If you’re local (and maybe even if you’re not), you might be interested in following the progress of one Michelle Ryan, a local dee jay who decided she wanted to go as locavore as possible (that is, eat food mostly procured at Market at the Square and the other stuff from local-as-possible sources) for the month of September. She’s on from 9-2 weekday mornings at 94.5, and she also blogs about it at The Farmer and Michelle. It’s been a solid project, plus it’s cool to see Michelle out at the Market with her friend/shopping assistant, figuring out how much they can spend and stay within budget.

Market season is winding down a bit (only 9 Saturdays left), but there’ll be a lot of programming for kids in October. I’ve been really busy trying to finish off this year, but also with planning for next year. I dream in site maps and fancy Word docs at night.

I’m sorry, I just can’t stop looking at it.

It’s gorgeous outside and the kids are still asleep and I’m thinking school starting this week is going to be rough going in terms of rising cheerfully to greet the day. I’m going to roust them out of bed right now.

Really, though, I want you guys to look at the photos I’ve been taking at work these last few months. Not because they’re awesome, but because it’s been a really intense learning experience for me, and fun, and Cody’s been letting me use his camera so some of the photos actually ARE pretty nice:

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.”

I had dinner at Prairie Fruits Farm in Urbana, IL. Taken by Cody.

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…

Fresh strawberries, that is: We’re a few weeks out from the true beginning of strawberry season here, but they’ve got them in southern Illinois, and that means one of the Market’s vendors does, too. Today was glorious at the Market - at close it was about 75 degrees and sunny, sunny, sunny. In my own garden: salad mix, spinach, arugula, peas, beets, chard, broccoli raab, pole beans, peppers, tomatoes, onions, and a shit-ton of herbs and flowers. Cucumbers to follow. I made a salad from my own greens last night, but I bought greens today to supplement. In my neighbors’ yard, uneaten and we’re welcome to it: asparagus. I eat it at least once a day. In my DVD player: Season two of Friday Night Lights, which I adore with the force of a million blazing suns. On the docket for my weekend, which started today at 2 PM: some Red Stripe, some FNL, some weed-pulling, some grocery-shopping, some work, some thrifting, some catching up on sleep, and whatever else I feel like doing. I’m only in my interior work space 4 days a week now - Tuesday through Friday - and my office is the great outdoors on Saturday. It’s not a bad gig, I must admit. OK, I love it. Learning to drive: Cody. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. I know, I know, I need to play it cool. Shyeah. Talk to me when YOUR kid is learning in YOUR car. He is an awesome child, o yes, but the car is somewhat beyond his current ken. He seems to be fine biking everywhere which, with gas being $3.89/gallon where I live, is a good thing. We all biked to work/school last week because it was National Bike to Work week AND because we’re lucky enough to be able to do it. Owner of a new IKEA loft bed: Lilly. Somehow her “new” room is bringing home to me, hard, the fact that she’ll be in double digits this year. For dinner tonight: Jimmy’s Gyros. My husband is grilling the lamb right now, the yogurt sauce is made, the pita are warming, and it looks like we’re roasting asparagus, too. Off to see the dentist next week: me. Good times! What are you all up to? Why is it so hot in Oregon right now? Can I get a situation report?

Thanks to the weather and the plant sales around town, the first Market of 2008 just POPPED. Thousands of people, people. Vendors sold out of stuff, the vibes were good, the teevee news was there (I was not interviewed, thankfully), almost no one complained, and I can’t believe the only crisis I had to deal with was as minor as it was. I felt completely comfortable and like I belonged there. One Saturday down, 26 to go.

11. The Replacements, Hootenanny (1983) 12. The Replacements, Let It Be (1984) During our years at Chaska High School in Chaska, MN, my friend Lisa F had THE BIGGEST crush on Tommy Stinson, bass player for the Replacements. He seemed accessible (unlike, say, John Taylor of Duran Duran) for a couple of reasons: a) he was born in 1966, so he was close to our age and b) he was reasonably local. I’d look for him at Shinders whenever I snuck into town, but I never saw him, not once. His brother, Bob, was another story entirely. But oh! What a privilege to have BOTH these records serve alongside Duran Duran, Journey, Foreigner, and Prince as the soundtrack to my teenage years! How awesome that the Replacements (and Husker Du, and Prince, and the Suburbs) were my local music scene in high school (thus providing an entree into the local music scene whilst in college, which included Soul Asylum, the Jayhawks, Run Westy Run, etc)! How well both these records have aged - they’re seriously timeless. Timeless! They were the best band - badly behaved some (much?) of the time, unpretentious, brilliant, troubled, troubling; you’d be so disappointed in their behavior or the occasional bad live show.. but the first to vigorously defend them to a detractor. So. The Replacements’ catalog is being remastered and reissued with bonus tracks/outtakes this year by Rhino. The first half of the catalog (through Let It Be) was reissued this week; the latter half (starting with that old heartbreaker, Tim) will be released later this summer. I’m rebuilding my collection. ####################### Now Cody has whatever Lilly had, with slightly different presentation. He’s out of school today. Jim has it too, but it attacked just his voice instead, leaving him to squeak over the phone at work. I have a touch of it too, also in my throat, but I just sound like I used to sound all the time back when I smoked (I quit almost 4 years ago, and still think about having a cigarette every day). Lilly has recovered, but the cough sounds terrible, just like the doctor said it would. ####################### There’s a guy at the Wall Street Journal - not some doom-and-gloomer survivalist website straight outta 1999, but the Wall! Street! Journal! - advising people to, yes, stockpile food: Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you’ll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax. Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year. And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They’re all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%. These are trends that have been in place for some time. And if you are hoping they will pass, here’s the bad news: They may actually accelerate. Amazing stuff. I’m hoping for high yields in the garden… and stocking up on lids and rings for canning jars. It makes you wonder (well, it makes me wonder) if this really is the beginning of the Long Emergency…