“…perhaps he is snatching us away from the jaws of certain psychic and cultural death by asking us to put on our thinking caps.”

Please vote today.

It’s a typical midwestern fall day - cool, sunny, the breathtakingly blue sky a perfect backdrop for the just-coming-on fall color - and this eases my Monday state of mind (despite the fact that it’s, well, Tuesday, and cold/wet weather is on the way). I’m walking to the bank, buoyed by the excellent weather and thinking, offhandedly, about lunch, when across my path mince two young “professionals”, - the kind of women that wear their office clothes a size too small and their shoes with pointy, pointy toes - one of them talking loudly about a new thrift store in town that is run by and benefits a popular local charity.

Mincy Young “Professional”: Well, I mean, you know, I have stuff to donate and they’re all, “We can’t take donations except at certain times?” What the f*ck is that about?.

[I’m finding myself about to agree with her, at least in principle (mainly because I hate showing up at the thrift with donations only to find them closed or unable to accept donations), though I find the eff word unnecessary, especially at such volume (lo, I am old now, it’s obvious), AND I’ve worked for an organization accepting food donations before and understand how difficult it can be when one is short-staffed and overwhelmed, so I end up being on the fence, when she continues:].

MY”P”: … I mean, I’m gonna donate my stuff when I donate it, and they’re going to LIKE it. Those people are going to take what they get..

Click-clack, click-clack, went their heels as they went off to lunch somewhere, and I recalled being reminded somewhere that “those people” is the plural form of “that one”.

Hm.

The President had a news conference yesterday. He said a lot of stupid things, as he is wont to do, and then he said this:

“One thing I think that would be — I know would be very creative policy is if we — is if we would buy food from local farmers as a way to help deal with scarcity, but also as a way to put in place an infrastructure so that nations can be self-sustaining and self-supporting. It’s a proposal I put forth that Congress hasn’t responded to yet, and I sincerely hope they do.”

A proposal HE put forth? Helping other nations be “self-sustaining and self-supporting”? I know it’s early and I haven’t had my coffee yet and maybe I’m just not reading as closely as I should, and I’m sure that he’s talking about food internationally as opposed to the US (I see “local” and “farmers” and my radar always pings)… and really, this is the same administration that’s destroyed seed banks during conflict in the Middle East and backs companies that creates seeds that can be used only one season (the better to force the farmer to keep purchasing seeds year after year), so…. …. what’s this all about?

