Pink Coyote

Falling Off the Side of the World

We arrived back from Oklahoma on Monday night later than we expected.  Settling back in is always challenging for me-the suitcases sit with clothes spilling over the sides as chores from a week ago remain undone.  Another day won't hurt!

It seems like life is flying past me at the moment.  There is really quite a lot going on with us and with friends, but I can feel myself checking out-drifting away from anything but here and now.  Miles is a bit sick and this morning I have a sore throat and swollen glands.  My low immunity seems to be a theme this year.  This week I've found myself wandering aimlessly back and forth from the kitchen in the past few days-what shall I take for malaise?  Eat?  How do I take care of myself again?  Sheesh.

I received my copy of The Guerilla Art Kit, and Miles and I made 6 installments around town yesterday.  I am exhilarated by Keri's ideas and her ability to take a simple concept and make a grassroots revolution out of it.  Opening up and reading the first 20 pages completely changed the course of my day, and I have to wonder if anyone took our artwork home and how those who saw the work were affected.  We used about 90% recycled materials, mainly the envelopes from junk mail and magazine inserts.  It gave me a buzz to think of putting garbage to work, giving it a much more important job than it was orginally designed for.  I enjoyed the exercise to determine what thoughts I'd like to put into people's heads as guiding principle for the pieces we assembled-it helped me narrow down what messages I'm, uh, living my life to promote as a result of my experiences and who I am-how intimate!  Part of me wants to drive around and see what remains today!  Trying to be a stealthy ninja spy while placing the art was fun, but I don't think the CIA will be recruiting me for any black ops divisions soon-I think someone spotted me twice!  But what, fun-I am telling you.  This town needs some color and liveliness, and we felt so excited to contribute to the mystery and fun of perfect strangers interacting with us.  What a fun rush!  Thank you, Keri-you are a beautiful renegade. I can see and feel how you are changing the world, one stick of chalk at a time.

I've got a copy of Real Simple (bit of an oxymoron for all the consumption they promote) magazine's special family edition.  I snatched it up at Phoenix airport because as I held it, it magically fell open to Heather Armstrong's (affectionately known to her readers as Dooce, as if all of you don't already worship her offbeat humor-so why am I even writing this?) letter to her daughter.  An added bonus is a letter from Rob Corddry to his daughter is featured, too.  Jackpot.  Funny stuff. 

Here is a shot from Uncle Rick and Aunt Pamela's ranch on the plains, miles from anything but a super Walmart, where the gravel roads have no street signs and seed ticks rule your ankles...

Thems turkeys.

More photos of Indian territory when I return.  Until then, go buy Keri's book!

Old World Wyrm

This is a hornworm, found on one of our fresno pepper plants, which for years I thought was called a tomato worm.  I think because when I was very small I saw one on a tomato plant and it made a giant impression on me.  That is my dad's thumb in the photo; the monster was at least 4" long.  I think they're so pretty, but they are so destructive and can eat through dozens of leaves in a day.  Sometimes little eggs attach to the backs of these worms, laid by a braconid wasp. The larvae feed on and eventually munch the horny host to death.  They grow into beneficial wasps as adults and prey on many other pests. 

The dark side of gardening!

I feel myself making a seasonal transition, one in which I want to create more with my hands.  Between gardening, writing, housemomming and massaging, my hands are already taking a beating!  What do I have to lose?

Medicine

"So, to begin healing, stop kidding yourself that a little feel-good medicine of the wrong sort will take care of a broken leg. Tell the truth about your wound, and then you will get a truthful picture of the remedy to apply to it. Don't pack whatever is easiest or most available into the emptiness. Hold out for the right medicine. You will recognize it because it makes your life stronger rather than weaker".---Clarissa Pinkola Estes, WWRWTW...

...which I heart bigtime for its salvey goodness.

Slow Comeback

 

Not since I was in college have I been hit with a virus this hard.  My infant son leapt back into vitality as soon as his run of antibiotics were finished.  Husband seems fine.  My road has been less of the leaping sort-more like limping back to health, and slower than I can bear.  I've become so impatient, I sometimes lose my sense about what I'm supposed to be doing to get better.  My immune function has never been stellar, what with growing up in Pesticide Smoggyvalley and all, but it seems especially pressed this month.  On the 9th day of Keflex, I ate a walnut laden brownie I'd made my dad for Father's Day and broke out in a hideous rash of hives (I'll save the pictures for another time when I'm not simultaneously discussing food).  My best guess is that with no probiotics in my system, I couldn't handle the walnuts (maybe it was the chocolate...).  This helped get me back on track thanks to 50 billion little live cultures.  And some claritin.  Gee whiz.

