Looking backward and forward...

goodpixgallery.com

It's been a very long while since I posted anything. So long, in fact, that someone nice enough to comment on my last post had their words held in limbo until I released them. Sorry about that! Somehow time just slipped by (lame excuse but true) and I didn't get back here as frequently as I needed to. It's been a weird year in many ways. One of transition.

Planned letter writing (yes, paper and pen style) that started the summer of 2014 after a high school reunion dribbled into oblivion in the summer of 2015. I dropped the ball there too. My correspondent was diligent and kept her word to write. Plus her writing was ever so much more interesting than the "it's been hot here" or "sorry it's taken me so long to write back" kind. It was honest, dealing with emotions in a healthy way, and yet somehow it left me hollow. Not her fault for sure, but it couldn't live up to the kind of writing I was longing for. The kind that comes from someone who really knows you and has known you for a very long time. I was silly to expect that from someone who I last knew 45 years ago. But I knew her from grade school through high school so thought, perhaps...

Clearly it's my own impatience with telling my story to someone who doesn't know me that deep way that has tripped me up. I want them to already know everything so they can help me figure out the fuzzy parts. But those people - the ones who have that type of deep knowledge - if they exist for anyone, certainly are few and far between for me. An accident of life I suppose; people go away for various reasons or don't pay the kind of attention that we think they do. The dwindling number of those who remain over the years have imperfect memories. And the ones with the best knowledge who I should have asked long ago have died and taken their insights with them.

Maybe that's why over the past few months I've finally become able to lay down the expectation that there are definitive answers out there that, if I just get them, I will get it right. Know for sure. Really understand. Its long been time I've been carrying the expectation that scrutinizing the ambiguity that runs through my life, the gaps in memory, the unanswered questions, even sussing out the questions themselves will change the past. It won't. Can't. Of course I've known this, but it took me til now to be able to be done worrying with it. I finally accept the imperfectness of the past, of me and more importantly, of the future.

And I now understand that an imperfect past doesn't hold me prisoner any more than an imperfect future means it will be bad. I have the opportunity to learn and change. To improve. And that's really so much more interesting than trying to climb up onto and maintain one's balance on the shaky pedestal of perceived perfection. Maybe I should go back and dig out that last letter and answer it...

Nice confusion

Recently I had a slightly confusing Twitter exchange with this book's publicist about it winning an award. Actually it was the Gold Winner in Juvenile Nonfiction awarded by Foreword Reviews and their Indiefab Awards. Foreword Reviews is another interesting story...
 

It's not my book.  Unfortunately I had nothing to do with it, but am delighted for the confusion so that I know it's out there. Continuing to educate children about the importance of what we eat, where it comes from and how to prepare it are all good. 

To learn more about the book, click here.

The price of healthy food

--> Everyone knows that healthy food is expensive. But why does it have to cost more for food with fewer additives, less processing and fewer food miles than it does to eat industrially produced food that is nutritionally questionable at best? It never made sense to me. And now I find there is a "fast food" restaurant just down the street that is healthy and locally sourced where possible.
Open less than a week when I visited, this little take-out storefront operation serves up a wide variety of freshly made wraps using good ingredients and many house-made items. The portions are generous and the food is really tasty. And it was surprisingly inexpensive. For less than $10 two people can have a nice lunch (excluding beverages) that is both well made and healthy. Yum. Let's do more of this, please.

Just as cooking at home doesn't need to be hard to do or fancy, this concept is simple at its core. Home cooking and healthy "fast food" both require focus, commitment and time. So there is a choice. What's yours?

You know you have roots when...

It occurred to me that the summer will be the 12th since my move from the "big city" to a small town. It doesn't seem like that much time could have passed. (Isn't that what people always say?) This is particularly true because up until today it felt like I was still a new arrival in town. That my home was still just moved into. And that the deep roots that I had were elsewhere.