< 2. Motorpsycho, Little Lucid Moments (released in the US April 2008) Four songs, 60 minutes, everything there is to like about music for this woman of a certain age (39), from a certain time/place (early 90s/CHGO) - guitars, noise, harmony, rhythm, guitars, noise, slow, fast, quiet, loud, etc. This trio from Norway has been bringing it (in English) for 20 years, evolving from a Jesus Lizard-like noise outfit toward a Yes-like faux-prog sensibility, infused on either end with adoration for giant guitar and jazz/indie stylings. My only friend that has ever seen them live wasn’t impressed (ears bled), but the words “Motorpsycho” and “US tour” still make my heart go pitter-pat. [Motorpsycho! At! Terrastock 2008!] ################## So, about the food: I was going to scan my receipt, but seeing as the scanner is snug underneath a pile of health insurance paperwork, some CDs, and some tax software info, I can’t be bothered. I’ll go ahead and list what’s on the table - most of the food is organic, and some is local - the * denotes a bulk purchase: A dozen local eggs 2 pound jar of local honey Jason mouthwash 2 cans Organix cat food 1 container Greek yogurt 1 container local goat cheese 1 bunch broccoli 1 head lettuce 1 container of dish soap* 1 container popcorn* 2 containers raw sugar* 1 container raisins* 1 bag chocolate-covered almonds (WHAT!)* 1 bag rolled oats* 1 bulb garlic 1 bag white flour* 1 small bag local cornmeal* 2 jars white rice* 2 jars brown rice* Eighty dollars! >Gulp<. I in no way fault my co-op - they're having to cope with rising food prices just like other stores, and they raise their prices grudgingly. The whole food price thing has been morbidly fascinating to watch, actually, because a) I eat, b) my family eats and c) my livelihood depends on people eating. What will it be like at the Market? We don't grow rice in Illinois, or produce much in the way of flour. Or, really, fruits and vegetables. We grow corn used to feed animals whose bodies are meant to eat grass; we also grow corn used to feed cars. We grow soybeans for oils and for... everything. Will more people come to the Market to search out fresh food options when the grocery store alternative becomes too dear on many levels? Will the weather improve soon enough to ensure timely planting? Will there be a late freeze like last year's, killing a large percentage of the state's fruit crops? These variances have meant a lot to me for years, but this year they take on a whole new meaning; people, including me, come to the Market to procure food. Right now, I'm interested in the fact that many (certainly not all) of the same staples purchased at a "regular" grocery store - even if they've been conventionally raised/grown - are costing about the same as what I paid at my co-op or... more. I buy from my co-op because I like to buy in bulk, clean food is a priority for me, they buy from local suppliers, and they get that people gotta eat. They and the Market are going to be my go-tos even more as conventional options start to become, well, less of an option. We shall see, eh? I don't have much in the way of links today. I've been reading a lot about ankylosing spondylitis, which I doubt anyone else would find interesting (but there’s a link for you, just in case). I have an appointment with my rheumatologist in a couple of weeks to see if it’s a possibility. Whee! Oh, who cares. Like a bad back is going to stop me. Locals: I’ll be teaching some Gardening 101 at Common Ground’s gardening workshop from 10-noon on April 12. Email me for more info.

It’s been an excellent couple of weeks. I know, I was really vague when I was writing before and stressed out and all that, but the skies have definitely brightened (despite our sucky weather) and I can report the good news. I’m very excited about my new job (yes! I can keep a secret!), because one of my many tasks will be to run and develop my city’s very large, very popular farmers market (officially monikered Market at the Square - see photo in previous entry). The position opened late last summer and I went through the application/interview process in December/January. People who’ve known me for a long time know how I feel about the Market and food as a community-builder; I’ve also written about it here. To say that I’m looking forward to this job would be a HUGE UNDERSTATEMENT. I’m coming over, City Hall. Of course, this mean that I’ll be leaving the Foodbank in a couple of weeks. I feel quite strongly about the work the Foodbank has done, is doing, and will continue to do; I’ve worked with really great people who know how to get it done… and we have gotten it done under some crazy circumstances. They’ve been an inspiration, and I’ll miss them. So. There it is. The cat’s out of the bag, the beans have been spilled, etc. I’ll have more to say about local food and local markets and suchlike, but do me a favor - if you haven’t already gotten this information to me from past queries, talk to me about your farmers market, if you have one. Is it big? Is it independent or is it run by a municipality? Does it have a website? Does it have its own facility? Outdoor or indoor? Year-round or seasonal? What do you love about it? What could your local market be doing better? Are you a lurker here? SPEAK UP! The comments are right down there! ****** Last night Cody and I headed over to campus to hear writer/philosopher Derrick Jensen speak. I’ve been reading his work for about 6 years - Janna turned me on to his work - and never thought anyone would bring him to campus. Well, I was wrong. And thank goodness, because his talk was excellent and lasted for 4 hours if you included the v interesting Q & A. What’s Derrick Jensen’s thing, you ask? His schtick? His modus operandi? A good start would be to check out these premises of his two-volume opus, Endgame. Here are a few of my favorites, taken directly from the website linked above: Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization. Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims. Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice. Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans. Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions. Pretty heavy stuff! But it’s what he says about hope that really resonates with me: False hopes bind us to bad situations and keep us from exploring possibilities… hope is a longing for a condition over which we have no agency. I know many folks disagree with this notion, and that’s OK. I find his work incredibly positive and energizing and… freeing. At any rate, we had an excellent time at the talk and I turned into a bit of a fangirl at the end, as you can see. You can read, if you like, more about what Jensen has to say about hope here, and you can read another great interview with him here. So - yeah! It’s been exciting. But I still haven’t done my seed inventory.

