An iPhone Analogy to Hester Prynne's Self-imposed Isolation. Maybe.

I woke up alone this morning. 
Unable to roll left for fear of a growling small cat, or roll right for fear of a playful fully-clawed big cat.  The cats are not company, they are Bed Wedges, so they can herd me to their food dishes as soon as possible after dawn.

 So, I was alone.

No smart phone within reach.
No smart phone in the house.
No Smart Phone.

No instant time check available. No check for messages, texts, calls.  No check for weather (I was forced to open the door in my pajamas and step outside).  No Pandora to cosy up to and grease the path to consciousness.

Alone, alone, alone.

My phone was simply nowhere to be found last night.  Probably dead.  Not in bag, pocket, car.  Possibly left at a Convention Center where 5,000+ Democrats had convened for nearly 12 hours yesterday.  I had no way to call and find out.  And dreaded the answer. Something to ponder as the gray day flooded the bed full of cat.

Feeling my mental way blindly through the first waking minutes, I fed cats, exposed my pajamas to the neighbors, forewent the radio news (way too early to endure The Trump Show).  I considered FB messaging a few people to let them know I was alive, then re-considered.  That was their job.  If I was dead, it would not be my problem.  In the event that my heart gives out or a murderer makes it past the cats and a baseball bat, I certainly would not be hitting 911 for a quick fix--which is one of my ongoing Ms. Manners dilemmas anyway ("When to call for Emergency Responders?").  Nope, today if everything mine goes south, I'll be content to decompose a few days.  Technology will not be complicit to a clean, mess-less exit on my behalf.  My feeling is that Death Is Better Off Without Technology. 

Slowly coming to terms with this smartphone absence in the ether, I experienced a kind of buoyancy.  Specifically: my little ship of state was, suddenly, not tied up at any dock.  Cast my brain to the wind, like. All the things I planned to worry about today are still on the agenda, but felt somehow different.  No one could call to see what I was up to, which eliminated obligatory Defense of Intended Actions.  Which gets to be a burden, because its hard enough to Just Go Do Something without explaining or justifying it.  With the effortless contact of an iPhone, anyone can demand anything with minimal effort.  But  sans-phone, no texts to remind me that at the Health Food Store if I spent $50 I could get 10% off of supplements I will never ever purchase.  No reminders that there were a couple of birthdays, events, appointments that I as a proud functioning member of Elite Smartphone Users must be aware of.   Being not-hooked-into my phone partially delivers me from being held socially accountable.

It's disorienting, as we all know.

But as wonder in the Brave (Old) (Pre-Smartphone) World swelled in me, I heard the empty sound of my broken doorbell not-working.  I opened the door to my phone, in the apologetic hands of a passenger in my car to the convention.  She was the agent of its disappearance, and before the noon hour she realized it wasn't her phone, and I was restored to the alternate iPhone universe.

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, indeed. 

How far down the "Luddite" path is realistic?  Back to exclusive land-line phone use?
Little breaks in reality become more frequent with age.  Waking up alone aka without-instant validation/reality-as-data is different, not bad.  Self-validation is one of those things I feel better with in my pocket, but if it has a cracked case, better off finding alternate sources, Mom would say.  Never.

1.  Ernest Hemingway, misogynist royale, "The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber" 1936?  A coward goes hunting in Africa with manly EH guide.  Francis' beautiful ball-cutting wife (in EH stories it's a beautiful-women job) was implicit in Francis' offing of himself after he attained courage on the shoot.  He enjoyed his courage for a very short time.  Like, hours.
2.  I know that a list of adjectives is a prescribed place to insert commas.  I just like to not use them.  (You know who you are)
3.  I love hyphenated words.  I love German words that take up whole sentences, and aspire to move English in that direction with the gentle nudge of hyphens.  Thank you for participating in this project.

Small things can spark a war.

After a cursory Saturday visit to the gym, my friend and I get down to breakfast at the nearby diner. This is a nice ritual of friendship, practiced over years.  We know the waitstaff, they know us.  This last visit, however, instead of my usual quiet reserved self, I Jekyl-Hyde-d the waiter.  I spoke out, I engaged, stepped outside the friendly social parameters of waiter/ waitee.  I revealed my parentage: Mom.  She was probably Yahweh in another life, but regardless, she retained the Right to Be Righteous in her last one.  Mom always knew what was right, and never ever hesitated to reveal that information.  She was a bonafide Moral Compass. 

So, this biblical DNA came home to roost as we sat in the nice diner having mediocre good crappy breakfast grease.  I saw plastic, and I simultaneously Saw Red.   I can't believe the things that come out of my mouth when it comes to plastic (and politics).  But having in my head the prediction that, by 2050,  half of everything in the ocean would be plastic, some synapses started snapping somewhere inside.  All the warning survival instincts in my bloodlines started shouting alarms.  My heart hurts for the planet, for the people, for the resources.  My blood rushed at that moment, and I became a spokesperson.  I started in on The Plastic at our table.  My friend leaned back in her seat to be further from me, I thought, but she did not tell me to clam up, and I think she's really in agreement. 

Most people are becoming very aware of the rape and pillage of the environment--mostly by technology, mostly by the U.S. and China, and mostly by human-induced climate change.  Plastic has its own horror stories.  Walk into ANY store in the U.S., and not only do you see plastic items for sale everywhere you look, but everything is encased in plastic.  Everything is disposable. There are mountains of it, buried in the oceans and under the earth.  AND NONE OF IT HAS GONE AWAY SINCE IT WAS DUMPED THERE. 

All the debris currently clogging the waters of the planet threatens the life of the increasingly-stressed ocean life, from corals to whales.  And increasingly, as fish become harmed, overharvested, and reproduce less, this means less food in the chain for us top-feeders.  As well as heartbreaking loss of fellow live creatures to keep the balance of life on the planet.  Creative minds have found ways to use plastic, recycle it, re-use or reconstruct it.  But the re-use's still get tossed someday. 

Hope, however, always exists, in some really unexpected places: Some young man in Denmark has invented a sweep that might be the answer to clean up the ocean (1).   And some researchers have found that an existing type of mealworm actually breaks down plastic so it isn't even plastic anymore!(2)  Not even tiny little life-threatening microbeads remain as plastic once these mealworms eat it. AND, and the mealworms are still able to reproduce on this diet. You have to wonder if evolution provided this escape hatch for the planet, eons ago, in a kind of time loop.  I truly hope so, because that means there might be more in the arsenal than we know of at this point. 

So when the waiter in the diner handed me a straw, I said, "I don't believe in using straws, because they are a huge contributor to landfill and environmental pollution."  He looked at me a second, processing the shift in his routine, and shrugged.

"Okay, " he said, and stuck it back in his pocket.

I said, " You could just eliminate straws altogether and let people drink out of glasses."  I demonstrated doing just that.  He shrugged again and shifted his feet.  He was filling in for a waitress and wanted to get back to important stuff as soon as possible. 

I pointed at the little bowl of plastic-packaged creamers and jelly, and said, " Those are plastic. You could use little metal or china creamers, and jelly pots."

He sighed and said, " Yeah, I don't make the decisions, you'd have to talk to my Dad."
I said, "You're right.  I will write up a letter and bring it next time.  But you get an opinion, too."
He smiled and said his favorite word, "Yeah."  He took our order to the cook. 

No one was saved, but I realized I could do much better than harass the waitstaff.  Why can't socially conscious restaurants--and there are many--share plastic-free business savvy? Myself,  I'm going to make up little cards encouraging restaurants I eat at, and patrons in the restaurant, to go for LOW PLASTIC.  There are a lot of ways to do this, and some are very simple.  One of my favorite restaurants uses cardboard take-out boxes instead of evil Styrofoam (if you don't bring your own container, which is a doable option.  Or just order less food, because the global food shortage is going to kick in one of these days.) Most people would really LIKE to change their plastic habits, but it is so engrained that we don't know how.  We will need to start a grassroots movement, a ripple effect, of information.  We can start by Just Saying NO to Plastic.  Grassroots works. All we have to do is START.

And there's the DNA thing.  Survival instinct. Dad was a Marine in WW2.  Trauma to the parent resurfaces in the child. Fighting for the planet is an evolutionary battle, it requires sacrifice and changes that we won't want to make. Mom's morals, Dad's actions.  All our ancestors fought, and handed us the evolutionary skills to survive. We have racial memory.  We have sophisticated and technological survival resources.  We are recognizing the issues.