Truth be told, the family roots of elders have long since slipped away. Only peers are left and their children and grandchildren. Not that they aren't important, but they aren't the older generation who knew me from birth as a daughter, niece or granddaughter. The ones whose memories extended far back to a time that shaped them and was so different than the one into which I appeared.

But today it became clear that somehow, while missing the roots that were gone, I have put down roots here. While there are many ways to know you are rooted, the one that got my attention was that someone I knew, liked, respected and cared about, lost a parent. An elder. Before today such emails came from mostly family and long-time friends in places I'd been from. Today, the email came from where I live now.

While it is not possible to recapture roots that are lost, having new ones and the belonging they imply, feels good, despite the sadness for the loss of an elder I never met.

This doesn't make sense

How different topsoil looks.

Can you pick the healthy one?

Right on the heels of my post about permaculture, a long-view approach to a respectful relationship with the natural resources around us, and one that admittedly requires curiosity, patience, humility and real, hard work, I ran across a magazine article that stopped me. In the past I might have regarded the gardening tips in the article more benignly. But not now.

I won't mention the magazine because it doesn't matter. The information provided isn't materially different from what other magazines or websites on creating pleasant home and garden environments might offer. But the content of one tip in particular caused me to stop in my tracks. The tip, quoted verbatim below is:

"Step up to better soil. Raised beds can be filled with the very best topsoil so you don't have to spend years improving difficult ground. Traditional wood beds are fine, but composite decking boards and rusted steel are decorative and durable."

Yes! Better soil! No! Not that way! We can't continue to buy our way into growing sustainably. We need to do the  work of rebuilding our resources. The answer isn't for big companies to improve soil so they can scrape it into bags I buy. Its my responsibility to take care of the bit I have and create more and better soil. And I believe it's everyone's job. We've forgotten that, or become disconnected from it or call it what you will, but I believe we all decide to do the necessary work and forgo immediately gratifying gardens, we're just kidding ourselves.

The Land Institute has been working for decades to improve soil by researching and promoting polyculture (growing multiple crops/rotating them) rather than the monoculture that has overtaken US agriculture. They also promote perennial grains (like the grains that grew before modern farming) rather than the annual crops that the vast majority of farmers grow. This big-scale solution can be applied in container gardening as well. Paying attention to how we treat our soil and improve it rather than replacing it every year and starting fresh feels more responsible. More sustainable. More right. 

What to do besides supporting the Land Institute's work? Start composting. Have your yard soil tested and work to bring back its health naturally. Grow plants that help the soil and each other. Fertilize and deal with pests and plant diseases naturally. Help support pollinators. Yes, it's work. Worthy work. Satisfying work. Necessary work. And work that won't wait.

When people, land, and community are as one, all three members prosper; when they relate not as members but as competing interests, all three are exploited. By consulting Nature as the source and measure of that membership, The Land Institute seeks to develop an agriculture that will save soil from being lost or poisoned, while promoting a community life at once prosperous and enduring.” - See more at: http://www.landinstitute.org/about-us/vision-mission/#sthash.uUh0m7ZH.dpuf

When people, land, and community are as one, all three members prosper; when they relate not as members but as competing interests, all three are exploited. By consulting Nature as the source and measure of that membership, The Land Institute seeks to develop an agriculture that will save soil from being lost or poisoned, while promoting a community life at once prosperous and enduring.” - See more at: http://www.landinstitute.org/about-us/vision-mission/#sthash.uUh0m7ZH.dpuf

When people, land, and community are as one, all three members prosper; when they relate not as members but as competing interests, all three are exploited. By consulting Nature as the source and measure of that membership, The Land Institute seeks to develop an agriculture that will save soil from being lost or poisoned, while promoting a community life at once prosperous and enduring.” - See more at: http://www.landinstitute.org/about-us/vision-mission/#sthash.uUh0m7ZH.dpuf

When people, land, and community are as one, all three members prosper; when they relate not as members but as competing interests, all three are exploited. By consulting Nature as the source and measure of that membership, The Land Institute seeks to develop an agriculture that will save soil from being lost or poisoned, while promoting a community life at once prosperous and enduring.” - See more at: http://www.landinstitute.org/about-us/vision-mission/#sthash.uUh0m7ZH.dpuf

Change that makes sense

One of the many posters in the Lexicon of Sustainability

An email landed in my inbox today from the folks at the Lexicon of Sustainability. I got acquainted with their work a couple of years ago and have been a fan ever since. They tell the story of sustainable food, growing, practices - you name it - so that people are using a common language when they talk. And hopefully, then, when they understand the issues they face. 

