red sky at night, zomban delight

There was a rainbow opposite in the sky, which we did not see, but--what a beautiful sight, after a day of steady rain. Kaleigh took this photo, shortly before Don arrived home from a 12-hour stint doing exams at SIU. Kaleigh and I left home this morning to attend swimming class at the Y. Afterwards, we went to the book club hostesses' home to play and chat until book club started. The girls read The Birdwatchers by Simon James, made birding journals, and then played long and hard, having a great time.

Kaleigh and I finished and started another book in the All of a Kind Family books series by Sydney Taylor. It's some good kid adventures, with a lot of girls. The book provides an interesting view of New York's East Side prior to WWI, and a social history of Jewish family life and customs of the time. I have learned a lot I did not know about Judaism.

Tomorrow is Kaleigh's ballet and tap class, practicing for the Big Recital. I have a feeling she would enjoy the class more if it was a plain old dance class, but she still likes to dance, likes her teacher, and her classmates. Afterwards, Don and Kaleigh and our friends Grace and Shannon are going to attend Toying with Science. As I explained to my mom, it's not-school for kids who go to school, but school for kids who homeschool. Don, called upon to answer all questions science in our house, is looking forward to it. I like science as an adult, but my knowledge is pretty limited. My junior high science teacher used to make up a lot of answers to questions he did not know, which I found out the hard way. I feel like I'm learning alongside Kaleigh now, and it's fun! I imagine she'll be able to teach me a lot after tomorrow's show. After the show, Kaleigh and her friend Grace are going to play imagination hardcore for a while. They always have terrific fun together.

We've had a stretch of decent weather, warm enough to be outside and time to be there. Don strung up the newest grape arbor, also a fence to protect the tulips and daffodils from kid feet. Kaleigh and I put a fence on the lowest 15" of it, and planted peas by it. We also planted Kaleigh's pink seedless grapes, plus two red currant bushes. I'm excited.

Seedlings are starting to come up in the seed trays. I have asparagus, rhubarb, arctic kiwi--much cheaper from seed, although they take a little longer that way. Also coming up are the dozens of open-pollinated heirloom tomatoes, seed saved from our friends' Gus and Andy's delicious tomatoes. I hope to have enough to keep me supplied with pasta sauce and ketchup, plus share with anyone who wants to grow their own and rediscover what tomatoes taste like.

Kaleigh has been enjoying the warm weather. Yesterday she grew, overnight. She woke up huge yesterday, and clumsy. First thing, she fell down the porch steps, and somehow managed to trip and stumble all day long. Poor kid. Today was better, fortunately, especially because gymnastics class was this morning. We also went to the library and were recommended the All of a Kind Family books, which are great so far. I love to see the pictures of old wood and coal stoves, people sitting around enjoying each other with no tv in sight. This book also has a lot about Jewish culture in New York from the turn of the century, so we're both learning a lot. This picture is Kaleigh with her friends Destini and Tink. They made a birthday cake. Can you see the candles?

Our friends Mike and Abby are back in town for a couple of weeks visiting. It has been great hanging out, talking, sharing ideas and information. They've been having a great adventure the last couple of years, getting a good education without indenturing themselves to enslavement to pay back overpriced loans. They are learning so much about gardening, herbs, living off-grid--so much. I'm glad to have them as friends and I'm really glad they can come back and visit!

Never go to Work

Unjobbing and unschooling, they might be giants, knitted puppets, and good kid music, all in one convenient You Tube video at http://youtube.com/watch?v=m3Kgj6EiZtw. I love the old folk song Hallelujah, I'm a Bum, and this is a good one for a new generation.

No cross needed to celebrate the arrival of spring for those who worship at the Church of the Open Sky, or the Church of Beauty. This holiday is dedicated to Patti Smith: "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."

We first saw a robin today. Although it's cold outside, the green reappearing outside is uplifting. We have garlic sprouting, along with a collection of spring bulbs, garlic mustard, clover, and dandelion greens everywhere. We can eat some bitters, and get some good nutrition once again.

Kaleigh is excited about the sugar-free candy Easter egg hunt, and the schlock she gets. So weird and hard in this culture to not participate when it comes to kids and their candy, corporations and their profits. I'm not sure what the commercialized American holiday has to do with Jesus anymore.

Sppprrriiiinnnngggg!