I should note, in case it wasn’t clear in my previous entry, that no one in my family is in any way affiliated with the University of Illinois, and we’re OK with that. We didn’t come here to go to school or get further degrees or to work at the University or anything. We chose to come here because it was a college town within easy distance of one of the world’s finest cities; we came here because there was a vibrant music scene, a chance to work in it, decent school districts, and low cost of living. And, yes, OK, Big Ten sports (you can take the girl out of Minnesota, etc). If anyone ever becomes affiliated with the U of I, it’ll most likely be the kids. I am Townie. ****** I hear quite a bit about “alone time” or “me-time”. The last time I really had any such thing - which to me means I am free mentally as well as physically of obligations to others - was before I had children. Nirvana’s Nevermind was rapidly ascending the charts (to the morbid fascination of me and everyone around me) the last time I had alone time. Oh, if only I hadn’t frittered away so much of my alone time - I didn’t even know it was my alone time. It was just my life, for God’s sake. So I guess I wasn’t frittering it away. I was living. Anyway. I now live with my husband, my 15 year-old, my 9 year-old, four cats, and a guinea pig in a small house. No, not a “not-so-big house” - a small house. Its square footage, if you don’t count the “garden apartment” (uh, basement) is somewhere around 1100 feet. The basement, half of which is finished off enough to be acceptable as living quarters, adds maybe another 500. Either way, we can’t have more than 4 people over for dinner, unless we eat outside. It’s a cute, strong, sturdy, old, well-built little house, kind of like the one from one of my childhood favorites: Right now, I experience what passes for alone time in the morning, after everyone has gone to work and school. I deliberately am the last to leave just so I can enjoy the lack of physical/emotional presence of any humans in the house. I love my humans a great deal, but that silence, that utter REMOVAL of all traces of kinetic activity and mental vibration, is something I marvel at every morning for a half-hour or so. I sit at my desk (see above) and putter for awhile. I listen to the news on NPR without the 15 YO interrupting to offer his opinion about what’s going on in Pakistan (I mean, he’s a cool kid, right on top of it, but it can get to be a little much before 8 AM). I do my grooming in peace and make my lunch to take to my office. It’s the only time I’m alone with myself every day. I dig it, because I’m alone in my space, this tiny house I share with so many others. I get some almost-alone time without the sometimes intrusive vibes from other people (and the constant distraction - if I’m by myself and I want to find people? I go to my cafe). I relish this half-hour every morning, rain or shine. It’s far more luxurious than you might think. ***** I find myself coming back, always, to certain topics/themes when I blog. Family, community, education, natural resources, consumerism, food, sustainability, history. I guess it’s my way of trying to make sense of what the HELL is going on around here while at the same time telling tiny stories. I probably won’t blog about national politics/the election as much as I did in 2004; national politics are ruinous of spirit and thoroughly uninspiring to me now. It doesn’t mean I don’t care; it means I don’t want to go specifically there while here. It means that I’ve seen what working at the local, grassroots level can do. Change takes time, and it takes individual discipline, not big fixes by millionaire men and women whom I doubt have anyone’s best interests at heart (except their own). I found a book while thrifting not long ago - published in 1977, Progress as If Survival Mattered is a compendium of essays by some heavy hitters/thinkers from the 70s. Categories for essays include population, energy, agriculture/food/nutrition, transportation, education, media, war/defense, and many others. I began thumbing through it recently, thinking I’d get walloped with some sort of 70s nostalgia trip, like I was watching Schoolhouse Rock. That it’d be quaint. That, you know, despite the mess we’re in now, we’ve come a long way, baby. I wish everyone could read this book - this book! It came out when I was in third or fourth grade. There were public service announcements on the teevee back then, and we had a President who admonished people to put on sweaters if they were cold rather than turn up the heat. Cars got good gas mileage. People were interested in conservation and the future because it was good common sense to be interested in these things. This book was filled with hope that the next thirty years could turn things around, that we’d realize the folly of so many of our ways and start doing the right things base don the evidence all around us, that community and education and conservation and helping each other out would be the difference - but it made no bones about the fact that the next 30 years would be crucial. It was a roadmap, not some meow-meow document. As I was reading, I realized that we haven’t come far at all, that we’ve frittered away thirty freaking years, and that we probably don’t have thirty more to make the changes we should have been making already. But. The other day I realized that reducing/reusing/repurposing/recycling, learning to grow and cook things, learning to make things and to improvise solutions, learning to self-educate, and getting to know the neighbors - these are activities/concepts that an entire industry has sprung up around, catering to the middle class and affluent. But they’re all concepts that are crucial in a conserver/”poor” culture and aren’t that common in the mainstream of an affluent one. I’m wishing they taught more of that in school, because I suspect those are the skills that are going to be most important, no matter how things shake out. Who will have the skills? Image by Eric Drooker ***** And, finally, in the oh, please department, I give you this: An Illinois police officer who is suspected in the disappearance of his fourth wife said Wednesday that she had asked him for a divorce - but he thought it was due to hormones. … “I’m not trying to be funny, but Stacy would ask me for divorce after her sister died on a regular basis,” Peterson said. “It was based on her menstrual cycle.” Article can be found here. Seriously?

