northwest Florida. I'd always known there was a large reservation of pine there, perhaps the largest air force base in the world, but I had no idea why they held them in reserve or why they had controlled burns within them. Now I understand that these trees were the best outfitted for surviving in the south- in fact they monotonously filled the south from central Georgia on down toward Ocala, west toward the Mississippi River and along the east coast up toward Virginia. My brother Josh lives in southeastern North Carolina along the coast, and it is covered in pines with a strikingly familiar environment to that in which we were raised. The lightning in the south where all the big thunderstorms form has burned out all the other trees that grow up there, or at least it used to, and most of the animals in the forest would run into gopher tortoise holes built under the savanna-like sandhills. Wiregrass grew beneath the trees and was also resistant to fire. The long-leaf pine has extremely flammable leaves which keep fire moving quickly through and not burning the dense trees, which are very hard. Apparently they are beautiful. I can't say that I've seen, except in Citra this winter when I saw a baby pretending to be grass. They grow like grass for a while, then shoot up tall very quickly when they're old enough as another fire-protection method.

Between the late 1800's and now the long-leaf pine forest has been reduced by 99%. A lot went into the construction of the American West, from the Appalachians onward. Laura Ingalls Wilder got to smell the blood of the forest I've never known that grew where I was born and raised in its own kind of prairie.

So this brings me to the last book on this list which I found somewhere, Trees Every Child Should Know, from 1909. The entry for the longleaf pine is as follows:

The longleaf pine is one of four hard pines whose lumber is not distinguished by ordinary carpenters, but is generally called "yellow pine." This is the chief source of turpentine, pitch, and tar, as well as one of the very best lumber trees of the pitch pine group. The most ornamental wood is that with the curliest grain, and the narrowest bands of alternating dark and light colour. It grows slowly in hard, sandy soils on the damp coast plains near the Gulf of Mexico.
We shall know this tree from all other pines by the length of its needles. They are twelve to eighteen inches long, flexible, dark green, shining, three in a bundle, enclosed at the base in long, pale, silvery sheaths. They remain on the tree but two years, therefore the tree top is bare except for thick tufts of these drooping leaves on the ends of the branches. If you have never seen these trees growing in their natural forest belt, that ranges from Virginia to Florida, and west to the Mississippi River, or in small scattered forest patches in Northern Alabama, Louisiana, or Texas, you may have seen branches or small trees shipped north to be used for Christmas decorations.
The popularity of these pine shoots is growing, and those who cut them seem not to realise that they are killing the forests of the future. Trees grow from seeds which fall in the territory cleared by the lumbermen. If these little trees that Nature plants are cut as fast as they show themselves above the forest floor, how are the longleaf pine forests to be restored? It is a great problem, for a great part of the natural wealth of the South is in these lumber tracts, now being cleared at a terrific rate of speed, and the land left practically worthless when stripped.

the infrastructure will collapse

2008-05-20T20:31:00.003-04:00

So, I have probably heard every person I love play the new Radiohead album. twenty thousand times. :D It's fantastic, clearly. A shipmate in the garden had an experience while hallucinating last week. I love my partners up here, for many and varied reasons.

Last night's full moon party was rather fantastic, as usual. Steve about punched everyone in the face. We're slowly talking it through, and he continues to refer to this place of green and young people as being covered by his holistic health care plan. The hot tub was fantastic, and as Joe says, "so oriental," with the moon passing through the bamboo. Guitar players and drummers played in the garden and around the fire pit on the deck, and Steve told his stories. I saw a really very nice moth in the green house some time, too. It was orange and brown, but you could see through the orange. Hm- the gooseberries are bigger, the blueberries tinging red and purple, the mulberries still small, and the valerian is forming buds below the bedroom window. We planted cucumbers and pepper plants today, and Mike, Mahra and Katie worked on trellises for our tomatoes. They're looking really good, one round and one woven straight up. The nasturtiums I planted are coming up beautifully, and it's more exciting to see because I haven't been able to find the seeds to plant more throughout the garden. (I'll move them, fish emulsion and fertilize them.)

There's a proFessional photographer interning with us this season, Jesse. He's gone this week as part of his dumb well-paying job. He is part of a project where six photographers take a snapshot at 7:15 each day. the web site is www.sametime715.com and it basically gives pretty pictures around the garden each day. Mostly from the garden.

