Easy summer; blackberries and Jaycob arrive

Last year when we first arrived, we quickly put in a garden (with the love and hard work of my buddy Valorie) and then Ben was born a month early. Even with all the chaos of moving and baby, we had a bumper-crop season.

This year we were a bit distracted by Jeff Halper's eminent arrival. So in the spring, when we should have been planting seeds in little pots, we were emailing and posting flyers.




Despite that slight set-back Courtney has managed to create two lush, beautiful vegetable gardens. And I have a sweet garden full of herbs and flowers, most notably sunflowers. The harvest has not been so dramatic as last year's though. That's because the heat has not been like last year's either. I am SO not complaining.





We spend lots more time outdoors because it's just so danged pleasant. Most every night we have dinner on the deck. The biggest pests are the bees and the kitties. We never planned to have four cats. It's not something people plan in life; it just happens. But Aaron loves them and they love him and that's worth alot. Plus they are so very cute and entertaining (and so is Aaron).





Another difference from last year: The blackberries all along the west side of our property are slowly ripening so that we have 2-3 buckets of berries each day, as opposed to last summer when they all ripened at once and we were totally unprepared. It's very fun to have a constant supply of berry buckets in the fridge and make gifts of them. Every day I take a bucket of them to work with me. Did you catch that "every day"? Yes, that's the big news in my life.




At the beginning of August I was hired as a staff member at the First Alternative Food Co-op where I've been working as an owner-worker (2 hours per week) and as a paid substitute whenever someone called me to fill in. So, bingo!, I went from 2 hours to 32 hours a week just like that. Hardly time to think, ohmygosh, what am I doing?

How, you may ask, can I do that? Aren't Courtney and I taking care of Ben so Maya and Eder can work? Well, the answer is that the same week that I had my interview for the Co-op job Eder's family arrived from Monterey--his mom, dad, sister and her baby Jaycob, who is two months older than Ben. So, just at this important developmental stage, Ben has a kid to play with all day instead of Mimi and Poppi (who were wearing down with age). So far this has been a successful transition for us all. May it continue.




Let's see, I guess the other topic I want to touch on is books. Lately I have felt this incredible appreciation for people who write books in an effort to shine light on something they feel will benefit the common good. I am realizing how much capitalism (if it doesn't make us money, it has no value), and the power structure and the promotion of competition (success by clawing our way to the top) dampen down the inclination to work for the common good. But two people who have overcome the odds, and think bigger than themselves, are John Robbins and John Nichols.

John Robbins, who would have been the heir to Baskin-Robbins but chose not to be, most recently wrote Healthy At 100". Of course most Americans look at that title and say "No way! Who would want to live to 100?" because they are looking at how people age in our culture. But John Robbins is describing in his book four different cultures where people live regularly to be 100 years old and robust, vital and still working and contributing. In these cultures the people do not eat like we do, stress like we do, live like we do or think about old age like we do. There's many contributing factors, including eating the food they grow themselves, fresh and in season, and exercising throughout the day as they work and move themselves around (not something they do at the gym after sitting for hours). How they live is not only good for their health and longevity, but also good for their state of mind, and for the environment around them. Low impact on their surroundings. Stewards of the land.

John cites different studies done on these cultures where people grow old gracefully, and on western cultures, where people do not. He says where the gap between rich and poor is the smallest, the overall health of those societies is the best. One reason is that no one fears being cast aside or financially ruined if they need care. And in those societies elders are revered and appreciated, not considered old and in the way. The older you are, the more valued you are because you have garnered wisdom and experience. You know more.

John believes that at any age we can drastically increase our life span and our health span by changing our low-down dirty ways. Courtney and I were both deeply affected by reading this book. It's 300+ pages and there's alot of repetition, but if you hang in there through the whole book, you start to think about things differently. Our habits are so ingrained that it takes more than 300 pages to change them. But here's trying!

My second recommendation is John Nichols' book The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure to Royalism. The title says it all. A couple of weeks ago Courtney and Aaron and I went to see Bill Moyer's show on impeachment, filmed July 13th, and we were all impressed with John Nichols on that show--how eloquent and passionate and well-studied he is on this subject. So I got a CD of John speaking at New College in San Francisco last November and have listened to the talk over and over.

Essentially he's saying that the founding fathers did not include in the Constitution anything about God, corporations, the electoral process. They did, though, include impeachment in six different references in the Constitution. Because they felt the greatest threat to our American experiment was not terrorism (duhhhhh) but a president that would over-step his authority, act as if he were above the law, and need to be removed from office. This they considered a Constitutional crisis and impeachment the cure to that crisis. Needless to say, John sees both Bush and Cheney ripe for impeachment, as do more than half of the American people.

In the vein of Gandhi's famous quote "Be the change you wish to see in the world", both John Robbins' book and John Nichols' book give us guidelines of how to be part of that change that the world so desperately needs.