We can fight to reduce the use and acceptability of all forms of plastic.  Hit on the waitstaff at diners.  Set an example by doing.  Practice plastic-free living (3).  Fight in the diners, fight in the streets, fight on the internet (4) .

We Can Do It.

1. Mealworms may help reduce plastic waste: 
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/30/us/styrofoam-eating-mealworms-plastic-waste/index.html
2. Teen Invents Ocean Clean-Up: 
http://www.hngn.com/articles/11969/20130909/teen-invents-ocean-clean-up-device-remove-1-3-plastic.htm
3. My Plastic Free Life --a terrific wonderful blog!!  And there are other resources on living plastic-free.    http://myplasticfreelife.com/
4.  Paraphrasing the probably most famous  and inspirational fight speech EVER,  Winston Churchill's call to Britain in WW2: 
 http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/97957-we-shall-go-on-to-the-end-we-shall-fight

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-CHANges

I just read an article suggesting that: to embrace cold weather is to love cold weather.  That's what people reportedly do in the upper reaches of Norway--Tromso to be specific--where the sun barely glimmers from November through February. In chilly, sun-filtered Michigan, interesting to think of a frozen town in far-off, exotic Tromso, Norway.  There, in a twilight kind of sky, heavily-bundled persons ski out windows, drink hot cocoa, and do snuggly things under furs.  All very communal and friendly (1).

Novembers have always been dear to my heart.  Today, that's eating beef kidney stew, surfing the Net, and swilling hot, black tea. But November has taken on added meaning for me, the last couple years.  Now, it's also a harbinger of Winter as a Suck-The-Life-From-Old-People change. Getting older changes things.  Things like my body, specifically. Those changes don't ease in, either.  Last November, I watched my face and skin dry out in a matter of a few days when temperatures plunged and humidity disappeared.  And there are the aches and twinges, building up.  It has dawned on me that those aches and twinges are not going away.   Ergo arthritis is a permanent part of my life.  And here it is, November again.  That means more wrinkles and stiff joints.  Which builds character.

I read about the Happy Norwegians and wonder about their arthritis status in the cold months.  The study about Tromso did not go there.  So I Google "international arthritis rates " and find this interesting chart, which I can't figure out.  But it clearly shows that all countries will give you arthritis (2)

Apparently, arthritis thrives everywhere on the planet, whether or not the weather is cold.  Moving to Australia might or might not make a difference, according to the chart which I can't read.  Possibly people in Australia are physically active enough to keep arthritis at bay, but not enough to damage joints. It's hard to tell.  If you figure it out, let me know.

I do herbs, stretch, walk around town, do some gym. Every effort helps.  Movement is life, they say, and I believe it. But those things won't stop changes, just ease them.  Maybe without changes, we'd all lose interest.

I visualize ageing people in Tromso, scooting out snow-bound windows on sled or skis.  With hot grogg in one hand.  I'll adopt Tromso's plan and slide into changes.  Easier on the joints.

1. http://www.fastcompany.com/3052970/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/the-norwegian-secret-to-enjoying-a-long-winter
2. http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/a/arthritis/stats-country.htm

Cultural Re-Programming is a Large Task, Which Requires Research

Such a day. Only 11:30 a.m. and already I've saved bits of The World. Saving The World has to be done in bits, it's the only way.  Unless you surpass Moses, who could only face down the immense Glory of God in a burning bush metaphor. Too much info burns out the circuits.  Fortunately, I'm armed in my overwhelming mission with Mom's certainty that she was Always Right, and with Dad's ability to sit at the kitchen table and talk to himself.  We all have unique superpowers.  The laptop is a requisite weapon, the Internet my supernatural helper, and a sense of humor essential. 

I've put in my 2 bits today, via Facebook's Baker's Creek Heirloom Seeds blog (1), against the pending threat of unlabeled Genetically Modified foods. BCHS is a radical group in the Ozarks of Missouri, which protects heirloom seeds and speaks out about food issues in the States. They posted this article about unlabeled GM food, which I found frightening enough to share with as many people as I can (2).

It's easy to attract angry people on FB blogs, by posting an opinion.  I've researched this.  Sometimes I think I shouldn't express an opinion on a public forum.  But public opinion tends to be expressed most vocally by radical minorities; a lot of moderates just don't speak up, perhaps knowing that eventually all issues fade into the background as new ones arise. I'm sure I've said a lot of stupider stuff when I was younger, myself, so I have a certain amount of sympathy for protestors and younger, inexperienced stupid people.  But I also feel that, like Mom, I have to set things straight.  Its my responsibility as an older, and formerly more stupid, person to perpetuate the species by helping them see things straight.  I am old enough to remember the thalidomide horror from the 50's (3), Agent Orange defoliant from Vietnam (supposed to be safe for people, huh?), and the recent (like today) FDA renewed, upgraded, warning that Ibuprofen and it's ilk can be fatal (4).It makes good sense,  if the Powers That Be screw up even once in a while on chemical malfunctions, to be skeptical of anything they say.  Lifting advice from an article which I read and then lost, Nature is a slow-moving force.  Give it a good 50 years of testing before messing with any tweaks of it.  In addition to the uncertainty of the source, type, and reliability of testing on GM foods (or any chemicals marketed to the public; like um Roundup, recently after MANY YEARS declared the murderer of Monarch Butterflies) a great many sources have also suggested that palms are being greased to deny and forbid GM labeling.  Being an American citizen, I believe these sources have a point.  Some companies are probably paying big bucks to get their GM food products sold.  Marketing did the incredibly unthinkable practice of fracking no good, because of all the places in Oklahoma and Texas where the ground is caving in and stuff. A great many people eyewitness that it is, in fact, a bad practice.  So GM companies say, " skip trying to convert the public, just vote against labeling foods GM or OR GM-free.  Let them eat it all, and don't tell them which it is."  I can only hope that there are some lawmakers who also have Mom's ability to be Always Right, and invoke it, soon.

What I have come to realize about Being Right and Saving the World is that it requires more than just eye-opening counter-information.  It requires the leadership abilities of Franklin Roosevelt, who talked the country into WW2 by using a fire hose metaphor.  It requires the otherworldly scientific ability of a Carl Sagan, with turtlenecks and galactic-sized facts. 

Most of all, it requires Herculean Cultural Re-Programming.  The ability to divert a couple rivers and clean out the Augean stables, in a manner of speaking (5).  We, the People of the U.S., tend to believe what our doctors tell us, what TV advertisements claim, what the FDA advises, and other things that do not come directly from Always Right sources who care for our physical well-being.  Its a joke that in the U.S. we have so many choices, so much available to us, that we can afford to make choices.  And we can make stupid choices and get away with them.  For a while, til they catch up.  As I argued with one FB blogger, giving GM food to starving people in other countries is a moot argument for not labeling GM food--starving people in other countries will take anything to not starve, even our crap.  Monsanto, or some other chemical company, should consider offering free birth control along with GM products, if they really want to help people.  Which they don't, they really want to make a profit.  Am I right?

So I have a lot more sympathy for Mom these days.  Being Always Right means swaying opinions, sorting out all kinds of screwed-up thinking, taking flak from dissenters.  Mom didn't worry about backing up Right with facts, however.  Her kids had to do what she told them, period. I on the other hand acquired a degree which compels me to at least make a passing effort to get some facts and line them up.  I am not keen on giving space to opposing opinions, however; that training fell on barren soil.  But here's where Dad genes come in:  I talk to myself a lot, chew things over as he put it, until the smoke clears and things come together.  Which I hope, with practice, will give me an FDR edge.

There are a lot of issues besides GM to re-program The World on.  The whole plastic, illusory lifestyle of the U.S. needs some shakedown.  What with growing conviction by even nay-sayers that the Earth is undergoing a 6th Mass Extinction, precipitated by humans (our era gets to be called the Anthropecene in honor of us fucking things up, almost exclusively), the Augean Stables of cultural programming needs to be cleaned up, fast.  I left my day job to save the planet, so I'll keep plugging away.  I'd appreciate suggestions, especially for useful public-swaying metaphors.  I'm just no poet. 

Here's a helpful assignment in the meantime:  Boycott individual Bottled Water Bottles. 
Next assignment:  Composting is fun and easy.