Sittin' in my wool sweater after another windy week, after the Mother's Day Tree Massacre with 65mph winds through the mountains. I was worried that night, but I got to sleep after I figured the hemlocks behind the pavilion didn't want to fall on us. A maple fell down a path without hitting any of the cabins, or destroying much in the way of plants, except a few small treetops. Now it blocks off the wasabi, and we have to jump over it. It's pretty big.

and... today I stared at the bullfrog for a really long time, right in front of it, and I thought about eating a frog, and who would think to eat a frog, and how good frog legs can taste, and then I tried to walk away after watching it move its eyes around in its head, and it jumped back in the pond really fast. But I was trying to leave, anyway.

be well, y'all.

ps- The Education of Little Tree is perdy near the greatest book I've read lately. Check it out at the library. !

let's learn together

2008-03-28T00:59:00.005-04:00

I have way too much written down on papers from here to Florida, notes and pieces of stories, a coupla poems and outraged letters. and there is a continuing bothersome feeling I tend to get when it seems every one around me is playing music or making some kinda artsy thing, a feeling like being only an observer to this lovely world of wonders. I've thought more about how to incorporate the million words in my head into these beautiful coincidal and expressive moments I share with so many others. all I can so far figure is passing off poetic nothings to everyone around, or perhaps decorating the cabin with all the words I can think of by paint and pen and glue. maybe, and this is where I'm heading with this, I may put together a book-ish thing, a cut and paste adventure in self-publishing. all else I can offer is a damn silly smile, and I can only stretch it out so far (but I'm trying).

love, of and on course.

I love way too much, everyone and anything.

learn more

2008-03-25T11:11:00.003-04:00

IT has been a month, fr sure. Today is my year-younger brother's birthday! He is 22, which is a sort of a nice number.

Mike and I ended our tour of the south, finally. Winter is over! ...most likely. I'm still processing spanish moss, horses, puddle lakes, everglades, family, keys, horse shit, and family. Perhaps this is why it has been a month, in addition to being out of internet reach for two weeks. We're in Springfield IL, now, but we spent the last few weeks at Joe Hollis' where we's interning again this year. Great interns this year, too. It's fantastic. I'm excited to have around me two very different but similarly great ladies, in addition to Stephanie Berry (who is an NC mama I hugely appreciate). The guys are turning out to be mighty nice, too, though I've spent less time with them.

The trip went like this:
Springfield IL --> Cinncinati OH to visit Badger --> Atlanta GA to visit Katie --> Citra FL to stay on tangerine grove/bamboo nursery with Craig --> St Petersburg FL to visit Angie sister --> Sarasota to visit Ringling Estate/aunt Alta/Sis --> Ft Walton Beach to visit parents --> Birmingham to visit Josh --> Burnsville NC to stay at Joe's for two weeks --> Cincinnati OH to re-visit the Badge --> Springfield IL to visit friends/family --> back to Joe's for the foreseeable future, thank all that is holy
*maybe this will help looking at flickr photos

We came home(ish) here in IL to find friends and family ready to kill themselves at this fickle beginning of spring, not even relative to the flooding that seems to surround this whole Midwest place. The Anti-Corn Commission was formed on one friend/family front, and house-plants were being divided, transplanted, and sprouted under big bright lights on another. A very few bulbs is coming up, odd that, as daffodils fill all places south of here (and Florida is sweltering as it was in February).

joy to the world, welcome to spring. let's get born againing underway.

I'm gonna write ya what I know (or, the yoga of Gratitude)

2008-02-26T12:39:00.003-05:00

Perhaps it is breathing through these cramps, leaning into the acceptance of them, and perhaps also slightly the Ani Difranco I haven't heard since high school, and maybe even the simple yoga positions I find help the pain. My heart feels ten times bigger than usual, an exponential expanding muscle, an obviously all-encompassing pal of mine. I'm thinking of my beautiful family and friends, their incredible faces and hands and stories. How I should be blessed with such beauty is a continual wonder of mine.

I'm set-up here on my older sister's little living room floor in her perfect apartment. She has decorated these walls with her love's paintings (including husband, daughter, herself). My lovely sister, my mommy-friend, the lady who dragged me out to look in dumpsters and introduced me to our oldest living female relative. She resides in my heart. I include her in my acknowledgement of self. I'm staring at my clothes piled high against my backpack on the other side of the room, mixed up with Mike's piled high against his. We have been wandering like hungry ghosts, like hobos trying to get home. My little heart and me, like stray kittens, really, accepting gifts of food and affection from strangers. We're residents in love, or so I'm told.

One of my older brothers, the last in the sibling line before me (and eight years apart), he's going through a rough time, has been for many years, I suppose. I'm formulating a prayer for him, and that's all I can say about my beautiful, intense and wonderful brother who cared for me so kindly when I needed it very much. May he simply know before he travels on how firmly he is held tucked in my heart.