This poster on permaculture was explained as being a shift in thinking and living. A stepping back to see the really big picture. It said:

The word ‘permaculture’ comes from the melding of two words: ‘permanent culture’ and ‘permanent agriculture’,” points out Rhamis Kent. “It’s something that’s able to sustain itself by the very nature in which it’s constructed. As Bill Mollison says, ‘It’s the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way.’" Learn how permaculture is not just a sustainable agriculture method, but a lifestyle for many.

Makes sense to me.

Today at the grocery

I am in the middle of a mindfulness workshop. At week four of an eight-week class intended to help me be more present in the "now." Doing so, I'm told, reduces stress, and as a result, improves health, as well as allows one to see things more clearly, without emotion or attachment to a specific outcome. Part of the practice is to observe how you react - not seek to change or judge - just observe. So I did.

Today I went to the grocery. It has been so cold and snowy that this was the first day I considered it. It was clear and cold with slushy, sandy, salty uck everywhere. Outside and in. Inevitable.

While shopping I came around the end of an aisle to see a young - perhaps six or seven-year-old - boy running toward me. He was bundled up in a snowsuit against the cold. Perhaps to distract him from being indoors in outdoors clothes or for another reason entirely he was eating a slice of processed cheese food. It was bunched up in one hand as he ran. But it was obvious that it was that product that comes wrapped in plastic, slice by slice. He was running to (I assume) catch up with whomever he was there with. Maybe he dawdled in front of the Fruit Loops too long, but he was on a tear. When dodging a shopper, he dropped he cheese on the floor.

(I could stop here, but I won't.)

He stopped in his tracks and without missing a beat, picked up the cheese, took a bite and started running again. He disappeared around the corner.


That was my observation. My reaction - even though I wasn't supposed to have one - had several levels...

(Level 1) YUCK!

(Level 2) Why would a child eat off a floor covered with slushy, sandy, salty uck? Where was the adult supervision?

(Level 3) It's bad enough that the child is eating processed food, but from the floor!?

There was a time that I or another adult who saw what was about to happen would have stepped in to stop it. And the parent or other adult with that child would have thanked the person intervening.  Isn't that as bad for society as it is for the child? Not even considering the pros/cons of processed food.

So, the connection back to mindfulness? I'm struggling with that. It appears that the child wasn't mindful of his action, but he's a child. At what point is it reasonable to expect that?

The adult that I assume was somewhere nearby was perhaps being as mindful as they could be - providing cheese rather than sugar - trying to deal with many things simultaneously.  Maybe they would have quickly snatched that cheese away before the bite could be taken if they had only seen it.

But the intervention of the past...what about that? What happened to "it takes a village to raise a child" and the assumption of good intent when others took a person's child in hand? The assumption of shared values about basic things like looking out for a child's welfare? Were past interventions really mindful or reactive? Does it matter if the intent is to stop a a child from eating something from a really dirty floor? Why do "good Samaritans" need laws to protect them?

I have so many questions...maybe there are satisfying answers out there. I hope so.

Living the Dream

This oil painting isn't really Ron's farm. I just liked it. You can find it here.

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“Hydrant's frozen”

“It won’t start”

Buck barn isolated,

Drifting snow ate our truck.

2 am, checking for newborns,

so cold eyes burn, fingers tingle

the snow crunches, but ghostly quiet.

all is well, living the dream.