 
1.  Baker's Heirloom Seed Company.  Radical stuff on this blog, they get really aggressive about GMOs in particular.  It is fitting that they are headquartered in the Ozarks, which is as good a place as any to headquarter a Green Revolution and call down government stupidity on Food and Drugs. I follow them on Facebook, had some extended violent disagreements from people posting on their blog who( undoubtedly) work for Monsanto or it's subsidiaries, and feel that GMOs shouldn't be labeled.  So I had to block several of them from my FB, hopefully preventing future Monsanto-sponsored reprisals on GM-labeled supporters.  http://www.rareseeds.com/news/

2.  http://www.gmwatch.org/  July 20, 2015,  The top story, on glyphosphates, is scary enough, but if you're game read them all, and never never eat GM foods.  Knowingly.  Which might be tough if legislation is passed to forbid labeling in the U.S.   This makes me think of Aspartame, which is also really harmful to health and which other countries like Japan never took up with.  the U.S. embraces aspartame and now is hedging on its safety.  Sheesh, like imbibing huge amounts of any chemical is fine with sheep.

3. Thalidomide, and heroine Frances Oldham Kelsey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#United_States

4. AARP is good info.  Who knew Ibuprofen was bad for seniors?  I didn't.  http://blog.aarp.org/2015/07/20/new-painkiller-warning-what-does-it-mean-for-you/

5. Hercules and the 5th Labor http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/stables.html
 

Cheer Up, Stuff Happens

Last summer, a surprise plant popped up in the shady southwest corner of the yard, under the mulberry tree. The plant was about 8 inches tall, and bore small, pale, round, orange fruits inside a paper shell lantern.  I thought maybe it was deadly nightshade, which is deadly (2).  I was planning to look it up, when I saw it at a local farmer's market.  It was a ground cherry (1), which is a member of the nightshade family, but not deadly (be sure to know the difference before trying things out in your yard).  They taste like musky, light cherries.  I know that they are a wild edible, but I don't know how it got in my yard.  It could've come on the wind, in the feces of an animal, or laid dormant in the soil for decades, waiting for it's Moment to arrive.  A mystery to me, because I have no comprehension of the scope of the universe.  So I'll just defer to Jeff Goldblum's classic line about self-fertilizing Raptor eggs in Jurassic Park:  life finds a way.

Fascinating how flora just Shows Up. The first settlers to America knew well that Nature in their new domain had to be actively fought off, or It would win. A few centuries later, that landscape has been raped.  In fact all over the planet it seems like Earth has decidedly lost a few rounds in the Battle to Be.  But looks are deceptive.  There is The Obvious, and there is The Insidious.  American suburbanites, for example, obviously commandeer water and pesticides and wide open spaces, like there is no tomorrow and no competition. What is a raccoon or a honeybee or a fish or old-growth tree going to say about humans trashing prime real estate, really?  A manicured yard gives the impression that Man, not Nature, is in control; everything looks uniform, cookie-cutter, predictable, within boundaries, sterile.  

But this is a pathetic illusion.  Without constant intervention, Nature has her way, Nature is 'What Life on Earth Is."   Although territory is in dispute, control is not.  Climate Change will weigh in pretty heavily one day soon. But even on a smaller scale, Nature still--always--Shows Up. 

One terra-example of Nature takeover is ruins of ancient civilizations, absorbed into the physical strata.  A fine example in this century is the city of Detroit, where abandoned inner-city sites are everywhere.  These sites are becoming grown-over (check this out: http://dornob.com/houses-gone-wild-haunting-photos-of-abandoned-homes/).  But you don't have to be a devastated civilization to have a view of what we're dealing with in Nature.  A smaller example of Nature Showing Up is in my tiny suburban yard, where "in control" is not practiced, and Nature stuff happens.

In addition to the visiting ground cherries, I was surprised to find a couple of milkweed last year.  Another gift from the birds, or the wind, or who-knows.  Last year I found two milkweed plants;  this year, over a dozen and still counting. They must like it here! They seem to spread by root, and are growing under a domestic blackberry bush. In fact, that bush was a start given to me by Dad from his Southern Illinois farm;  it may well have brought the milkweed with it.  If so, it's been dormant for years. I will take a year to observe and accurately identify and learn about this little prize, but in the meantime, it's great news for neighborhood pollinators. It's also good  news for my growing abundance of edible wild plants: http://foragersharvest.com/milkweed-a-truly-remarkable-wild-vegetable/

So, its hard to see Nature take the big hits: sprouting subdivisions; water orgies in desert lands that were never designed for water orgies; decimation of small animal populations that are displaced by human activity; melting ice caps.  But it is comforting to see small things that persist in Nature, despite human insult to the planet.  Nature is way older than humans, and has long-established methods. Many small things, someone said, make a difference.  Life goes on, stuff happens.
 


Scrappy little milkweeds that came from who-knows-where,
and have made themselves at home in the garden. I'm easily excited about
visiting plants, but these will be great for pollinators and,
when I have it figured out, for food. 

(1) Ground cherries:  edible members of the nightshade family (which includes tomatoes!)
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=ground%20cherries&qs=n&form=QBIR&pq=ground%20cherries&sc=8-15&sp=-1&sk=

(2) Deadly nightshade pictures:  (DONT eat these) http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=deadly+nightshade+picture&qpvt=deadly+nightshade+picture&qpvt=deadly+nightshade+picture&FORM=IGRE

"Son Mat" Says It All. Or Quite a Lot.

Son mat  projects in progress:  sauerkraut, mead.

I get crazy about food preparation. "Healing-and-spiritual nutrition" takes over my brain. My kids joke about the overkill of food when they visit.  This form of maternal/paternal food-crazy is widespread, through families and cultures. Food is maybe its own religion. Food is Love, especially when prepared by the hands of those who love us.  Hence the title of this post:

Son mat:  the taste of hands. 

Son mat is a Korean phrase I borrowed from an article about kimchi (1).   My paraphrased definition, from the excerpt below, is: the physical touching and preparation of food imparts a change in that food, and to our bodies and  minds. Like anything in Nature, this change occurs over time.

My family raised, foraged, preserved, cooked food on a 75-acre farm. We were surrounded by food in its native state: cows, pigs, chickens, truck garden, wild berries--a typical rural connection. Typical urban food connection, though, is the most common food experience in the U.S. today: processed, fast-food, ready-made.  Most people eat out frequently; and as my friend the Detroit food inspector assures me, restaurants are dirty places.  Food preparation, at home, from ground-up is time-consuming, and dirty.  When it comes to growing, harvesting, and killing food, most people prefer to sanitize the connection: "if I don't see it, it doesn't happen."  So, folks in the U.S. today don't toss food scraps to the pig whose bacon they eat in restaurants.  Most don't weed, or water, or oversee the life-and-death of lettuce from the store.  Our urban food supply is not grown hands-on, nor by people we know. Sometimes not by people, at all. Does a physical connection make a difference in the healthful-ness of our food? 

Many in the U.S. are thinking, or remembering, "yes."  Many other cultures have never left that connection.  (In defense of the U.S., we are a very young culture, and going through adolescence is not easy. If we don't kill ourselves and the rest of the planet, we'll do great things.)

As a result, many people are practicing a revival of hands-on food.  A generation of baby-boomers "left the farm," and the next generation is looking to recover that connection. New words are surfacing to describe this revival, a sure-fire sign of cultural change.  They reference the old American habit of going off West to start a new life: urban homesteading, survival homesteading, off-the-grid.  The shared consciousness of Internet fires the food Can-Do and DIY spirit.  So does growing recognition of our eco-system's fragility.  This revival includes personalizing food.  Urbanites are growing their own, eating local and in-season, preserving food.  Borrowing a term from Buddhism:  mindfulness.  Be aware of what goes in our body. Screw fast-food thinking.

 I'm taking the fermented route to food-as-religion, and resurrecting Mom's 10-gallon sauerkraut crock.  The plan is to fill it with pickles from the garden, and watch them ferment throughout the winter months.  That's the plan.  I shared the plan with my backyard neighbor, suggesting that if she were up for it, we could share our common chain-link fence to great advantage by planting pickles on either side of it.  By uniting resources, I explained, we'd be in better shape for the Apocalypse.  She looked up at the sky and casually asked,"When is this Apocalypse?"  I answered that it would be when the Zombies come.  Of course.