Photo by his friend S.

I’m trying to get back into blogging without it being so… bloggy. You know what I mean? I know, I know. I’ve said that how many times since, well, my first and favorite old blog (Madame Insane, for those who’ve been around for a long time) bit the dust in, what, late 2004? Seriously, though - recently I’ve had several thought-provoking IM chats (I know - what are the odds?) with a couple brainy, inspiring broads (plus Amanda!). I’ve received old-fashioned US Mail from some seriously interesting women who make me feel all kinds of feelings - mostly the kind of feelings you feel when you hear from someone who’s known you best over distance and time. They’ve all reminded me that I write - even though I haven’t written well for awhile - without being overbearing or pushy in any way. I mean, even my mother doesn’t act like my mother any more - I should probably lose the chip on my shoulder, eh? I also went back to the saved archives I have from Madame Insane and I realized how much I’ve changed since that one launched in 2002. Clearly, writing on a regular basis at a “place” whose design I loved was good for me; the blogs that followed (MizUntitled and this one) never felt (or feel) right to me and weren’t (or aren’t) posted to nearly as often. Maybe it’s the Wordpress interface. Maybe it’s my total lack of design skills and color sense. Should either of those things matter? No. Neither should the pens I prefer to write with when at work or writing analog-style in my journal. But they do, they matter. Even though they’re distractions from matters at hand, they do matter. I turned 39 a few weeks ago and find myself at many, many crossroads - mental, physical, personal, professional… … and I feel that it’s time to incorporate some new keywords into the ol’ existence. Like discernment and focus and truth and momentum and breath and forgiveness. And principles - principles like count to ten before jumping all over The Teenager ™ and old habits die hard, but often it’s best to let them die and what you put out there comes back to you threefold and if it’s not working, do something else and less is more and fresh is best and maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. I’m coming off a month of terribly stressful work and other stuff, and while sitting around eating Halloween candy and opening the mental front door to give Despair the time of day is kind of appealing, I know it’s a recipe for disaster. Ergo, NO SOLICITORS. ****** In other news, Lilly turned 9 yesterday. She’s my youngest child - my baby - and she is a spectacular human being: Also, three years ago yesterday - on Election Day, no less - I put down the cigarettes for good. While I know it’s for my health and what about the children? and it’s a nasty, gross, and goddamn expensive habit were all rationales for quitting, here’s what pushed me over: Big Tobacco wants me to consume their products, possibly forcing me to use its buddy, Big Pharma, to stay alive someday. Pretty good racket, eh? No, thanks. Sally forth and conquer.

I’m fairly certain it does not. For more photos of the anti-war “die-in” Cody and his friends planned and made happen without incident on the University of Illinois campus yesterday, go here.