I’ve been writing for a long time, but I always seem to come back to the same themes - and since blogging, sometimes even the same titles for posts. I’m pretty sure I had an entry titled this very same title about 4 years ago.




Awesomeasana posted about words and phrases recently, and I really liked the idea of leaving some here for readers. Maybe you’ll get an idea of where my head is at lately.



Without further ado:



re-invent discernment confidence discipline patience write forty teach dirt impart balance initiate revolution

OK, now that Thanksgiving’s over, I can talk about holiday food. Thanksgiving doesn’t really count for me, since the fare is relatively simple in our family (turkey, dressing, cranberries, mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, bread, and pie). Unfortunately, I’m a little cranky this morning, so I’m going to re-post something from last year. Besides, if I have a recipe that’s a Perennial Fave of Others in the Blogosphere, this would be it. Proofing Mom’s Cinnamon Rolls 4 1/2 - 5 C (unbleached/organic, if you can) flour 4 t active dry yeast (2 packages) 3/4 C milk 1/2 C water 1/2 C vegetable shortening (part butter — also, I use Spectrum’s non-hydrogenated shortening — it works very well) 1/2 C sugar (or rapadura, or ecocrystals, or turbinado) 1 t salt 2 eggs, room temperature Measure 1 3/4 C flour into yr large mixer bowl. Add yeast and blend. Measure milk, water, shortening, sugar, and salt into saucepan. Blend. Heat until warm (about 120-130 degrees F). Pour into flour/yeast mixture. Add eggs. Beat 30 seconds with electric mixer at low speed, scraping bowl constantly. Beat 3 more minutes at high speed, scraping bowl occasionally. Stop mixer. Gradually stir in more flour (by hand) to make a soft dough. It will be rather sticky. Knead on lightly floured board or counter until nice an’ smooth, about 5-10 minutes (it’s good exercise!!). Cover with bowl or pan and let rest for 20 minutes. Shape as desired. Here’s what I do: I cut the hunk of dough in half, roll out one of the halves until it’s flat and rectangular and large, brush it with butter, sprinkle it with a cinnamon/sugar mixture, add raisins (sometimes), and roll it up. Then I cut off the ends and cut the rest into 1″ wide slices. They usually fit nicely into 2 9″ greased cake pans. Then I put them in a warm oven (I usually warm it to 200 degrees for a few minutes, then turn it off) with a pan of hot water under them and a foil tent over them and let them rise for 40 minutes, or until doubled. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. You can ice these with powdered sugar icing (I usually do) after they’ve cooled off, but believe me when I tell you that they’re wonderful just plain and warm out of the oven. Cool them on a rack. When they’re cool, you can wrap them in foil, and freeze. Just warm them in a 250 oven for about 45 minutes and oooh baby! It’s like you just made ‘em. Enjoy them — the recipe is from a cookbook called Homemade Bread, published by the Farm Journal folks in 1969.