I'm also harnessing wild yeast for sourdough starter, none of that sissy store-bought stuff for this survivalist homesteader. ( I read in  my new bible, "The Art of Fermenting" by Sandoor Katz, that shared sourdough starter takes on the name of whoever shares it. I thereby name mine:  Patsy Cline.)  And I'm working on  mead, because  the world needs hands-on alcoholic beverages. I love my food from the moment of it's birth.  And now my obsession has a great personal motto: son mat.  (I will (hand) make a T-shirt with my motto.)

Here is an excerpt from the kimchi article mentioned above:

" But Korean's affinity for kimchi goes deeper than just a tasty pile of cabbage.  Kimchi-making is traditionally a woman's job in Korea, where recipes are passed down from generations.  Most people have fierce pride in their mother's kimchi; it is intimately connected to the maker as she handcrafts batches, and it is thought that her hands help impart that perfect taste.  In describing flavors of kimchi, many talk about son mat, literally translated as "the taste of hands."  I vividly remember my mother soaking her hands --flushed and swollen from touching the salt and chilies--in a milk bath after spending an entire day making kimchi. . . . I came to believe that a combination of the cold weather, my grandmother's chilly kitchen, the heat of the chili, the stink of the garlic, and the brininess of the salt penetrated my mother's hands and released her son mat into the kimchi."  (1)

If God is in the details, as they say, surely hands-on food is as good a place as any to find Her. Who doesn't want to leave a little of themselves in those we love?  Passing on the taste of our body, feeding yeast and bacteria to live on in our descendants. The definition of "re-incarnation " keeps broadening (2).


1.  Kim, Chi-Hoon.  "From Kim-chi to Infinity."  Hyphen;  www.hyphenmagazine.com
     PBS site re-posted by Sandoor Katz on Facebook, 4/11/15.
2. This blog post is on the verge of proclaiming bacteria my take on re-incarnation.  For my take       on  DNA as re-incarnation, check out my blog post 10/14/14:  "Conversation on the Afterlife, Part 1:



 

Great Balls of Joy?

I rolled out of bed this morning at the behest of two cats, performed feeding acts and minimal ablutions, and transported oats and tea and notebook up to the writing nook.   The writing nook is a ritual, which gives me a nice, warm, flicker of joy around the edges.  Yay, Joy!  Happy to see you there, buddy.

Being a professional worrier, though, I worry that "joy" could become a victim of my personal ageing process.  Losing vision, loved ones, youthful vigor and strength, and things yet un-lost is a sure-fire Joy douser, but I keep stoking that fire.  Ageing is loss, joy is survival. 

I recently quit a full-time job, and I need to shift gears into other fulfilling work.  I need to justify, to myself, the validity of those alternate pursuits.  Sometimes I feel guilty about being an introverted researcher of mundane proportions by day, instead of building a paycheck and being respectably middle-class.  But I'm giving it over.  Living joyfully is an art.  It requires fuel to feed the fire.  I collect, by bits, fuel for the pursuit and maintenance of joy.

In front of me,Howard Thurman advises: "Don't ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you

come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."  Howard, I'm lookin' at you, right here in front of my word-joy maker.

In my head, Kathy Mattea tells the story of a retired trucker and his philosophy:"With pieces of the old dream/ they're gonna light a new flame,/  doing what they please, leaving every other reason behind."  (2)  Kathy, I'm singing your song, and doing what I please.

My Tiny Garden fires me up .  Everybody I know is forced to view baby pictures of Kentucky Wonder pole beans, artisan gourds, and mygodyes! the grape vines that inspire pest research, home canning, pruning methods,and,especially, contemplative reclining-under.  Kitchen Garden fuels preventative medicine research. Research fuels me.

Visiting my son recently, I woke up to a softly turning doorknob and a smiling 4-year-old in my face.  She whispered, "Damma, get up. You have to look out the window. The sun is awake." Then she asked to listen to my heart.  Then I listened to hers.  Her Dad recently explained hearts send food all over our body. She will listen to anybody's heart at the drop of a hat.  Hearts pump joy, too, I will tell her.

With encouragement, cat or kid, I check the sun every morning.  I gather fuel and light the fires.  "Go joyful into that good night," eh Dylan Thomas.




1. Yep, I'm a licensed Linguist and writing teacher and I spell "grandaughter" with one "d" because I wage personal battle against all kinds of stuff including redundant and non-represational spelling and grammar.  Don't think that Spell-Check encourages that sort of thing, either, I have to fight back against it.  I also take license with prescribed research writing reference protocol, because I forget what element comes when, despite having taught it for years.  As I tell English Second Language students:  first, just be understood.  My passionate observations of Grammar--including the joy/job of visually landscaping writing--require a future post. 

2. Mattea, Kathy.  "Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses.
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ElCpHuiWkA
 

The Conundrum of Cats; Part One

(Due to downing a few cups of real coffee in the last 2 hours, and in keeping with the nature of the topic, this post will not hold to any point, but be stuffed with adjectives, side trips and hyper phrases.  Maybe Mystery.)

This past summer, my new neighbors 2 doors north of me moved in to their new and small abode.  I said hello in passing, and in that and every following brief encounter She has somehow managed to squeeze in the sentence "It's small, but we really loved the backyard!" (referring to their new house).  This suggests to me, as a repeated anomaly in the landscape of Her conversation, that she suffers from Buyers Remorse and wishes that They hadn't purchased such a small house. 

Since They did buy such a small house, however, Chaos took over and things happen relatively.  They got rid of possessions, for one thing.  One day as my new front porch was being created, I looked north up my street, and observed Him carrying out some quite nice looking furniture to sit at the curb.  I'm used to seeing things set out at the curb, but not usually of the caliber this looked to be from a distance of two houses.  So I walked not ran over to the nice young newlywed, and asked, "Are you getting rid of this?"  This being two nice contemporary like-new armchairs with matching ottoman.  Just what I was looking for, if the price was right.

But first I did re-introduce myself, ask how things were going.  THEN I asked if They were getting rid of the chairs.  He said, "Yes, we don't have room."  So I cautiously said Oh if you're getting rid of them, I might take them.  And he said with enthusiasm Oh sure!  That's fine!  Then we both walked off, he to get rid of more things and me to ponder if this was for real.  I didn't think about it too long, though, because there was a good chance that the alluring trio at the curb would attract the attention of others at any moment. 

In my house--attendant on: school being out for the summer, on being stuck with his dad who was among those working on my porch, and also on his unexpected skill and interest in calming and entertaining my 9 month old grandson--was  Eddie.  Eddie is larger than the average teenaged male, and capable of carrying large furniture.  So Eddie and I did a quick turnaround after the situation was explained and he said  Sure.  We trooped down to the new neighbors, trying not to attract attention, and divvied up the burdens.  Within a few minutes I had a lovely new living room re-décor for FREE.

I thought Wow, karma and the universe and good luck, bite me!  And things went on in the way of things. 

A few  days later, the new neighbors were putting out a LOT of things on their driveway.  Since I felt like family, having inherited some furniture from them, I strolled down to check out the new development.  A sense of unease grew as I saw prices stuck to the possessions.  My synapses were connecting "getting rid of things" + "garage sale"+ "curious disposal of high quality furniture for free by clueless husband" + "young wife's mom now involved."  Since I have a Masters in Linguistics, I added all those up very quickly in my short journey.

Although I add quickly, I stumble with feeling entitled.  So instead of playing the dumb card, I said Hi, I'm your neighbor down the street right there with the new porch.  I took the chairs your husband set out the other day.

Mom lit up (too brightly, I later thought) and said to her daughter the New Neighbor, Oh!  This is your neighbor who took the chairs!  How Nice!  And the feeling grew within me that Mom would have sliced off the New Neighbor's Husbands head if the past could have been rehashed before he gave away some very nice brand name furniture prior to a fund-raising garage sale.  But I smiled and nodded.  The New Neighbor wasn't very good at picking up quickly and without rancor, so she looked off into the middle of the street and said Oh, right!  then after a moment of silence, "and here's the custom-made slipcovers, in this box!  They're in the yard sale!"  So Mom and NN look happily at the box full of beige-y cloth with ties and elastic.  I put on a look of great excitement and discovery and say Wow!  how much are you asking?  And NN says, now gazing at the box, ")h, $10.  Each."  and they both smiled and looked pleased.  So they weren't all that fast on their feet, either, or else they counted on guilt to make itself manifest to me.

