Things just speed right along. I finally got some carrots:

Let’s see. Since I last wrote:

1. I gave up eating wheat. Not gluten (too difficult, and not sure celiac’s my problem), just wheat (plenty difficult all by itself). After eight days fully wheat-free (I forgot I had a pita chip misstep last Monday), I feel so much better that it’s a little embarrassing. I mean… it was that easy? I don’t want to be perceived as a picky eater/food fusser/dietary evangelizer, so I won’t talk much about what I’m not eating here. I will say I’m going to miss eating certain stuff, but it’s also awesome to feel awesome, and as it turns out… there are plenty of other things to eat. I think it’s more of a mindset than anything else, especially in terms of getting past convenience food and understanding one’s body’s signals regarding hunger, etc. So. There’s that.

2. A Momentous Event is happening this weekend. Common Ground - the humble little food co-op that, in 2005, gave me my start into the world of Working for Something You Believe In and Getting Paid For It, Even - has relocated and expanded and will be opening to the membership on Friday, with its doors swinging open to the public for the very first time on Saturday morning at 8 AM. OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS.

I have a lot of feelings surrounding this. Back in early 2005, right after we bought 909 (our current residence), Jeanne the Now-Texan and Then-Board Member encouraged me to apply for that Outreach Coordinator job at the co-op. I was hired, and that job paved the way for some major life changes (without it, or her, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today, I have no doubt) for me. But the job was hard sometimes, the co-op was struggling with getting from mere daydreaming to structured visioning to actual brick and mortar situation, etc. I left the job in mid-2006, but remained involved by joining the Board of Directors, and buckled in for a bumpy ride. Less than two years ago it seemed like things might have run their course and come to a not-so-happy ending, but in February of this year we found our future home (that’s Cody mopping - he now has a real job at Common Ground), and thanks to some fundraising derring-do, membership generosity, Board dedication, and management/staff tenacity and genius:

From this…

To this…

… in six months, y’all, when there were times we weren’t sure it was going to happen. And that last photo, taken August 16, looks NOTHING like what the store looks like today, which will look nothing like what the store will look like Friday at 5, when the doors are opened to members. Check out the custom-built checkout counter!

This is what true investment and buy-in - by a group of people - into a concept can do, even when the answer is often “no”, or the comment is “you guys must be crazy” (we heard both a lot). Yeah, I’m maudlin. What of it?

3. Uh. I’ve run out of steam. So, quickly:

a) Remember that awesome outdoor dinner I went to back in July at Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery? They’re doing several more through October, and you can reserve your space at any of them online;

b) U of I students return in force on Thursday and I shamefully have not yet purchased a single school supply or article of clothing for either of my offspring and school starts a week from today;

c) the Le Creuset set from August 5 was gone by the time we had the cash to purchase it - oh well;

d) Art Mart is pulling, IMO, the best espresso shots in town right now, not to mention carrying select owly bits;

e) drinking wine with good friends under a full moon until 2 AM every so often is worth the revenge it exacts.

Next entry: an interview with the young author responsible for this:

It was quiet in space. The shuttlecraft was still. Berry lifted her hands carefully off of her ears. “Ocea? Destiny?” she said to her team. “Anything broken? Everyone alive?” Juniper sighed with relief, putting her arm around her sister’s shoulders. “Anyone else been in space before?” she asked. There was complete silence and Juniper moaned inwardly. Great. Berry and I are in charge - again. “OK, girls,” she said decisively, “it’s patrol time.”

Sunflowers aren’t the rarest flowers in the world - there’s no shortage of them in my neck of the woods this time of year - nor are they the prettiest, but they certainly impress me every year with a) their ability to attract all kinds of birds to my yard and b) the fact that they can grow to be 12 feet high in what seems like no time.

Almost August Already. To me August means that Jim and I will note another year completed of marital bliss, that the garden is getting away from me, that a bunch of crap I meant to do didn’t get done, and a host of things I wasn’t planning to do did get done.

Hard to believe, but I am watering my garden while floods… well, FLOOD parts of my own damn state.


Here’s what’s happening outside this morning:








Cody and I picked these yesterday:


I am going in late today. It feels good to just be home in the morning.

This waking-up nonsense seems early for the weekend, anyway, but I got my 7.5 hours. So. Here I am.