Maggie sent me Nourishing Traditions as a gift months ago and I finally got around to cracking it open.  She and I used to be vegans, she much more recently than I.  Both of us are rethinking vegetarianism.  Ethically, vegetarianism is a very good idea.  Environmentally, it is usually a great idea.  My body, however, has a different story to tell.  OPDC has made me love milk and dairy farming again, because of how thoughtfully and healthfully they are doing it.  I'm also considering adding fermented foods to my diet and sprouted ones too.  I ate an umeboshi plum today, favored by the macrobiotic community, and puckered up like Tom and Jerry on alum.  I suppose I'll keep eating them.

It's a good sign that I am here again.  I expect to be participating in life again soon and sharing about our trip to Portland, which was so fun and amazing-even though it was dampened by stage 1 of the Virus That Ate New York.

Missing your voices and your blogs, too!

The Do Nothing Garden

Doing nothing is a future goal of mine.  I have not begun to get close to doing nothing at this point in my life-but I see it up the road a bit.  Keri's Tuesday entry inspired me to talk about my garden here, and my hopes for it, and how the philosophy spills over into the rest of my life. 

We live on 2 1/2 acres of washed out desert dirt in the south central

California valley.  It's where I grew up.  My parents live 2 parcels down on their 2 1/2 acre piece.  The chunk we live on belongs to them, and my dad built this house we live in.  The soil is pretty barren; a test I did showed that there is literally nothing in terms of nutrients in the soil and that it is highly alkaline.  In short, it needs major ammendments to become really fertile.

There are some pretty bright minds out there, tackling the issue of where the world will be in 10-50 years, but the ones intriguing me the most at this time in my life are those who emphasize learning to feed ourselves.  Psychologically and collectively speaking, we are a very dependent culture.  Many of us do not know the difference between food grown at home and food grown far away-what is in it, at what point it was harvested and by whom, whether the farmer and his workers were paid enough for it for them to live on, whether it was irradiated or not... 

With that in mind, I wanted to explore growing some food around here.  I started a compost pile to cut down on landfill contributions, though it's gone a bit crazy at the moment.  I read some books.  I've considered adding chickens to fertilize, weed and eat my leftovers, but haven't gotten to that yet.  What we have done is begun some little experiments called "guilds". 

I'm so excited about guilds because they are a model that could effectively do all of the work I would normally have to do: fertilize, water, feed, kill bugs, draw pollinators, create habitat for beneficial sorts, crack open hardpan, and mulch.

I've created four guilds and will begin another three in the next month or so.  I have no idea if they will really work, but here is what I did for one of them:  All guilds begin with a simple tree, preferably one that has a few functions such as fruit, nuts, shade, or flowers.  Then around it I planted these guys:

*Nasturtiums-this flowering, fast grower is a soil fumigant-she keeps scores of destructive, plentiful-in-my-bad-soil organisms off of my tree's roots.  I planted scads of these from seed packets.

*Root vegetables-also from seed packets-radishes, rutabaga, carrots, mainly.  These break up the hard soil.  In fact, what we don't want to pull and eat, I can snap off the greens and eat them or toss back into bed for instant mulch and let the root rot in the ground, feeding the soil and providing food for worms. 

*Beans and snow peas-these fun vining varieties feed my lacking soil with much needed nitrogen.  From just a few plants, we munch on sweet, raw beans while we're out inspecting plants and removing weeds.  We haven't had enough to cook yet, but we will.  You can just poke a dry bean into the soil and have a plant in a few days. 

*Artichokes-these plants totally rule.  I bought some tiny cheapies at the nursery and they are going nuts.  Their big, spiky leaves fall off on the underside of the plant and create lots of mulch for the tree and the guild. 

*Strawberries-for groundcover-to shade the spots where the sun beats down on the earth and sucks away the nutrients.  Clover is also great for this and is a nitrogen fixer, too.

Though I putter around out there, nurturing the newer plants and asking them what I can do to help, soon, most of my work will be done.  These little communities have been created to take care of themselves so that I won't have to, except to eat them, smell them, or enjoy them visually. 

If the guilds flourish and become jungle-like, this will be the best thing I have ever learned and executed in my life.  I say this because it seems to come much easier to me to make my life more busy, difficult and overwhelming than to do things that make it run smoothly.

Privacy Please

My son is cracking me up.  Yesterday his book pick off of my shelf was "You Grow Girl" by Gayla Trail.  He took it all over the house with him, pausing to sit and flip through the pages, seeming to admire that it contains  illustrations, as well as real photos.  Today he is still on about it.  He has brought it to me to read, but only for a minute.  He mostly wants to enjoy it alone.  He opens it to the back flap and looks at Gayla's picture and points, making soft sounds.  I think he's in love!  I'm giddy that he wants to cart around a gardening book.  I'm going to go see if she has tee shirts in his size.

The Feminist What?

I've drank a bit too much coffee this morning and not had any breakfast yet.  This would explain part of the trembling that is moving from my head to my toes.  But not all of it.