Guilt did.  I said "Oh I'll just run to the bank and get some cash and be right back!" because I hardly ever carry cash, lest I get suckered into garage sale materialism when I'm wandering around in the summer.  They nodded and smiled brightly and I ran to get my car keys and go to the bank, where I withdrew $60.  I went immediately back to the New Neighbors and made happy with the custom made slipcovers, and said So $20 each, that's $60?  And NN smiled and nodded, still not meeting my eyes or acknowledging my slipped-in price-increase to compensate for my getting something free that maybe she hadn't wanted to be quite so free.  So the transaction was made and we parted to meet some other day, I carrying a mound of beige cloth, she tucking some absolution for her very cute but blonde husbands mis-cue into the garage sale money box.

After several tutorial-practices, over a period of weeks, I was able to get the pricey slipcovers on all the nice free furniture in a pretty presentable fashion.  Slipcovers are not easy.  The chairs and slipcovers have been comfortable and praised into the middle of winter, now.  Friends sit in them, they look well with Dad's old magazine table, the Ikea contemporary-print fabric worked up swimmingly into drapes next to them, and the tiny-house living room looks positively upgraded because of them.  Ricky and Kiki the cats love their plush back-cushions to drowse on.  Ricky likes to sneak up under the slipcovers behind, and sharpen his claws.  He has been discouraged from doing that, but Ricky is only loveable and not very attentive to instructions.  Kiki likes to stay away from Ricky when possible.

The slipcovers of course come off for holidays, and for company except grandchildren.  Over Christmas and New Years, in fact, they were left off for a couple weeks.  I was working up to putting the slipcovers on, just yesterday in fact putting the basket full of beige and formed cloth on the ottoman, to wrestle onto the chairs bright and early this morning.  And as this morning broke cold and clear, after tenderly feeding Ricky and Kiki their alternative-breakfast treat, I went to open THEIR living room windows to facilitate their observation of the bird feeder and birds on the new front porch.

My psychic Master's Degree synapses popped a little when I saw a large dark spot in the middle of one of the chairs, as I crossed the darkened room to open up the blinds.  Since my cataract surgery, I don't distinguish light/dark too well, so I had to look closely to confirm that a cat had definitely deposited something on the nice and un-slipclothed chair nearest the window.  Smack in the middle of the seat.  It was not the usual occasional barf deposit, either, to my surprise, but a still-warm poo. 

I cleaned up the crap, muttering under my breath but quietly so as not to alert the culprit, whichever one it was.  I calmly picked up Kiki and put her on the cleaned spot, to watch her reaction.  She growled, which is usual, and after a quick glance in the general direction of The Spot, jumped down and ran out of the room.  Aha, I thought, Guilty.  But to be fair I picked up Ricky and placed him by the spot.  He looked interested and took a few deep sniffs, and eventually had to be forcibly removed because he was too interested and it was still damp from cleaning.

Did Kiki take off because of guilt or because of disgust for Ricky's poo?  Was Ricky interested because it was Kiki's poo or because he's not attentive and forgot it was his own?  Occam's razor?  Damocles' sword?  Who givesashit?

So I am stuck with the perennial problem of those who live with cats:  how to figure them.  Despite books which probably exist and explain how to figure cats out....is that like work?.  I prefer them
enigmatic and unfathomable.  Which leaves unanswered the question "Who pooed on the nice free armchair without the slipcover on?"  And leads to the thought that some things in life need to have mystery.  Mystery is as good as a euphemism as any for a great many unexplained things that just wear you out tracking them down, anyway.  I'm betting the New Neighbors chalked up their old/my new living room set to Mystery.  I hope so.

 

How to Combat Cultural Programming, Part .5

A few weeks ago, I  quit my latest job.  My friends keep saying, "Oh you retired, how nice."  I didn't retire, I quit my latest job.  My job history is all about short-term, part-time, flexible-hour jobs (and low-paying and benefit-barren, but there is always a balance isn't there).  Currently, I have shifted my powerful focus to matters other than earning small paychecks and studying administrative frictions. Like learning to: play open G tuning on guitar, Bobby McGee on piano, making grape jelly, chicken and dumplings, etc. etc.  These are skills that will benefit the community when the Climate Apocalypse happens.  They also contradict take-out food, canned music, cultural programming etc.

A big focus of my new-formed down-time is spent getting my house in order (a personal favorite Jungian metaphor).  My house is tiny.  I had a tiny house before it became a national movement (1), in an effort to live cheap, keep possessions to a minimum (no storage space!), and be like Thoreau or the Dalai Lama.  Even living minimally, there is a LOT of stuff around here, and yes some of it is pure-dee junk (2).  It requires thoughtfulness to know what is needed and what is wanted, and how those sometimes combine.  Thoughtfulness is another project I am working on in my not-retirement. The cultural programming of More Is Better is being fought on the beaches and the streets at 725 Irvin.

Within my tiny house, I strive for the idea that Everything Counts. Or it's outta here. This dovetails with the habits of old people to treat everything in their life as momentous and important.  Take my Mom as a perfect example of this phenomenon.  When moving from her home of 60 years to a senior condo, she literally snatched an empty, blank envelope from my hand as I was in the act of tossing it.

"I might need that,"  she said.

This was an extreme act of respecting possessions.  But I can see it happening.

Everything, since my recent abandonment of hourly wages and manufactured deadlines, has shifted into sharper focus.  It's nice.  For example, I'm getting the left-hand notes on the piano.  The mysterious science of sealing jelly jars in a water bath has been revealed. My tiny kitchen is becoming more efficient (slowly), the tiny fridge is filled more leanly, the tiny tiny bathroom is staying cleaner longer. What Is Important seems more noticeable. And on a second visit to the tiny john today, I noted that the toilet had not yet been flushed.  I saved 6 gallons of water today.  So far. I'm respecting water possession.

And speaking of conserving water:

Matt Damon famously addressed the whole toilet flushing issue as he brings the weight of his stardom to water shortage issues around the world.  Its a small place to start, but that old "one small step for man" saying is still true.  His viral video for the toilet is at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQCqNop3CIg   His organization for affordable clean water is http://water.org/   He is so cool.

And speaking of toilets:  a current movement in the U.S. is to use human urine for nitrogen fertilizer, thereby eliminating need for personal use of chemically created fertilizers, and thereby reducing fertilizer pollutants to water.  This overuse of manufactured fertilizers includes Lake Eerie/ Toledo's recent infamous water catastrophe:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/caused-toledos-water-contamination/story?id=24825275
The culprit for the algae growth in Lake Eerie which contaminated the Toledo water system, forcing a shutdown, was excess manufactured fertilizer, dumped and run-off into the lake.  What to do to eliminate need for manufactured fertilizer with manufactured nitrogen?

 Start today.  Make your own.

My previous post (The Never-Ending Garden, #72)  mentioned the growing Pee-Cycle movement in the U.S.  I referenced a phrase, which the blogger from Northwest Edibles used:  we need to rethink cultural programming.  That's a great phrase.  The media in the U.S. avoids facing mortality, and doesn't talk about pee in an enlightened way. We are culturally programmed to follow this non-reference strategy. 

Here's an ice bucket challenge.  Culturally un-program yourself from something this year.  I've been working on downsizing living space and possessions for about a decade.  I'm now quite taken with the whole pee-cycle (and related issues of body, resources, and climate change). 

Take the Cultural Programming Challenges.
Downsize.
Don't flush the toilet.
Water the garden with your personal self (diluted if on the veggies, full strength on compost piles).


1.  Tiny House Movement is largely about small houses that can be moved around, and/or situated on small plots of land.  I like to think of it as a backlash to extremist housing developments and space/material squandering, too.  Americans have become fond of BIG houses, but I think we are re-thinking it, like so many other parts of our wild and crazy 300-year adolescence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_house_movement

2. Excellent information on using pee for fertilizer.  Check post listings. http://www.nwedible.com/

3. Ways to conserve water on a personal level:  http://eartheasy.com/live_water_saving.htm

The Never-Ending Garden

Ground Cherries--Upper left: 2 free-floating samples
from a Farmer's Market Vendor.  On the stem: some
from my backyard.
 