Yesterday was excellent. After some wicked thunderstorm action Friday night and thick, heavy clouds greeting me at 5 AM Saturday morning as I “dressed” (crazy floral skort, T-shirt, kicks) for “work” (I still can’t believe I get to do what I do), the skies parted and the sun burned everything off by 7:05 AM. I saw friends, took photos, Jim and Lilly stopped by to pick up money for shopping, Cody showed up for a bit, my fears of disaster were unfounded, etc. It was extra-bonus, actually, because I spotted the The Sandwich Life and her family, plus Mrs. Chicken and her lovely Poo, neither of whom I’ve met IRL but recognized from their blogs. Of course I accosted them and probably freaked them out! It is my way!


I eventually ran into N the Future Blogger and we talked C-U blogging. My conversation with her gave me the idea to just start a blog for Market at the Square and transfer the content over if the Market’s page eventually gets some blogging capability, so I did. There’s no content yet. There will be tomorrow, I think. Maybe today. I don’t know.


Saturdays at work are the fastest work days I’ve ever had in my work life, which is extensive. It seems like we’ve just set up when it’s time to tear down. I am very lucky, indeed.


For Veganlinda: The only certified organic strawberries at the Market, as far as I know, are from Tomahnous Farm, and theirs will be more ready for the June 7 Market than they were for this past Market. I recommend arriving early.


I’ve been asked to speak at this series of events:

Continental Drift is an invitation to look at our collective existence on all the relevant scales: the intimate, the local, the national, the continental and the global. Continental Drift is a mobile assemblage of people presenting their projects, observations, experiments, discoveries and questions, and producing value through social exchange. Continental Drift through the Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor is a self-educating tour through our concrete world and its abstract representations, discovering distant lives in familiar situations, and embracing the interdependency that links what is usually treated as separate. Continental Drift is intended for anyone seeking to locate global economies, pressures and possibilities in daily life and to reorient aesthetic invention in response to an ethics of equality.

I’m excited, though it dawned on me yesterday that I’ll be leading a discussion in my neighbor’s backyard about food and localism and DIY food gardens, which means my backyard will be not just visible, but a possible focal point. There are some SERIOUS weeds that need pulling, the tomatoes need some mulch, arugula needs to be replanted, the beets and chard should have been thinned awhile ago, the beans need replanting because something is eating them, I keep forgetting to soak moonflower and cardinal flower seeds and - holy crap - all my squashes and cucumbers germinated. I can’t believe I’m trying to grow them again. I’m such a sucker. Anyway, I’ll be in the yard, and maybe I’ll get some snaps of how things are growing.


There is more - the Blue House of Sustainability and Gardening as Responsibility! - but it can wait until tomorrow.