A couple of days ago, I was sent a book review from U.S.A. Today by a dear friend who is a mother, a child advocate, a Marriage and Family Therapist and a feminist.  The book is called "The Feminist Mistake", a marketing play on words from feminist superhero Betty Freidan's The Feminine Mystique. The subheading for the article read: "is a well-crafted cautionary tale for women of all ages."  Though the review does point out that Leslie Bennetts' weakness is that her "campaign for financial autonomy is so shrill and unrelenting that it borders on a harangue,"  it promotes Bennetts' book, the main point of which hinges on the idea that "Women should make work a top priority with the lifelong goal of self-sufficiency". 

It is tempting for me to ask where Bennetts has been while her two children were growing up?  I want to lash out in anger at her for steering women away from their children and toward their careers.  Why?  Because her premise reeks of her own trust issues, which she barfs out on women who are taking care of their first responsiblity: the children they chose to bring into this world.  I suppose I am trembling because this review says nothing about the decision to not have children in favor of a career.  It sounds like women should strive for it all, marriage, work, and children-however neglecting of the marriage and children that may be.  Because after you've nailed the perfect American life, hurry back to work so you can self-preserve. 

I'm projecting, of course.  Like I do.  I haven't read the book.  But I already hate it.  Haranguing?  Is she attempting to bully women into neglecting their children because of her mother's and grandmother's weaknesses?  I just don't get it.

My friend, the one who forwarded the review, wrote a rebuttal to be published here and hopefully elsewhere.  I'm pretty sure the ezine gets mailed to your inbox, so do check it out to read the complete rebuttal. 

In the meantime, here's a tidbit: "While I can appreciate Leslie Bennett's message to women regarding the importance of financial autonomy, it is not as black and white as she seems to portray it.  I take exception to the idea that women who drop out of the workforce or scale back when they have children are making a mistake or running the risk of derailing their careers. It need not be that way."

And more: "Perhaps women need to ask themselves this question: Which matters most--my children or my career? If the answer is their career, it is a crime that they bothered to have children. I have counseled too many clients whose issues started with the abandonment and neglect they experienced as children because they had a working mom as well as a working dad or perhaps an absent dad. Kids that are put into daycare after mom's maternity leave is up without a thought to the abandonment and neglect they will experience at being away from their primary caregiver all day are the kids we see today with behavioral problems from anger to aggression/violence to ADD, childhood depression, anxiety, and other lifelong problems occurring with greater frequency than ever before. Women do not have to give up a career entirely if it is important to them, but parents need to put their child's needs first." 

One of my favorite blogmamas also has a strong sentiment worth reading.  She presents the economic facts about women in the workplace.

I have very strong feelings about what our personal damage drives us to do.  Children are always the sacrafices for our shit.  It angers me, saddens me, hits me like a boot in the belly to see neglect and abuse everywhere I go.  In my opinion Bennetts is using her Vanity Fair status to push her ideas that children will be fine without their parents. 

The woman I love to listen to calls this The Tulip Theory: "Many, but not all, of these women were not well-nurtured themselves, or they have a low bar for what they think children need, because they may not have been sufficiently mothered as much as children need to be nurtured. So, they are a little cold to the idea of mothering, which is one of the long-term side effects of daycare and nannys. These wonderfully strong and creative women are operating on the Tulip Theory. They think that everything the child needs is inside, just like everything the tulip needs is in the bulb. They think that children need a good home in a good neighborhood, a good school, a good nanny or day care provider, a good role model, and they will be fine. They actually think the issue is about quality daycare. They have different ideas of what "fine" is than we do. They don't know that any and every child (who doesn't actually have a physical brain abnormality or disability) can be a genius and can go for greatness. They don't realize that they are settling for less. They don't know that their children need them, and no one else can take their place. They don't know that there are degrees of impact on the child who is farmed out, depending upon how young and for how long. They don't know that this is a mental health issue."

Amen, sisters.

Be sure to share what you think.  What a great opportunity for us all to get vulnerable and talk about our fears and what we're doing with them.

Fertilizer

  There is a strong motivating force working on my heels to keep me moving forward into the unknown. I know that potential lies there, awaiting my arrival. I am no longer in the beginning of this growth cycle, but somewhere in the middle. I will soon find a bountiful treasure, as I've been picking up threads leading to it for some time now. It can only lead me to more pitfalls, then more treasure. I don't mind that some truths are being withheld from me, I think they may scare me off of my path anyway. I'm exhausted from thinking, working, feeling all of the messages my body has for me. But I can't stop working.

Thought for the day: Chickenshit makes mighty good fertilizer.

Reading:

The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller
Mary Jane's Ideabook Cookbook Lifebook: For the Farmgirl in All of Us, Mary Jane Butters
The House at Pooh Corner

"Pooh tried to think of something he would say, but the more he thought, the more he felt that there is no real answer to "Ho-ho!" said by a Heffalump in the sort of voice this Heffalump was going to say it in.
"I shan't say anything," said Pooh at last. "I shall just hum to myself, as if I was waiting for something."