It occurs to me I have prayers to offer up. Please be well. and be in joy.

commercial break

2008-02-18T14:24:00.004-05:00

What if there were something that made every flavor taste better, more intensely that flavor? What if it were filled with minerals and tiny creatures and small green plants? What if it was also medicine, long-used medicine, that is a near-panacea? And what if 99% of people could absorb and make use of it for all these purposes without adverse reaction? That would be great, but it would be better if you could find it commonly for sale. Well, you can! It's Celtic Sea Salt, or any ocean harvested salt. On top of all those other things, it is sustainably harvested from ocean water, hand-picked and sun dried. Salt is quite an ally.

My birthday is tomorrow. We're heading to the Florida Keys, I think Big Pine Key in particular. We're going with our friend Katie who is great. After that is on to plant a garden with my mom in her front yard, maybe visiting a Mountain Gardens intern on the way up to Joe's to drop off Mike's jewelry equipment and garden-sit for a week or two, go to Organic Grower's one-day school where Joe is teaching south of ASheville on March 8, maybe see Badger if he's still in Cincinnati on our way back to Illinois for a few weeks. And then back to Joe's in western North Carolina. Mike plans to build tensegrity structures using Buckminster Fuller's concepts and perhaps start an earthship foundation for a greenhouse/living quarters. I kind of want to take over the kitchen. :/ I can't wait to have very little power again and the built in exercise of mountain climbing the driveway.

Also, we went to see Susun Weed talk on Valentine's Day, and of course it was wonderful. She talked about the huge difference between men's and women's heart attcks and heart disease. She discussed the many benefits of chocolate like it's an anti-inflammatory, increases blood flow to brain (helps women think), regulates blood pressure, controls heart disease, is Packed with antioxidants that fight free radicals that we get from eating seed oils (vegetable oil, soybean oil, flax seed oil) and processed foods (cereal, milk, veggie burgers, cheese, soda, ketchup, bread, etc), and due to its anti-inflammatory nature allows the parts of us that are supposed to become inflamed to more easily become engorged. :) I am a food advertiser today. I wish I were getting paid in food.

Went yesterday to meet my almost 90 year old great aunt on my dad's dad's side down in Sarasota, south of Tampa. She loves fruit trees and gardening. She has a starfruit tree, two avocados, two tangerine,s two grapefruits, a few oranges, a ponderosa lemon, a smaller variety of lemon, and her front fence is covered in jasmine. She's near blind, but gets around just fine, gardening and raking and hauling bags most days. She has arthritis in her thumb sometimes. We also visited the Ringling Estate where we visited the Circus Museum and his lavish estate. My dad's dad's dad was the Ringling's yacht captain until the boat was wrecked in the Gulf of Mexico. Afterward he was made the groundskeeper for the 60+ acre estate. After Ringling died, the family (including my aunt Alta and grandpa Nick), lived on the estate during the depression while the house was in litigation. Ringling died penniless, and it's pretty easy to see why when walking through the HUGE art museum on the property with famous painter's names everywhere and an entire room devoted to pottery and statues from 500BC Cyprus. Apparently what's on display is only a third of his collection. This is where my dad played as a child. Ringling gave my great grandpa two buildings, one a four apartment complex, and another wooden building. Grandpa just had to move them. My dad's parents lived in the complex after they were married. Most of this is new information for me. Life is so funny sometimes.

recent books: The Revolution Will Not be Microwaved, On The Banks of Plum Creek, How to Grow More Vegetables (John Jeavons), Craig gave us a copy of Wild Fermentation
recent foods: salad of first spring lettuce, radish sprouts and turnip sprouts in Citra, chickweed/ cleaver/ magenta lamb's quarters/ garlic chives pesto over pasta and steamed garden broccoli, tangerine juice!, watching my sister try to be patient as she waits for the curds to separate from the whey in her goat milk

The Black Earth

2008-02-01T21:36:00.000-05:00

Mike's birthday was the other day. He's 29, which my sister says is the return of Saturn to the place it was when you are born. Year of note. Year of re-direction? I made him a German chocolate cake, and it's good. For a second I thought it might be ridiculous to give Mike something he wouldn't be able to control himself around, but fuck. When else do you get to eat straight-up sugar, butter and chocolate? I stole him a pink candle from a partially opened package, and it was beautiful.