Thanks and a tip of my warm, fuzzy hat to Ron Klein of Windshadow Farm & Dairy in Bangor, MI for this.  He posted it to a list I'm on and graciously gave me permission to reprint it.

And they said it couldn't be done...

This photo of two year's worth of one person's trash is from a 2/12/15 article in EcoWatch.

After reading this there was really nothing better to do than straight-up share it. So here it is, just click here.

Local Investing Update

This organization was referenced in a blog post on January 10, 2015 .

Last month I started my local investing journey. Here's an update.

(Well, there was an update here until February 25. I was contacted by LocalStake and asked to take my post down. Apparently it was in violation of some type of something even though it didn't have any financial information but just very general business descriptions of the three firms I was interested in.

I'm still interested in them and sorry I can't share them further. To learn more about what LocalStake offers, you'll just need to go there and see for yourself.  Back to what was originally posted...)

So far I have three potential investments that I found on LocalStake. It would be great if more people needing funds were aware of them,  particularly those who fall into my area of interest, local food in Michigan and Indiana. But new ideas take time to spread. These firms are collecting interest from investors and with enough interest shown, will be available to actually invest in. Hopefully this brief update will help.

If these seem to be the types of businesses you would be interested in helping, take a moment to look at the LocalStake website (localstake.com). New businesses are added all the time. Or maybe you're a business looking for funds. Take a moment and see if this platform would be a way for you to raise the money you need from people who want you to succeed.

As has been said elsewhere, it's time to slow money down from flying around the world in electronic pulses being invested in who knows what. It's time to reclaim the connection between where we invest and where we are. It's time for a truly local stake in economic outcomes.

More Than Enough

Recently I came upon a quote about gratitude. It knocked me down and picked me up. It was:

Gratitude turns what we have into enough. 

Why, yes it does. Maybe that's why those meals that are scraped together from whatever is around - some veggies and a little bulgar left to marinate and then sauteed - are some of the ones I enjoy the most. Unplanned tastes mingle together and may never be created exactly the same way again. Nothing is written down. It is just done and enjoyed. Ah....

I don't need "more." I need "better." With better I can make do with less because I truly enjoy whatever is better - the vegetables, the wine, the balsamic vinegar in the marinade. More is simply more. Better is better. And better trumps more every time in my book. 

I am grateful that I am able to live a simple life. That I have work that is meaningful to me. Even today's grey sky that keeps me inside and focused. Some things I'm grateful for I have worked hard to bring about; some happened with no input from me. But gratefulness is my conscious choice. 

Enough is enough. Not too much, not too little. Enough.

Investing Locally

 
I recently took a step to put my money where my mouth is.

The idea of bringing money (investments) back to the local community has appealed to me for a while. Being able to know the people who are using my money and having a first-hand understanding of what it is that they are doing with it is appealing. As is the idea that my money is actually going toward something that will take root where I live, rather than in some unknown and unknowable place because that's where the fund advisers decided to invest. No, the idea of direct investment had appeal. But I hadn't done anything to really act on the concept til recently.

Perhaps to chagrin of my financial adviser, I "liberated" a portion (perhaps the first of many...) of my funds from traditional investment vehicles and they now sit ready to invest in local enterprises. But how do I find out about and choose the investments?

That's still a bit of a challenge, but it's getting easier all the time. Currently I check in on a website called LocalStake.com where there are all manner of local investment opportunities. Many related to local food and beverages. And they are true investments not donations. For the moment, "local" is a bit of a stretch but at least the options are in the midwest rather than somewhere on the other side of the globe. And over time as more people know about the site and more businesses are funded, my hope is that more will appear as opportunities.

Will I make a fortune doing this? I doubt it. I don't even think that's the question that needs to be asked. The question that needs to be asked is: what does it take to reclaim control of what I eat and drink? To know how it was made, what's in it and what's behind it? If I can know these things and get good products from the companies I'm funding, along with a fair return (financial and social), then these are sound investments and ones I'll be committed to for the long haul.