Late this summer, I found an unknown plant making
its home in the garden and in a shady, back corner of the yard occupied by dandelions, the mulberry tree, and
the hammock. 

At first, I thought it was Deadly Nightshade, which is poisonous (1).  Something you definitely DO NOT want to nibble.  After looking it up, I think there is Nightshade nestled in the yard, but in different places.  The stranger also looked a little like decorative plant Japanese Lanterns.  But it is, instead, a Ground Cherry, which I found out serendipitously.

A few weeks ago I went to the Northville Farmer's Market.  I stopped by an amazing booth, which specialized in native (or some might uncharitably say "weed") edible plants.  The vendors had dandelion leaves the size of swiss chard leaves; big honkin' tubers of Jerusalem Artichoke; and mounded boxes of Ground Cherries.

I've read about Ground Cherries when drooling over the penultimate winter-favorite-required-reading-book for serious and pantheistic gardeners who support biometric living: Seed Saver Catalogue (2).  But never--knowingly--had I encountered one.  My folks, farmers in rural Southern Illinois, undoubtedly knew them.  Once I sent my Dad, an avid gardener, some Jerusalem Artichokes (3).  I thought, "Wow, natural food, full of vitamins and easy to grow!  And pretty flowers!" He planted them, because I sent them.  They grew.  And grew.  And spread prolificially but still grew, after being burned, plowed, and cursed.  He said once, "Why did you give me those weeds?  They grow in the ditches around here."  I looked around after that, and darned if it wasn't the truth.  But he planted them, knowing the trouble anyway.  My folks knew a lot of edible plants in the woods and ditches and fields, but considered them weeds.  Growing up in the Depression, they knew desperate people who picked dock and other weeds and ate them; they wanted to distance themselves from that kind of poverty, I think.  Then, I guess it was considered desperation.  Now, it's considered wholesome and earth-friendly.  "Choice" makes all the difference."

In the photo above, the Farmer's Market GCs are in the upper left, and the Ground Cherries Gone Wild which showed up in my yard, right-hand.  The purchased ones are fresher, mine are old-looking because I had picked them and left them lay on the backyard table for a few weeks, trying to figure out what they were.  The purchased Ground Cherries were much larger fruit than my volunteer wild ones, as is usually the case. 

In fact, all of the items at the amazing booth at the Farmer's Market were BIG, and I should have asked what they used to make them so big.  But I was afraid to.  Maybe it was a commercial fertilizer, or maybe an Asian technique (night soil), or maybe it was a new/old technique that is not yet popular (yet): pee-cycling.  Yep.  If you are a healthy human, with clean wiping practices, you can pee directly on your compost pile, OR dilute it according to the kind of plant, and apply to the base area of YOUR VEGGIES. 

As the excellent blog Northwest Edible Plants (4) notes, some of us may need to rethink our cultural programming about "pee and edible plants."  As I said, the size of the vendor's wild edibles at the Farmer's Market gave me pause.  I wondered just how they got so big.  However.  I am going to try pee-cycling next spring.  I subscribe to the blog listed below, and the writer is a chef, with wonderfully researched info.  There is plenty of other info out there on pee-cycling.  It is one more, small, step towards Saving the Planet.

But about the Ground Cherries: they do taste like cherries, a bit.  I think they taste a little like watered-down creamed corn, or caramel latte.  They might taste good cooked with pork cutlets. My daughter thought tasty jelly.  They are obviously well-packaged in those papery shells.  And they are a curiously different, small, new inhabitant of my yard, which I will encourage, along with the dandelions, as a gift from the birds or the wind or the earth.  They popped up in my completely organic yard of their own volition, after a decade of hiding out or being ignored.  The undisturbed yard comes up with the darndest things, if I just pay attention.


1. Nightshade:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropa_belladonna.  10/27/14
2.  Seed Savers Exchange, in Iowa, has an excellent website dedicated to preservation and distribution of seeds, and biodiversity.  I want to visit their farm someday.  They also have great books on all aspects of gardening, harvesting, storing foods.  www.seedsavers.org/ 10/27/14.  You might also be interested in Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle as a classic work on sustainable food.
3. Jerusalem Artichokes:  I once had a backyard full of these pestiferous, 10-foot + tall plants with nutritiously edible roots, at the time I sent them to my dad.  I moved away, and someone else has probably been working on containing them, or else has learned to harvest and cook them.  I hope. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_artichoke 10/27/14
4.  Northwest Edible Plants:  THIS is a terrific website, I love the internet:  http://www.nwedible.com/2013/03/how-to-use-pee-in-your-garden.html



Many Small Lights

An overcast day in October lends itself nicely to lights.

 

This morning, the gas stove flamed blue beneath the teakettle.  The toaster red-wired the toast. 

A fluorescent lamp in the basement took the creepy out of laundry duty.  The rustic Meijer oil lamp moth-matizes grandchildren.  And it will be good backup for the Climate Change Apocalypse.  LED lights strung over the backyard pergola, among the dying grapevines, glow all day and all night.

Lights for cooking, seeing, working, dreaming.  Thanks to little lights everywhere,

The Afterlife Conversation Part 1

Photo credit:  Brian Ragland.  The Skies on Fire.  Ellis Grove, Illinois

Donia, Hamish, and myself get together at a library sometimes and discuss library-type things.  One day the conversation included "The Afterlife."

Donia, who is Muslim, was interested in Christian opinions of The Afterlife.  None of us have died yet, but I am edging closer towards my earthly time allotment, and Hamish is probably within spitting distance. Donia is youngest and healthiest, and her husband is a doctor, which makes her furthest from death-by-old-age. That may be why she is interested in what happens, and Hamish and I aren't:  she has time to fix it up yet. She said that she believes people come back, and have a chance to become a better person than they were. 

Reincarnation, Hamish nodded sagely.  I'm sorry to say I don't believe in that.  When we waited for a little expansion on that, he added that he felt that death is the end of the body and the soul.

Donia looked sad, like his opinion might be truer than hers.  I felt this was going badly.  Plus I didn't like Hamish to be the Unchallenged Spiritual Resource.  So I said to him: Well, you're an engineer.  He looked at me with an inscrutable Engineer Look, and I scrambled to cover my butt.  Engineers = science, more or less, so I said, Carl Sagan the astrophysicist says that religion and science will meet on the hilltop someday.  Ok, said Hamish, prepared to be open-minded. Donia looked puzzled.

I paraphrased handily from a favorite book, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, by Carl Sagan: Sagan says all life on earth began with the proteins in the dust which sifted down from stars  from universes which originated in the Big Bang thingy. From that protein, that dust, we developed into Us.

 Hamish pondered and said, I've heard that about the stardust.  "We are the stuff of stars."  

English is not Donia's first language.  None of her English classes ever discussed Sagan or the Afterlife.  But she didn't hang out at the library discussing theology and science for the heck of it. She buckled down and wrote a lot of words in her vocabulary journal to look up later.

Hamish said Well I can't see how it's possible that we come back time and again, science or not. 

Hamish is a good example of "curmudgeonly" when he wants to be.  It seemed insensitive of him to not give the youngest member of our little group some hope to go on living and achieve immortality through faultless living.  This is not, after all, an easy goal.  To cheer Donia up, and maybe Hamish too, and definitely myself, the obvious answer popped into my head. It was an "A-Ha" moment that was so obvious I didn't see it coming.  Religious metaphor and science met in my head, on my personal mountaintop.  I couldn't even question it, it was so gently true.

So I said, DNA 

They stared at me, for a moment, while processing this statement.  We talk, in our little group, as Language and Culture learners.  We do not take words lightly. Words must be known, and understood.  So my friends who love language and ideas processed my acronym.  One processed the idea, one processed both the words and the idea. Donia knew "DNA" through her husband the doctor, but knowing the meaning of DNA wasn't helping her, or Hamish, follow The Thought.  An alien Thought you've never met before takes a bit more time to wrap around.  I was happy to see that my friends were rolling my tossed-out Thought around and hanging with it.  That of course, according to the Rules of Discourse, encouraged me to keep thinking that Thought.  So I followed it in.