I have spent time thinking about pattern, a good deal. I find myself using the information I have access to as a sort of back-up for a time when the access is more limited. In effect, I have enforced a policy of intense learning to be done using my hands and brain and all the information I can get at the library, through netflix, through the internet. Information networks being patterned themselves into net-like webs, I find myself very integrated in these patterns. I'm delighted to read about old ways practiced over long, long periods of time. It's fascinating to discover a recognizable and repeated journey of woman and man in general. It's easier to imagine a soul journey, a destiny or purpose, or a conscious underlying pulse when you can see yourself as a person throughout history and time, connected to your mother and father and on backward. We share a very common thread with each other, and those threads manifest to me in discovering a common method of clothes washing by women before this most recent era of oil. That is deeply re-connective to me, and healing.

studying.

you cain't help but hear me

2008-01-19T11:14:00.000-05:00

books i've been reading:

laura ingalls wilder
journey of man (population genetics & human motion)
jonathon livingston seagull
the celestine prophecies
1909 children's guide to trees
diary of an early american boy
african-american southern gardens(& yards)
community gardening
nourishing traditions
past in perspective (early hominids at the moment)

ferments from past few weeks:

kimchee
cortido (w/pineapple vinegar)
mint chutney
pineapple chutney (rinds/core made vinegar)
apple cider vinegar
beet kvass
lacto-fermented ginger ale
ginger beer bug/ginger beer
& we used the whey from the farmer's market raw milk to make butter/buttermilk
mike makes loads of sourdough that is delicious
kombucha!

lists for my head to forget now.

farmer girl

2008-01-07T10:33:00.000-05:00

We watched the debate the other night, noted Kucinich's absence and Paul's small amount of speaking time. Particularly I noticed the lack of integrity many of the candidates seemed to display. That's as much as I want to write about that, except that we saw a Ron Paul blimp flying around Tampa yesterday. That was kinda neat. I respect him, at least.

Went to the Palm River Thai Buddhist wat yesterday for old Thai lady breakfast/lunch. They were out in droves doing their Sunday service for the temple, including selling locally grown Thai herbs and fruits. My sister bought she and I baby Kaffir lime trees. hurray! We had noodle soup, coconut milk and rice flour dumplings, thai iced tea and coffee, rice cookies (like fried crepes), and coconut dumplings filled with brown sugar. O, also fried bananas, sweet potatoes, and taro root. Saturday she took us to the botanical gardens in Largo, outside of St. Pete. We couldn't get to the historic village or the inside the studios or museum, but it was still wonderous! Tropical plants galore, fruit tree garden, alligator pond, etc. In the herb garden they were growing common herbs, mugwort, cinnamon trees and ayahuasca. It was an exciting visit for me, and I'm particularly excited to go back. It was part of my sister's free weekend plans for us. :)

We had an exciting few days on the grove with the freeze. The temps predicted fortunately were lower than it actually got, but the damage was done to a number of plants and trees, particularly the banana trees, papaya trees, the sweet potatoes, the baby seedlings, the fennel and the oregano bush. Mike and Craig covered the peppers and potatoes, they also laid down all the bamboo in the nursery and covered them with frost cloth while I went around covering all the baby avocado trees throughout the grove. Craig drained the hot water panel and cistern lines, and he got up every two hours on the night it got down in the low 20s to re-load the wood stove in the greenhouse where the jackfruit, cacao, pineapple, miracle fruit, adamoya, eggfruit, papaya, and strawberry guava reside. He also reloaded the wood stove inside where we were soundly sleeping through the cold. I am glad I'm not a naked tree when it's freezing outside. Craig made an attempt to pluck some fruit from the trees on the second day of freeze, but a lot is still on the trees. Some froze, but it's still edible for a while. If anything, the fruit won't last as long, so we won't be taking it to market as long. On another note, I found out the Food Not Bombs peeps have one meal before the market on Wednesdays, so that may be a lovely volunteering opportunity. I realized how much I love cooking for people, good food I feel good about, mostly because then I know they aren't eating corn syrup or MSG. It is, however, difficult to always enjoy cooking for different dietary restrictions. Sometimes that bugs me. But mostly I feel a sense of communion with others, a real feeling of community when sharing food. It is incredibly intimate and something that should be done frequently among friends and neighbors. It is the thing that sustains us, food and sharing. We should certainly pay more attention to our common needs of good land, clean water, clear air and food in particular.

Mike just told me they collect presidential shit. :/

Also, I read Farmer Boy this last week, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I love Ms Wilder, her straightforward interpretation of homesteading, farming, community and integrity. She gives explanations of family and community systems that are meant for young ears to understand, and certainly most of us have young ears these days. I found the book I was reading recently in the Little House series almost eerily connected to our situation. The folks are in northern New York, and the other books are in the northern midwest (Lakota territory!), and they dealt with freezes and inhospitable climates. While I'm thinking of creating life and community in the north, these books seem to me a godsend. Friends, read them so you will feel happier and more able when it comes to making things happen with the Lakota, if that is ever possible.