So - yesterday I set out at about 8:20 AM in search of some whole bean coffee, as we were fresh out. It was lovely outside, and where we live is quite walkable to most things, so I decided I’d take a half hour or so - maybe a bit more if I stopped to smell the flowers - and take a brisk, invigoratingwalk to the local independently-owned cafe and then a local convenience store for the aforementioned coffee and a copy of Cody’s Favorite Reading Material - the Sunday NYT. Because, you know, I am all about supporting the local scene. Easy, right? As I approached the cafe after a delightful walk through my old neighborhood, it dawned on me that the possibility of there being no beans for retail sale was a distinct one, especially since I’d walked and not called first. A weird dry spell regarding beans at this particular establishment had happened before, and it wasn’t pretty when it did (I still don’t understand how a cafe could think it was OK to be entirely out of decaffeinated coffee for over a week). Since I was after fully-leaded beans, however - you know, the stuff regular people drink - there was no way this was going to be an issue. Right? However, I really wasn’t surprised when I walked in and discovered the only whole bean coffee they had for sale was a single pound of decaf. Swiss water-processed decaf, but… decaf. Onward to the next place - the Hippie Health Food Store! Surely they’d be open by my ETA, which was 9 AM as I was on foot and had already stopped to pick up the NYT. The smell of lilacs (which I stopped for several times) was overpowering along the way, bringing my last spring in MPLS (1991) to the front of my brain’s Memory Line. I admired some local architecture as I walked, and cursed myself for not wearing sneakers. It was with little surprise as I approached the HHFS and discovered they did not open until 10 AM. Drat. I strolled through downtown, on my way to the (regionally owned/operated) grocery store to procure doughnuts and some bananas and maybe, just maybe, some coffee. I looked at some excellent shoes in the window of the local high-end shoe store, checked out some Irish pottery in the window of another establishment, and lamented the fact that the Fancy French Bakery was not open on Sundays (it never has been, but I still lamented). Construction has begun on the county courthouse, I noticed, and the excellent maples near one of the busier intersections in town had finally leafed out. I crossed the street and walked past the Giant Coffee Conglomerate, which would have made everything easier, and on to the grocery store. Turns out the cafe in the store actually has better-than-passable beans. I waved to a co-worker who was there, buying orange juice and a newspaper. As I walked toward home, I saw a City Council member, a lot of rabbits, some interesting yard sculpture, my favorite flower garden, and the Blue House of Self-Sufficiency (more on that in a minute). I took a slightly different route at the end of my trip, the better to check out another one of my favorite gardens, hoping to catch its caretaker so I could ask about the yearly bamboo harvest. I heard a great many House Wrens, a bird I haven’t been hearing much over the last few summers, but seems to have settled in my neighborhood in force this year. Mogul Geoff and Hooey Jill were out in their enviably space-efficient front yard with their dogs, so I went over to say hello. After a lengthy conversation about rock n roll reunions, coffee roasting, container gardening, and heirloom seeds, I left their place with 3 packages of seeds (melons and pole beans) and three tomato seedlings (2 of them Black From Tula). Home was less than a block away; I arrived and delivered the coffee, bananas, and doughnuts. It had taken me two hours, but in that time - which went by really fast - I’d done something I used to do all the time but have had little time to do this spring - I observed. I took notice. Most of those places are places I’ve been walking past every day, but haven’t been noticing beyond a perfunctory registering. ****** Fun news from Chank - Wordier Diva and Li’l Diva will soon be available to font nerds/freaks/devotees everywhere. Wordier Diva is a twelve-years-in-the-making re-draw of Wordy Diva, and Li’l Diva is, of course, Lilly’s contribution to the Wordy Diva family. Lilly is hoping to get Li’l Diva into the Artemis Fowl series. Could be an excellent case of like mother, like daughter. ***** Obligatory Market at the Square photo, taken Saturday, May 24: Note especially for locals: the Market now has a Facebook fan page, a Flickr photostream, and a weekly preview page that gets updated the Thursday before the Market. Also for locals: would love to see you at the Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force Listening Session in Urbana this Wednesday, May 28, from 7-9 PM at the Urbana Civic Center in downtown Urbana. The Facebook page is here, a link to the (PDF) flyer is here, and I really hope some of you can come and contribute to the dialogue. I’ll be there, too! ***** I was going to keep going, but this is plenty long enough for today. More soon, this time on Motorpsycho, the Blue House of Self-Sufficiency, and gardening-as-responsibility, plus whatever else…

It was a weekend filled with spectacular misfires (involving, among other things, an altercation with a dog, pampering a feverish child, and a busted water pump) and even more spectacular weather. I got to spend some time in the yard - we cleaned up last year’s unholy mess, moved a literal truckload of compost into the garden beds, and I planted a few things. People, I salivate (I know, ew) at the thought of truly fresh food. The neighbors’ asparagus is up, my greens have sprouted, etc, and after a conversation with one of the Market growers, I think it’s going to be a decent start to the season even though he is, by his estimation, at least a week behind. It’s going to be awhile before I eat anything out of my own garden, so BRING IT, market vendors. So then I went in to work for a half day (when the kids are sick, Jim and I split the days) and everyone wanted me, just like the Billy Squier song says. I guess it IS that time of year, but heavens. I got home and was fretting about my girl child, grocery shopping, and general WHATEVER. I think I ate something for dinner with MSG in it because this is exactly how I feel afterward - crabby, puffy and needing everyone to do my bidding (with ensuing crabbiness when they do not). Farewell, endless Monday.