November 2, 1998 was the day a page was turned, a light was switched on, a door was opened. We brought our new daughter/sister home and began a brand-new family life, and while it was very, very good, it was also damned difficult at first. We had to adjust to being four instead of three, and I know Cody, who was six when Lilly was born, had a rough few months of it before the edges smoothed enough to allow for some big brotherhood to creep in. He remained in school for the rest of that school year and all of the next, but came home after second grade…… and another page was turned, a light switched on, a door opened. The five years that followed were, frankly, some of the best years of my life so far. [Way more fun than hanging out with rock bands, that’s for damn sure. Seriously.] When Cody left school, that’s when the real education of my adulthood began. I see those five years as the core formative period for our family - constant activity (though it wasn’t always about learning), constant togetherness (though it wasn’t always fun), constant struggles to make ends meet (don’t ask me how we managed, because I have no idea. Well, I do). The kids had freedom to learn what they wanted to learn, and so did I. I have no doubt in my mind - none - that if Cody had stayed in school, I would never have pursued gardening, food, or cooking to the degree I did (and do). I would never have found the work I’m doing now - food system work - I know I’ll be doing, in some fashion, until I’m not working anymore and even then… I’ll be doing it. Homeschooling the kids for five years enabled me to learn how to learn again. It also gave me a chance to parent kids in a way I’d never imagined I’d be wiling to try. These two kids, who would never have attended the same school (and now that they’re in school, never will), grew up together respecting each other (for the most part) and being each other’s friend and partner in crime. They had easy access to an adult they were close to for a hug, some conversation, a game, whatever. Our family became closer-knit - we were one tight unit back then - but more welcoming, too, of friends and relatives and guests. Not having so many work/school demands was, in a word, awesome - that kind of freedom is unheard of in this culture, and I spent a lot of time explaining ourselves to people who were suspicious of all that “hanging out”. A lot changed when Cody went back to school in 2005, and more changed when I went back to work full-time in 2006. It’s complicated (what about families isn’t?), but it was time to do something different. The kids needed it, Jim and I needed it, and the family as a unit needed it. The whole career thing for me was terrifying professionally - what if they find out what an utter fraud I am? What was I thinking, re-entering the work force after 8 years? - and personally. What if putting them back in school was the wrong decision? I fretted. What if they’re bored or get in trouble? What if they secretly hate us for what we’ve done? What if they don’t value the time they had at home? What if family is no longer important to either of them? Or to us? I still fret about all that, even though they’re both very well-rounded kids who are solid parts of their school and outside communities. And intimidatingly bright and committed. What is my problem? I mean, life isn’t perfect by any means, but perfection would only serve to make me more anxious anyway. On the way home from Michigan this past Sunday, I stole glances at the kids while they did their thing in the back of the car, knowing that we’re on the back end of family vacations including all four of us. It hurt, which made me sit up and assess this new situation - that of the children are not babies, toddlers, or young children anymore, and holy freaking bats, I have a nearly-grown man as offspring. Tonight, we’re putting Cody on the Amtrak to be with his dad for Thanksgiving, and he’ll probably be gone for 9 days directly after Xmess. We’ll miss him, but we’ve been heading in this direction for awhile. He was gone most of this past summer, and plans to be gone all of next. He’ll be 16 in July, but he let me peck him on the cheek when I dropped him off at the high school in this morning’s pouring rain. That’s when I knew it was OK. Sometimes, I worry about Lilly’s feelings about the shifts in the family dynamic. It occurred to me that maybe she doesn’t really notice, or if she does, she doesn’t care. Maybe she wouldn’t show us if she does care, I’ve thought. But then I read this last night, excerpted from her current story:

Gwen took a deep breath. “You don’t know where your parents live?” Mysta turned to her. “I don’t know yet, but I can find them. If I wanted to see them, my longing would be so great that I would if it was the last thing I ever managed to do. If I really wanted to see them, nothing would dare to stand in my way. I would hunt them, stalk them, track them down if it cost me my last breath; hunt them not like prey, but out of love and devotion for my family.” Gwen was knocked silent by these words, although Mysta continued her lecture. “If I wish to do something I can do it. I would battle Tai, slash the Dark Riders to bits if I had to –” here Gwen shuddered at the gory visualization, “– and even battle the Lord Maskmei, high in his palace at the peak of Ghuandumar. I could do it. If it is out of love for my family and devotion for my friends, I would battle till my last breath to see or do what I really wanted to.”

Lisa B-K and her kids, Florida, 2007


I’m thankful for the political conversations. The phone calls reassuring us when he’s late. The love notes. The unloaded dishdrainer. I’m thankful for “Mom, have you ever heard of the Pixies?” and “I wrote Oma a thank-you note, and could you put a stamp on it?”. Gratitude abounds for games of Scrabble and Set, for LOtR movie night, for father/daughter basketball games and mother/son protests. I’m not going to hold on too tightly, because that makes them struggle to get loose. I know this. I’m just going to find deep peace in this period of time and enjoy my people. May you do the same.

They say time near water can breed great ideas. The family and I took a much-needed getaway this weekend to the shores of Lake Michigan. Now, this getaway involved the four of us shacking up with my wonderful sister-in-law, her husband, and our three nieces, PLUS my parents-in-law; it also involved a trip to the University of Notre Dame for a rainy and chilly football game and a sneak peek at the campus. These are activities that might not sound all that vacationy or getawayish to most, but if you knew my family-in-law (and if you could have seen this awesome arts & crafts bungalow we stayed in), you’d understand. And, yes, I like college football games: I’m not so into the way universities deal with their student-athletes, but that’s a topic for another time. I am aware of the duality of the situation. But, yeah, it was good. I’m hopeful that the weekend away was the gateway to good things. There are many irons in the fire. How’d you spend your weekend?

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?

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.

Photo by his friend S.

My good friend Jane the English Reflexologist is returning to the UK for good in early December. Her husband and youngest (who’s Cody’s age) are already there, along with her grown daughter. Her middle kid is almost 19 and is heading off to Australia from Urbana in a month. We’ve known this family for 12 years; they’ve been here for twenty. If anything, watching them go through the experience of pulling up stakes after so many years in one place reminds me to never say never, but I can’t shake the feeling we’re Total Townies ™. I’m fine with that. I’ll write about why another time. No more time for words, so just a couple of photos:

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.