We make possibilities. We are creators.

feels kinda free

2007-12-15T10:40:00.000-05:00

kinda, yeah. mike is working with silver, and i am about to look up some books to see if they are perhaps selling for too cheap. i think i'll look up mycelium running, companion plants (the old one), culture and horticulture, and maybe some food not lawns for christmas gifts if for some reason there is a crazy outlet store for chelsea green online.

i'm nursing a sore taste bud, so i have been taking it easy on the tangerines, but it is hard. that is the toughest thing i'm working with right now. they are so orange! o, this is what i've been doing the last few days- there is a famous local pizza place in gainesville called satchel's pizza, and satchel lived on this grove for years in his treehouse. the remains of his home are still on the back of the property (or the side), along with another house built back there. mike and i have been battling vines first to find the tiny citrus tree in front of the supposed pile of rubbish that was the tree house. when we found that tree, two large piles of vines later, we continued pulling vines from the pile, which cannot be left out as it was like unearthing an archaeological site. mike continued pulling vines from the actual pile when we got to it, and i pulled apart some roofing tin from old boards and pulled vines and yanked out refuse and old boards from the pile, also continuing to cut paths back into the pile through young palms, spiders and mosquitoes. our concept is to uncover everything, get it finished pulled apart, salvage what is salvageable, not get bit by tarantulas, sweep off the porch that is down there, and build a platform with mosquito net and a slanted tin roof that utilizes some of the easier sustainable technology like catching the rainwater off the roof filtered through a sand filter, using a cool box that hangs in a tree, rocket stoves in an outdoor kitchen situation, and the basics like composting (organic matter/poop) and re-using our water (graywater). we got the hands, the motivation and the support for this project, so i'm pretty excited about it.

yet again we are tied to pizza.

we've also planted up the newly reclaimed part of the garden in chinese cabbage, beets, kohlrabi, purslane, cilantro, mizuna, arugula, lettuces, indian lettuce, and sugar snap peas, and there are still kale, turnips and flax to be planted! also the market was this wednesday, and we went with craig's friend, robin, and robin's son, heartbaby, to sell the tangerines we picked earlier in the day. robin and his wife used to live here on the grove before craig, with oliver. we sold out in two hours! everyone was like, "let me get 6," then trying the tangerines on the table and asking for more. they were confused which were the tangelos and which were the tangerines. these tangs is so super sweet! after the market, we went to a potluck with lots of happy, healthy, kind people, generally interested in the same sort of things as far as sustainability (we saw at least half of them at the market). we had raw wedding cake to celebrate a new couple, a drum/guitar/singing circle around the fire, the kids were swinging and throwing snowballs (from an ice maker) at pictures of santa and frosty the snowman. and, as always, plenty of good conversation (including the topic of loving poop).

things are good in our tent. it's still pretty warm. the papaya are great, so are the bananas. hope to see and hear from everyone soon. there's plenty of room down south for happy visitors!

new beginnings in blogtastics.

2007-12-09T00:30:00.000-05:00

we're living in this tent, now, in citra FL on a tangerine/permaculture orchard. craig is very into researching alternative technologies and small scale, sustainable practices. he has a large green house made from salvaged materials for tropical trees. we put in a wood stove the other day. it looks great. mike built a masonry wall on two sides that is beautiful, and the stove pipe loops around to create more radiant heat inside the greenhouse before it heads outside through the tin roofing material we used around the exit. also, we have cleared a bit of ground for planting and for reclaiming the fire pit. haven't done much more, yet, but we've only been there a week. it's quite enjoyable, on solar power, but not using much. however, there is a tv with dvd player and satellite radio. there's a permaculture group that gets together for work parties every two weeks, and that's neat, too. one day we spent cleaning bee boxes for that. nice folks.

florida is hot. it was 80 in st petersburg today, where we're visiting my sister. it takes some adjusting to get used to hot days in winter. i'm so happy to have the light and warmth. it's like something i'd forgotten but which has flooded me with good feelings. we went to the dali museum today, and that was incredible. such a wonderful conceptual artist on top of being a master painter. one almost brought me to tears, with two stone figures, like giant ruins from an old city in the shape of these figures from angelus by some guy i don't know. there were these two tiny figures at the bottom of the painting pointing up at them. just moved me.

more to come, my dear loved ones.

old blog at myspace on /nyotok. no more updating, though. some good links, however.
photos at flickr.com