7. Throwing Muses, “Not Too Soon” and “Counting Backwards” maxi-singles from The Real Ramona (1991) The Throwing Muses were dead to me me until The Real Ramona came out just ahead of the lilacs in early spring 1991. I’d always been very attracted to the testosterone thing in rock music (with a few notable exceptions - see Sinead O’Connor), and I had passed the Muses off as “difficult”. Another Lisa got me to listen; the way she scrunched up her face as she sang along to “Not Too Soon” got me thinking that maybe I was missing out. The Real Ramona got women in music my permanent attention. [A couple months later, she and I were in a band with a couple guys, one of whom was Jason Keillor, for a few months before I moved to Chicago.] The two lead songs on these singles are from the record, which boasts a truly developed pop sensibility, the most of any of their releases. These singles also feature a couple of remixes, one from TRR and one from 1989’s Hunkpapa (”Dizzy” just shines), and a cover apiece. ############# The Muses’ Kristin Hersh is posting a photo a day here. Songs from 6 of the 7 releases (no Motorpsycho yet) I’ve profiled this week can be streamed here. Stream it while you surf the tubes! I’ll be doing it every week for that week’s reviewed releases. Garden photos tomorrow.

Let’s get this party started with a photo: The idea of place has been kicked around a lot in my eensy little corner of the blogosphere lately - in real life, too. I have friends who don’t like where they are; I have friends who think where they live is fantastic; I have friends who like where they are but still wish they could be elsewhere. Here, people generally yearn for geographical attributes that are nonexistent in this part of Illinois - they pine for places where there are mountains (lakes/hills/cliffs/oceans/Trader Joe’s). Nothing wrong with that - it’s damn flat here and it’s not exactly the land of ANY lakes, much less 10,000. We always want what we can’t have; in my case, it’s water. I’ve heard there are a lot of people where I live who were brought here against their will (kidding!) by spouses/partners pursuing advanced degrees. I imagine that happens a lot in a college town, that being thrust into a new environment that in no way resembles the one you came from. In our case, if you come into town the wrong way at the wrong time of year, it can scar you for the duration of your stay here. Seriously. Do not come into C-U via South Neil in February. Chuck D was here a few years ago, lecturing on campus, and while he said a great many interesting and profound things, he also said something very simple that really struck me, given my situation at the time - it’s not where you are, it’s where you’re at. I think of those words often, for I’m a Total Townie ™, I’ve been here for almost 12 years, and I’m mostly OK with that. That’s right, y’all! I’ve been here for 12 years this coming June. See, I left Chicago for Urbana in 1996 to live with Jim and Cody in some goddamn peace and quiet. I was going to grow food in my yard in dark lipstick and boots! I was going to wow the natives with my CHGO savvy whilst turning out dishes from some Moosewood Cafe cookbook I’d come into! This was not going to be Green Acres - far from it! I was going to successfully remain City Mouse with my black Todd Oldham skinny pants and platinum hair while concurrently going all Country Mouse with the gardening and the home cooking and… and… stuff. Of course, I’d never grown a thing in my life (Me help out in my parents’ gardens? As if), and the only cooking I was familiar with was the kind you do when you come home from the bar at 2 AM and you put some pasta on to boil and when it’s done you top it with a jar of Ragu belonging to your housemate. That kind. But it didn’t matter, my lack of experience, because I was going to force the City/Country hybrid concept on myself. And Urbana. I won’t bore you with all the details, but there were many, many kitchen failures that first year, and since our landlord wouldn’t let us have a garden (you mean, not everyone has a garden here? How do you eat without Whole Foods?), I tried growing basil plants in a window box, resulting in their deaths. I embarrassed myself regularly at the Farmer’s Market, but the worst (best?) time was when I threw an entire bag of salad greens away, certain that some crazy-tasting weed had found its way in. I mentioned it to the grower, who assured me that, in fact, the greens I was eating were of the highest quality, so I tried them again and again with the crazy-tasting “weed”. Needless to say, I decided to quit buying greens from THAT guy.* When I arrived here, I worked in the music business and had next to no appreciation for food or what goes into the production or preparation of food - how hard could it be? Last night, I attended two events. The first was my food co-op’s 33rd birthday bash, which was a potluck of the highest quality; no one creates vegetarian/vegan fare made from local ingredients like the co-oppers. There was music and dancing and little kids. Dinner conversation was lively and meaningful and often hilarious. It was an especially awesome occasion, because the co-op was close to death a few years ago; not only is it thriving, it’s expanding to a new location sometime in the next year. Nope, C-U doesn’t have Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, but we do have Common Ground, and I wouldn’t trade the conviviality for anything - I’ve met people who do massage, keep bees, have mastered the baguette, know how to install skylights and tankless water heaters, are experts in homeopathy and commodities trading, host websites (like this one)… and they can all COOK. I owe my past employment at the co-op to my dear friend Jeanne the Wise, and I continue to work with Common Ground as a board member. I then went home and grabbed 2/3 of my family and made them go with me out to Prairie Fruits Farm, who was hosting a farewell party for Eric The Menz. I wrote about Eric several years ago on one of my other blogs - I discovered his 4 beautiful chickens in an alley coop when I was walking to the library one day:

We were walking down the street today when Lilly spied a chicken coop down a little alley. Further (and furtive) investigation resulted in the discovery of four young hens very comfortably ensconced in a most divine little coop with accompanying cute house. It was all so clean and petite and so visibly doable in so little space. It was inspiring. I went back later and had a nice chat with the owner, a very nice man who had actually attended the informal chicken seminar Janna and Ed had given this past winter. The coop is of his own design (though loosely based on the chicken tractor model) and is made of both scavved and new materials. All told, he said, the entire endeavor cost about $70. The nesting boxes… are in the chicken house and were constructed from old office furniture.

Meeting and talking with him made me realize that chickens were possible in smaller numbers and smaller spaces and getting to know him helped me decide that I wanted chickens, for real. We became friends over time. His 4-chicken hobby turned into a several hundred-chickens business, and he sold his eggs to the co-op and other people interested in locally-sourced food. He eventually got out of eggs, but continued to work at Prairie Fruits, where he’d kept the birds. As an aside, he’s also a hell of a softball coach - when he invited me to play on the team he was coaching, I had no idea how crazy into it he was, and when he showed up wearing batting gloves and barking orders, I was like, oh, shit, he’s really serious. I had to quit because of a bad shoulder. Thank God. Heh. No, really, I do have a bad shoulder. Anyway. Eric’s getting a farm in his home state of Iowa and his farewell party was last night. When we showed up and went into the barn, I was immediately surrounded by almost every local food producer within a 50-mile radius of Urbana, people I’ve gotten to know, some of them well, over the years once I got over myself. All the food was local, the meat was tremendous (-smelling - I was too full to eat), and the keg was Goose Island. The Corn Desert Ramblers played, little kids danced. It was friendly and comfortable and… safe? There was a bonfire outside and a fantastic 360-degree view of the nighttime prairie. It was cold. It’s November, and I usually loathe midwest November, but I came home last night feeling pretty good about where I live. I still like lipstick: Almost as much as I love locally-grown eggs, goat cheese, and spinach:

Everyone eats. So simple, so complicated, and my life’s work. I would never have figured that out had I not come to Shampoo-Banana.

*The “weed” was arugula (which I now grow in my own garden), and Jon, the grower, has been a good friend of mine for years.

It’s already been a hell of a morning. We’ve had a Cat Incident (With Neighbor), a missed bus, an unplanned trip as a result of the aforementioned, and a rather utilitarian trip to the Farmer’s Market. [To be blunt, I hate the end of the growing season (although cannot tell it is, in fact, the end of the growing season if one steps outside. Today’s forecast high is 90 degrees, and tomorrow it’s supposed to be even hotter). I hate it in my own garden (rotting tomatoes smell like hot ketchup, and not in a good way), and I dislike it at the Market even though some of my favorite foods are ready to eat. Brussels sprouts are in effect (though I didn’t see any today), broccoli and spinach are back, there’s all manner of squash… but it’s still the end of the season and there’s no sweet corn left and whatever beans there are are kind of dry and stringy, and today was the last of the potatoes and, damn, no garlic at my favorite stall today.] Today I plan on taking photos, cleaning, writing, being a fair-weather Big Ten Football fan (I’m not a huge football freak or anything, but when one live in a Big Ten town, one finds oneself getting involved in the Big Game whether one wants to or not - traffic, constant topic of conversation for most people, etc), getting a couple packages ready for mailing on Tuesday, taking my blog out for a good shake and hanging it on the line, and trying to figure out the best time of day to bake a cake tomorrow. I’m thinking in the AM. I’ll be back!