… I know, it’s quiet here. First of all, we’ve been ill – Amie is much better now; we’re now even doubting whether it was the flu at all. Secondly I took the Training for Transition last weekend and I am still exhausted and exhilarated – too much so that I can’t yet write about …
Category Archives: place
Lifestyle Changes
Wow, Sharon has another great blog entry up: Dreaming a Life, about radical lifestyle changes – “whether they come from adapting to a deeply damaged climate or from addressing the crisis, whether they come from adapting to depletion or from enduring it.” Sharon points out that much of the political unrest we are seeing comes …
The Mobility of Skills and Spirit
Someone asked me: What if you would have to move now? This was with reference to the vegetable garden, to which I have devoted many, many hours of hard labor and a whole lot more of research, hopes and dreams. My answer was: It would be no problem. Really? You could leave all of this …
Place: A Review of Home Ground, edited by Barry Lopes
Here’s one of the reviews I wrote for Suite101.com. The copyright recently passed to me, so I can share it with you here. It’s of Home Ground, a book that deals with the concept that is most on my mind these days: place. The more I think about place, the more it amazes me that …
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Three for the Neighborhood, or How I Scored Unlimited Amounts of Horse Manure
One Our renovation project has so far generated a fair amount of scrap materials. Luckily it’s mostly wood and only some drywall, which is virtually not reusable. Of the wood DH and I have saved most: we take out the nails, tease off the drywall and have built up a nice stack of project wood …
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Maps: Return to the Map Book
I found Amie’s Map Book. It had gone missing in the move. The Map Book, or Place Book, is a collection of maps, pasted in or drawn, of where we have been living and traveling (you can see some more scans here), with anecdotes and journal entries addressed to Amie. Amie became very interested in …
My Joy in the Present and My Fear for the Future
I am preparing two bags; 1) A field bag, containing compass measuring tape pencils and pencil sharpener paper/journals for Mama and Amie eraser watercolor and water bottle, brushes baggies for collecting clear tape camera I might add a baggie with Plaster of Paris for capturing animal tracks and a mixing tin. 2) A run-out-of-the-house emergency …
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Snow Ghosts and Full Wolf Moon on Snow
It’s 8 in the morning and everyone is asleep but me. I’m in bed, next to the sleeping bodies, trying to type quietly. They lie so deep, while I’m on the surface, eyes wide open. I’m looking out of the bedroom window at the trees in our western garden and in the neighbors’ garden: beeches, …
General Malaise Barely Evaded
Why do I even look at the news – my “consumption” of which is out of spiritual necessity minimized to reading the headlines in Google News? 8-year-old boy shoots himself in the head at a firearms expo, 7-year-old boy kidnapped then shot to death, Neo-Nazi plot to assassinate Obama. The places where my jawbone fits …
Planting and Planning the Homestead
I haven’t been blogging much lately. Summer at our burgeoning homestead has meant more time spent outside and in physical activities, like transplanting and planting. There hasn’t been as much of planting as I would have wanted: just some herbs in pots and a an edible border by the side of the house (thyme). Mainly …