Today is the official start of spring, and what a beautiful day. After gymnastics class, Kaleigh and I went to the park with her friend Cecelia, and her mom JoAnn. The girls had a great time running around the empty park (too bad all the other kids were in school).

These pictures are from the weekend, when it was also warm. Here is Kaleigh, putting soil in the seed trays. We have been getting a lot of seeds and plants through the mail, and I saved seeds last year, so we are set! In the seed trays, we planted one whole flat of open-pollinated heirloom tomatoes, another flat of rhubarb and asparagus, and the third flat was mixed herbs and veggies. I have room for another flat, but we haven't gotten back to putting dirt in the last seed tray. I know, it's getting late to even bother starting seeds, but last year I did it way too early, and the record cold March didn't help.



Here is Don, sharpening his chainsaw. He has made really good progress on the giant American elm in our neighbor's driveway. Half of it was small enough that he could shove it into our yard, and the other half might be small enough to shove as I type this. Progress! The other picture is me, cutting up mulberry sprouts to fit into the kindling bucket. They should be nice and dry by next winter. I'm attempting to keep up with all the brush, keeping stuff like this on our property to be used for something, rather than putting it out in a brush pile for the city to ignore.

We spent yesterday cleaning out the play room and the catch-all closet. We got rid of a lot of stuff! We found a VCR! What?! We haven't had a tv in a decade! It's nice to be rid of all that useless and unneeded crap. Of course, it's still sitting around, waiting to be picked up by excited freecyclers.

cause for excitement

This is quite an exciting morning in our house. Kaleigh started doing this yesterday, unprompted: reading on her own, silently. Yeah!!!!

Yesterday, Kaleigh went to ballet and tap class, and then played with her friend Grace for many hours in the afternoon. They cleaned up like responsible girls.

We had about 5 inches of snow yesterday, which fell in about 4 hours. It was really beautiful, and thick!

I started reading another Kim Stanley Robinson book called 40 Signs of Rain. It is about now. I don't know why I like this author so much. He has an uncommon way of taking the everyday and mundane and describing it in striking detail. He's my favorite Sci-fi author next to Saint Phil (KD).

Today is going to be a fun day at home for Kaleigh and I. Don will be gone most of the day, first to SIU for a dry run, and then to IBR to sling some plasma. We're going to do chores, and do things we haven't had time to do with all the socializing we've been doing!

kissed by sunshine

Ah, a beautiful 72 degree day in central Illinois in the beginning of March yesterday. What a blessing! We spent the day outside, working and playing, kissed by sunshine and cranking out the Vitamin D. Here are Kaleigh with her neighborhood friend, Marco, hauling firewood in the new firewood stacker we acquired. A few hours later, Kaleigh was in t-shirt, skirt, and bare feet, complaining how hot she was. We saw many Vs of geese flying over to the northwest.

First cleaned up the firewood and bark left over from our hydraulic log splitting day in November, in preparation for moving the wind-prone shed to a more sheltered spot. But Marco just wouldn't stop! That boy can work! He hauled wood and bark for the better part of five hours, and stacked up this log rack with split wood 4 and a half feet high. I felt bad that I only had a dollar in my wallet to give him, but I think he felt a need to be needed and appreciated. And that he received in abundance!

Kaleigh got into the unstoppable act by sweeping the sidewalk around the porch, and helping Marco in between rope swing tricks. Don sharpened his saw and cut some more elm, to the encouragement of the neighbor in whose driveway it sits. I hung out some laundry, including some pillows that got rather gross by being stuffed in unsuitable places during a bout of Pillow Pirates. (We really need to do some spring cleaning!) Then, I smoothed out the sheet-mulched bed we prepared last fall and sprinkled on the greens seeds. I put the mini-greenhouse frame in place, but left the cover off until the rain and snow cease. We had thunderstorms last night, cold chilly wetness today, and snow is predicted for tomorrow. Yes, March in Illinois, hold the tomatoes (tornadoes) please.

Today was a cold and drizzly day, and I couldn't find my hat. We spent most of the morning at the Y, where Kaleigh had a culture club class featuring Eskimos. I walked the track, and I tell you, there's nothing like the jumping fiddles of bluegrass to keep me moving almost as fast as the joggers. Then swimming class followed by an hour of free swimming and playing. Then we traveled northeast many blocks to the library on foot (what were we thinking?), and spent an hour coloring and reading. I am reading the Grandma's attic series to Kaleigh, and although it's more religious than she'd probably like, it's not disgustingly though. I was surprised to read a chapter about the Gypsies, about the stereotypes held by this small farming community, and how this family was Christian, and said God loved the Gypsies as much as the Christians, and who were they to judge or badmouth? It was cool. It's great to find real Christians as they are such a rare breed.