I said, Life on earth began as little cells, which developed into more complex cells, which reorganized into even-more-complex creatures, and eventually became Us.  We have some of the original DNA, from the beginning of life on Earth, in our bodies.  (I believe that's true, but I was running with the moment and didn't check it. I will check it. Soon.)  We are, or specifically our DNA is, born over and over, changing to meet evolutionary demands and climate conditions, and to keep improving our survival capabilities.  That's what "reincarnation" is.  DNA. 

I drew breath and realized I was agreeing with Donia. Ten minutes earlier, I didn't believe in Reincarnation, as posited by Hippies and Hindis and such. 

But that was ten minutes ago, when I didn't understand.

Donia was still interpreting half of the words I was using, so she didn't understand yet that we were agreeing.  Hamish was being Engineer-ish and thinking about the science of my posit.  And being uncharacteristically quiet, too.

I expanded my new idea to myself while they were processing and while I was still figuring it out:

DNA dies and comes back--in the flesh, somebody's flesh--over and over.  It is/ we are reincarnated.  Through DNA, we pass on our same physical, mental, emotional traits, in different bodies.  If we live a "good" life, which Biblical literature articulates), our DNA (or the closely associated DNA of  relatives/ country/ race) is passed on.  If we don't live a good life, our DNA might not survive.  Back into the dust for another shot, after a few years or millennia or Big Bangs or something.  The survival of individuals, and our species, is dependent on living a Good Life, according to religion.  The idea of "luck"  does not enter into formalized Christian religion, although it's key to DNA thinking, I bet. 

There is nothing new under the sun, someone famously noted once.  Somewhere Out There, this very idea is all written down, and I will Google it one day soon.  I'll take the pros and cons back to the library and we'll use more theological and religious and metaphorical words for Donia, and have more fun deciding what's what.

Hamish nodded and said, I hadn't thought of that.  It cheered him up, I think.  He gave me a hug when we left.  Donia picked up some new English language terms from religion, science and philosophy, but I don't know what she thinks reincarnation entails, because we didn't talk about that.  This time.

I think its nice that, although we believe it in very different ways, we all believe the same thing.



 

Semantics

Ageing gracefully is an oxymoron, unless you are a devoted Pilates practitioner.  Joints and muscles are less cooperative as the body powers down.  For age-ed  people, graceful movement  requires   maintenance.   

In a Lutheran Church once upon a time, a definition of Grace popped up in a Sunday sermon: "Time is a sign of Grace."   The Pastor expanded: resolution and forgiveness and acceptance happens, given time. Given time, things can work out. Simple. Those words have simmered in my brain for years.   

Clearly, Grace plus Time doesn't work for everyone in the same way.  A young man I knew who died of asthma at 16 had a much shorter Time to find Grace.  When babies die, we believe, they remain in a state of Grace they are born in, before they have Time to leave it.  For some people, all the Time in the world might not bring Grace, if they don't want it. 

What is Grace?  How do I get it?  Time is getting short.

I have a neighbor whom we will call Attila the Hun.  This man has-evil-eyed me for a decade.  But recently, his wife has been sporting a bald head and those pink-ribbon pins. It's no fun to carry a grudge against people who are facing their mortality.  They smiled at me once, and how could I not nod back at them?  Grace?

I swore off my birth siblings decades ago.  We had issues. Recently Mom died, and we have kept in touch.   Scattered around the country, we text each other once in a while: "Nice day here," "Thought of Mom today,"  and such.  Grace?

Time, like water, does have a way of wearing away stone.

I may be ageing Gracefully.




 

Far and Away

Once upon a time, my brother told me that China is on the other side of the world.  I was digging in a sandpile with the cat, who was doing other things in the sandpile.  My brother said if we dug too deep, we'd fall through and go to China and never get back.  Then he moved on, presumably to drop thought bombs elsewhere.  At the tender age of 4, I was learning not to believe most of what he said.  Yet, the idea of an "other side of the world" was new and something to chew on.  For a few minutes.

Forty-five years later, in a small backyard at a small house in a suburb of Kobe, Japan, I watched an eclipse of the moon.  My hostess, a Japanese woman, was better at English than I was at Japanese.  Because being on the other side of the world confused me sometimes I asked, "Is this eclipse visible at my home in the U.S.?"  She thought a minute, translating my question and her answer internally, and said, "No." I was, after all, on the other side of the world.

Cats and eclipses and Dorothy, oh my. 

You can go far away from where you were to see where you've been.

The all-time top universal theme of human Story is: I want to go Home.  All the great heroes do it: Dorothy, E.T., Frodo, Ulysses.  They all had to leave home for some reason, and all wanted to go back.  All of them had adventures which changed them, and benefited others.  Mythologist Joseph Campbell calls this The Hero's Journey.  In myth, someone like Greek hero Ulysses goes far away, has wild and crazy experiences, and fights his way back home, where he is a wise ruler for the rest of his life.  Carl Jung describes it as a personal journey, specifically individuation: finding the self, becoming a mature and whole person. Someone who refuses the journey falls under what Jung calls the shadow. A tidy example of individuation and shadow is the small hero Frodo, in Lord of the Rings.  Frodo both physically carries and personally embodies the Light that Shines Where-There-Is-No-Light.  He never gives up his mission: to save the world, specifically his shire.

So where is Home to go to?  Frodo's journey leaves him so changed that he can't stay in the shire.  He goes off into the West with the Elves.  I had a home where cats and brothers roamed wild and free.  I had a home with children and financial responsibilities.  And a home living alone. With cats. As my personal journey through time and space winds down,  I think home is a place I've always left, to find the place that I was always creating.  It's the place to stop and share everything I picked up.

This quote hangs on my fridge:

Don't ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.  --Howard Thurman

Pretty much the same thing Campbell and Jung said.  In that spirit, I play with grandchildren, paint pictures, write stories, garden, and otherwise come alive.  After years of looking for something, it may have found me.  My cat and my brother sent me off.  I'm back in the sandbox.

• Carl Jung . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_and_His_Symbols  10/14/14
• Joseph Campbell.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell.  10/11/14
•  Howard Thurman (November 18, 1899 – April 10, 1981) was an influential African American author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader. He was Dean of Chapel at Howard University and Boston University for more than two decades, wrote 21 books, and in 1944 helped found a multicultural church. Thurman, along with Mordecai Johnson and Vernon Johns, was considered one of the three greatest African-American preachers in the early 20th-century.-  Wikipedia, 10/14/14
• Rufus Jones --He distinguished between . . . negative mysticism (making contact with an impersonal force) and . . . affirmative mysticism (making contact with a personal being). He upheld that God is a personal being with whom human beings could interact. He wrote in The Trail of Life in the Middle Years, "The essential characteristic of [mysticism] is the attainment of a personal conviction by an individual that the human spirit and the divine Spirit have met, have found each other, and are in mutual and reciprocal correspondence as spirit with Spirit." . . . He exerted a major influence on the life and work of theologian Howard Thurman, who studied with him in 1929-30.

Tree Zen Me

In the middle of nowhere, where I was born, trees were ubiquitous and at-hand.  They were frames of reference for weather, locations and daily events.  They had personalities. They suffered damage and died and were mourned. They had branches for climbing, for harboring snakes, and for providing shade on steamy days.  They were black and grey in winter.  They categorized, in our Universe, an order of How Things were. 

The maple trees in the Front Yard formed double columns.  My parents planted some young ones as replacements, when needed.  These comradely trees were quiet and well-behaved. They had each other.  They were front-parlor trees. They were tolerant of children who mowed and raked and crossed between them on their way to other places.  Their limbs were high above climbing-and- swinging reach. The Front Yard was a buffer between the house and the passing road. It kept to itself.  

Some trees, on the other hand, grew in solitude.  An old maple stood a little east and south of the cistern, in front of the kitchen windows.  It  held a series of rope-and-plank swings. It shaded a sandpile.  It held a bird feeder.  It is close to 100 years old.  Its the tree I love most.  Another tree which grew in solitude at the edges of the yard is a hackberry tree.  It grew along the fence between the truck garden and the field.  An elderly neighbor woman, who lived down the road when I was a child, told my Dad that she loved to listen to the blackbirds singing in that hackberry tree at night, in the moonlight.  I don't recall the blackbirds or the singing, at all.  The hackberry tree was split almost in half during a storm, but it still grows.