Good reading, good luck and happy end of summer,

Valori

As Good As It Gets

It's now early August and Ben is more than 14-months-old. There's plenty I could say about life with a 14-month-old, but wanting to conserve time and space, I'll just say that he weighs 25 lbs and he rules the roost. He is sweet and adorable and strong-willed and a bulldog and a miniature Samarai warrior. (My new mantra: the world does not need passive people. It needs passionate, willful, determined warriors that will fight to save it. That's how I survive Ben's back-arching and melt-downs.)

I just this last week got a staff position at the First Alternative Co-op, so life is changing for all of us again. Ben's other grandparents miraculously arrived almost the exact day that I found out I'd gotten the job at the Co-op, so the Lord works in mysterious way, and I'll accept that. They'll take care of Ben while Maya and Eder work, and Courtney and I can still help, but mainly I'll be working in the deli, slicing that cheese and making those sandwiches. It's a great place to meet lots of people, and the kind of people that I want to meet. The work is busy, easy, physical and limited--when I get off work, I'm off work. Not like the years at the Rosedale, where I was always on-call and never felt like I was ever off work. And not like peace work, where there are small victories, but no end in sight. That's all to say, I'm quite happy to be employed, and the Co-op is where I knew I wanted to work, even before we moved here, so Hooray!!





Ben does not have a piggy nose other than when he smooshes it against our front door. He's a very handsome little boy (really, believe me!)




The other creatures in our lives climb this trellis that Courtney just built for the kiwi, run up and down the trees, romp, leap, scurry and pounce. Unfortunately they turned out to be nocturnal, so much of this romping takes place once we've turned out the light and, silly us, want to sleep. As with Ben, it's a good thing they're so danged cute.




Here's a back view of our house and deck as seen through the 6 ft tall sunflowers (whose seed packet describes a compact 3 ft flower, oh well....) The next entry on this blog (which I promise will be showing up very soon, please stay tuned) will include photos of our gardens, full of vegies, tomatoes, herbs and flowers. We've had incredibly cool weather, only a couple of really hot spells of temps over 100, but as soon as we get a bit more hot weather, the garden is going to be bursting forth and we'll be eating vegies morning, noon and night. Right now the blackberry hedge is producing a good-sized carton of berries each day, but soon it will be more than we can keep up with. We eat them, give them away, and will start freezing the rest. Plentitude!!

We've also been blessed this summer with visits from friends. We enjoy are sweet little town even more when we have friends to share it with. First Frank and Margaret from Pacific Grove came through on their way from Ashland to Portland. They are considering Corvallis as a destination someday in the faraway future, so it was fun to show them the campus, the Co-op and our favorite hippie restaurant, Nearly Normals. The day they arrived we had dinner out in the back yard--just a beautiful Pacific Northwest evening, good company, good food. The mornings were of course full of coffee and conversation. They pitched their tent in the backyard and Frank especially liked waking to the sound of birds.



Shortly after Frank and Margaret's visit, friends from Chico, Chris and Michael, called to say they were in Eureka and heading north. Chris is my old travelling-to-Guatemala buddy and someone I don't get to see nearly often enough, so that was a fun call to get. A few days later they arrived in their Veggie Voyager (pictured above and below). Michael converted the truck to run on vegetable oil and mounted solar panels on the top to power their home in the camper. We were one of their first stops on a 10-month road trip which will take them across Canada and around the U.S. and back to Chico next spring.




That's Sasha, their very mellow travelling dog, in the photo above and, yes, that's their bikes, kayak, and skis mounted on their truck. They had to pack for outdoor living that will span three seasons and many climates that they'll be passing through.

They are dedicated bike riders, so it was divine timing that they arrived just in time for DaVinci Days. (If you've been reading our blog since its inception you'll remember our photos and stories of DaVinci Days last year.) Michael especially was inspired by the human-powered machines he saw in the parade, and I wouldn't be surprised if they came back next year with an entry of their own.

As well as enjoying our time with friends passing through Corvallis, we just celebrated Aaron's 12th birthday on July 27th with a family dinner, on the 28th with swimming and then The Simpson's Movie, and on the 29th with a barbeque in Maya and Eder's backyard. That should be enough birthday celebration, even for a 12-year-old. He's been a great sport about all the change in his life. He has a very spunky and cheerful attitude and I hope he can maintain that throughout his life. I pay him to do a certain amount of work around the house each day, which includes helping with Ben and the kitties. But I also pay him to go to political events with me--documentaries, speakers, demonstrations. So he goes quite cheerfully (knowing that he's going to get paid) but he also pays quite close attention, asks lots of good questions and learns alot. He always says afterwards "That was so interesting that you wouldn't need to even pay me to go, but you already promised, so pay up." Well, I like the sentiment.

Last week we took him to see the film of Bill Moyer's show on impeachment. I highly recommend that you see it, if you haven't already, and that you take an impeach pie the next time you go to a potluck. The movement is happening--it's very exciting--jump on board.

That's it for today. Check back soon for flowering garden shots, and to hear more about what the kitties think about impeachment,

Valori