After the bus home, we found our friends waiting for us, Jed and Amanda, and two of the three kids. Kaleigh played with her friend Kimmy, dress-up and singing, and pretend out the wazoo, while we grownups hung out with the baby Rahlee who is recovering from bronchiolitis. It was fun. The rest of the day was spent with Don or I reading to Kaleigh, who could barely keep her stiff body awake after many hours of play and activity.

It's a beautiful evening in Zomba.

carey

the years of rice and salt

This is a book I read, that Don is reading now, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Love history, sci fi, and feel an overwhelming need to change your self and the world? You will enjoy this book, and 600 pages will not be enough. The premise is that Europe's population has been wiped out by plague. The rest of the world keeps happening, and in a much different way than white people taking over everything. The characters are a band of souls, inhabiting different but same characters though a journey of reincarnation, learning and changing, always attempting to live life to the fullest, and giving the human spirit a lift from civilization's never-ending oppression.

I went to a small school, and my knowledge of world history, excluding Europe and America is scant. I felt like I learned a lot, even if much of it didn't happen. The book is definitely plausible, and because it brings up the same themes of this life in this time, it also provides for a lot of brain-poking questions. What are the keys out of the black iron prison? Passion, bravery, love, care, nurturing, knowledge, experimentation, slyness, being true to one's self...

We are illuminating the walls and trying to find what we are seeking: our escape into the world we know is possible. I am sure many of us can feel it in our bones. There has got to be a better way for us all. It's a challenge, but we're human. We have big brains and we can use them. Changing seems to be a key. If we keep doing the same things as previous generations, what are the odds that we'll wander out of the black iron prison that is also the cave of treasures? Either way you look at it, we're trapped. But we can smell the paradise outside the prison walls. We know there has to be a way out. But I am getting very off-topic from discussing the book.

If you have read The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen, you will recognize it in this book, as it catalogs civilization's wars, and all the cruelty and depravity they engender. It is simply history. I also was reminded of Fredy Perlman's Against His-Story, Against Leviathan, in that it was a history of some of the same places in the same times, and the themes show a cycle of war, suffering, empires rising and falling, which also is simply history. Not that this book is anything like those, but you will see some of the same themes.

I think I recognized my friends in the characters in this book--the magicians, the jesters, the sly foxes, the lovers, the mothers, the warriors, the engineers, the healers, the wise women and men. Did I forget anyone? I have always felt like an underdog, living life against the odds. My own mother will tell you that I have a really rotten birth star chart and it's no wonder I'm not a raving success. When I was a kid, I always rooted for the Indians to shoot John Wayne, and that was before I found out I'm only about 90% white. This book was written for me, for all of us who find ourselves at the bottom of the pyramid, wandering around and thinking there's got to be a better way, while rowing the galleys of MacDonalds and getting coffees and credit cards, watching tv when we get home because we're too tired to think about it, likewise for our fast non-nutritious food.

There is a better way, many of them. There are so many paths, I can't even begin to tell you of them. Actually, I can only see my own fairly clearly, and it has something to do with throwing of the shackles of not good enough, something to do with nourishing my body with nutritious food, laughing heartily, and caring a whole lot, sharing my everything with everyone I love. I still reside in the black iron prison, but I can see the garden popping up here and there. Fractals! as Kaleigh would say. There's the rise and fall of empires, bell curves of empires, empires of civilization. And here's the big 10,000 year long bell curve of civilization that is skidding down on wars, their technology, and our ignorance in killing off our host.

It's not going back, but forward, on the path that will take us into...something so beautiful maybe we'll never be able to name it.

Yesterday's quote from the zomban calendar, from February 29:
When the day comes that the sky is emptied of stars, and the sun is black, and the distraught winds have only the void for their lament, I am sure that somewhere [people] will be merry together, somewhere good hearts will greet good hearts and somewhere our dreams of unbroken love and good talk and laughter will have come true. This is a glorious Somewhere, and it is nearer to us than the stars.

sharqi