And there were cedar trees. Two giant cedars, as old as Methusaleh, bordered our driveway when I was a child.  But when our old, teensy bungalow was replaced with a newly-constructed, modern (plumbing) ranch house, a neighbor bought the bungalow.  He moved it, on a flatbed wagon pulled by a tractor, down the road a few miles to his property and lived in it for many years.  However, in the process of moving it out of the narrow driveway, we had to cut down one of the guardian cedars to allow the house to pass through.  We remember and mourn the lost cedar to this day.  Its surviving fellow seems to be immortal.  It compelled Mom to compensate for its lost companion. In the following decades, she tirelessly dug up cedar saplings in the woods, and re-planted them around the edges of the farm yard.  Now, the saplings are huge and fragrant, guarding pens and fields in ascending lines of growth stages.  The surviving Methuselah cedar still stamds, aloof, at the end of the driveway.

There was another division of trees / time / space: an orchard.  Pears and apples and cherries grew on the north side of the rock driveway.  They always bore fruit, which was sometimes wormy and thrown to the cows and pigs.  But careful salvaging allowed occasional batches of pies, or of apple butter,  cooked up in a copper-lined pot in the back yard and preserved in Mom's home canning. The apple trees were kind. They were small enough and large enough to climb.  I sat in them and watched down the road where my brothers were at school.  I watched the field behind the orchard.   I watched apple leaves and sunlight and heard the wind and nothing at all. 

Places we live in never leave us.  My house today is surrounded by trees and bushes who came to live with me, sometimes planted, sometimes left by passing birds or winds. I don't take for granted the shade, the sounds, the associated wildlife, the beauty of trees.  Its nice to see organizations like the Ancient Tree Archive out of Northern Michigan, which preserve genetic material from the world's oldest beings:  ancient trees.  Its wonderful that so many people all over the world are planting trees and reforming ties.  Lord of the Rings, with the walking, talking tree warriors, remembers ancient relations with trees.  The plot of the cult movie  Avatar features great trees which are the center of spiritual connection on a planet. 




 

Hummingbirds

Beautiful late summer day, under the pergola.  Life is good.  A lone hummingbird swoops past, startling me. Hummingbirds are rare in my backyard.  A friend says, "Were you thinking of your mom?"

Mom was our family hummingbird fanatic.  She kept legions of them fed and admired for decades.  She made their preferred food--sugar water--herself, adhering to strict rituals of preparation.  She kept their feeders hygienic and full.  She picked up the occasional unfortunate who slammed into a window or another hummingbird, and stroked them with wonder and confidence until they recovered (usually recovered).  She cared for them as physically as she did for everything she loved.  When her kids left home, and after many many years when Dad left her, the hummingbirds were an outlet for some of her passionate energy.  We gave Mom hummingbird trinkets, jewelry, magnets, note cards.  Hummingbirds were part of her symbology, like Jesus and a lamb.

When Mom died, we took down the hummingbird feeders.  Nobody was there to care for them.  Maybe the neighbors who inherited the feeders will put them up in their yard, and fill in the slack.  Probably, the hummingbirds are on their own.  The livin' won't be as easy, but I hope they find enough.

I'm a displaced hummingbird this autumn.  Suddenly my job is not the place I want to be.  Whatever has been filling my feeder has moved on, so to speak.   Instead of the urge to serve and save humankind, I am having a survival kind of epiphany.  Happy is Important.  Mom's death has spotlighted my own mortality in a way I didn't expect. 

When did the choices get so hard, with so much more at stake?
Life gets pretty precious when there's less of it to waste (1).

There are other avenues of finding enough.  Hummingbirds can attest: all good things come to an end, look for the next good thing. 

When I see a hummingbird, I think of Mom.   The hummingbirds will not lay down and die of grief. Their life is their own.  They'll think of something.

 
1.  Raitt, Bonnie.  "Love in the Nick of Time;" song.

Regaling Arugula . . . . . . .88:1001

This week, I'm sure I'm a Druid.

Many reasons.  Mom is a pyromaniac. No one who knows her thinks I'm kidding. Liked to go into the woods with a beer, a hot dog, and her dog / cat retinue and light big fires.  This act has all the Druidic bells and whistles: mind-altering drink; hot dogs / sacrifice; dog/cat whatever; big fires.  And then there is her general Gallic personality.  And Grandma Sassenger.   And Dad's share of shaman DNA, from Wales and South Carolina.   I'm in.

Supporting this argument, The Facts: I compulsively compost organic material, from onion skins to tree limbs, knowing I will go to hell if this ritual is not religiously followed.  My Immaculate Conception Garden (detailed a few posts back) is living proof of my Druidic Universe Entanglement.  The Virgin Mary statue left guarding my garden over the years has attracted a fine following of un-husbandry type yields.  That is, they don't get planted, they just grow.  Is that Virgin, or What?  And....I just finished a quickie mind-candy novel on druids in Hibernia.  And other things . . . . . . .  Although these mystic feelings, when they stir, make me feel guilty like I'm cheating on Carl Sagan/ ultimate Real Science person: they stir.

But the big thing THIS week that convinces me of my Druidic bent is the Arugula In The Yard.   This summer was nasty, hot, and dry.  I gave up on the flora denizens of my yard.  They were on their own.  I thought we should all just give up and die.  But no.  THEY struggled on.

The grass died.  The weeds thrived.  My never-been-planted-by-Human-Hands specialty cherry tomatoes flourished.  The Blue Balls from Space Thistles increased.  The Rose of Sharon bushes, planted to screen the neighbor's kid's playhouse from me--and the Burning Bush, allowed to grow rampant to shield the other neighbors from me period---went wild.  Note: these are all Biblical type names. 

So a few days ago I allowed myself a leisurely cold six-pack whilst sitting in my pergola and observing the growth pattern of my second-year grape vines.  Not up to wine making, yet.  But while enjoying the recently reviving weather pattern, it suddenly hit me as I glanced around my teeny yard domain:  the grass was dead, but the Arugula was Growing.  In the middle of the Dead Grass.

This, I mused, is like another Resurrection.  (These--resurrections--happen in my yard all the time.)

So it seems that it would be the wiser option to embrace this unavoidable reality.  Me and the flora have an understanding.  Whether I will or not.  The Arugula seems to have sent the SIGN that it will take over the formerly wasted space where dubious grass grew.  IT has decided to thrive through old growth/ dead growth grass, and who knows how in the hell it got there in the first place. I have indeed planted Arugula in the past, and may have neglected to dispose of it's discarded, past-peak progeny immediately in isolated conatiners.  That is, I might have left it's clearings laying all over the yard when it was at its seed peak.  I don't remember doing that, but hey.  It Lives.  Nay, It Thrives.  What The.

Friends are uneasy about the whole mystic revelation thing, as manifested by their reaction to Arugula in gift bags to them.  "Are you sure," they politely inquire when I tell them where it came from, "that this is Arugula, and not some deadly poisonous weed that your yard is trying to kill people with?"  They can accept my reassurances. Or not.  I Know.

I have not put any chemicals on the yard since it became mine, purchasing the house over a decade ago.  This means:  I have organic dandelions growing everywhere.  ORGANIC dandelionn GREENS.

Uh-Huh.  I can give up doing other stuff, follow the lead of my flora friends, and become an ageing hippied organic salad dispenser.    The whole green thing in my yard renews constantly if I bother to mow it; newly sprouted Arugula and Dandelion Greens could be mine ALL YEAR.  Who in the heck needs a yard of grass, with the power of druidic flora behind them? 

With a deck of Tarot cards in my hand-- 'cause as a linguist/artist/ musician I do Symbols like Nobody's Business--this could be a package. 

I cannot ignore the role of the The Virgin's Chipped Plaster Statue in my garden, in the decidedly increasingly interesting twist to my involuntary Druidic investment.  Which statue's presence I think has added to the pot of interesting and wildly independent growth patterns in my yard/ garden.  The Virgin is, some believe, the vestigial Catholic Christian nod to Gaea/ Earth Mother religions, quashed milleniaium ago by jealous type male chauvinists.  To the Druidic worship of all life.

Arugula, beautiful name, beautiful smell, beautiful taste, growing in my yard.  I'm going to till up the entire side of my pergola facing my teeny garage and devote it to the Magic Arugula next spring.  Next Spring; the hope of every true Druid, the call of every wild garden, and wild gardener.  The promise of rebirth, the lure of fantasy, the call of the wild.