Household Blog

As part of my herbalism class, this past week we had a guest teacher, the lovely Suzanna Stone, to teach us about fermented foods, fermented beverages, and above all, the importance of joy and courage in the kitchen. We all left the class thoroughly blissed, with happy tummies and tons of inspiration to digest.

Over the course of the day, we sampled and/or made sauerkraut, kimchi, ginger carrots, beets, brined garlic cloves, herbal soft drinks, kombucha, and t’ej – an exquisite no-heat Ethiopian honey wine. Needless to say, I can’t wait to try out these wonderful ideas in my kitchen at home. Currently percolating, I’m planning to make a fermented green tomato salsa with the last of the tomatoes left on the vine. I’ll keep you posted as I progress.

Suzanna introduced us to a wealth of wonderful information about the health benefits of fermented foods. My favorite quote of the day: “’Rotten’ is a culturally-determined concept.” That made me chuckle. In addition to adding a couple fabulous new books to my wishlist (especially Steven Buhner’s book on sacred and herbal beers) and nifty way of peeling ginger with a spoon (again, how have I missed this!)  we were introduced to Lehman’s Non-Electric, a catalog wonderland of do-it-yourself whizgiggery, sturdy tools, enough non-electric (and some electric, to be fair) items for the home, kitchen, and farm to put a tear in any luddite’s eye.

I placed my first order on the Web site (funny that – non-electric and available on the Web) this morning and am eagerly anticipating my first shipment, along with a free copy of the paper catalog, which will be my evening harlequin romance reading for many an evening, tucked under the covers with a warm dog at my side. I feel almost a little cheated that I’ve missed out on this for almost thirty years, but I’m happy to make up for lost time.

After years of intense research on the subject, I have developed the Theory of Observable Coordination. In said theory, I posit that the amount of physical coordination (or lack thereof) possessed by an individual (we’ll call our individual Sam) at any given moment is directly proportional to the number and degree of importance of the people present. For instance, on a scale of 1 to 10:

• Sam’s dog who loves him no matter what = 1
• Sam’s cat who feigns apathy but mocks him inwardly = 2
• Random dude going through Sam’s trash can = 3
• Sam’s smartass younger brother = 5 (due to ongoing heckle-ability)
• Sam’s hipper social acquaintances = 6
• Sam’s boss (a real battle axe, that one) = 9
• The person that Sam’s been crushing on for months and tonight could be the night = 10

You get the idea. If x=percent chance of Sam committing a humiliating act of klutziness; y=number of people present in the immediate vicinity; and z=the average of y’s assigned numerical importance (subjective of course to Sam’s personal means of ranking import), then:

x = y(z) / 100

To illustrate, if Sam is hanging out at home with his critters and decides to do some yoga (he’s sensitive like that), y = 2 (# of pets present), z = 1.5 (average of their degrees of importance), so in this instance Sam has only a 3% chance of humiliation. Of course we may need to build in an allowance for different sorts of activities, I mean, he is doing yoga, and that should somewhat raise Sam’s chance of humiliation. Well, we’ll get back to that…

Now if Sam walks into a room at a party and sees that 6 angry exes are having a tete-a-tete regarding Sam’s flawed character and other myriad inherent shortcomings, then y=6, z=10, and he has a 60% chance of utter humiliation while beating his retreat. Of course, it goes without saying that if your x > 100%, you’re pretty much screwed. Sorry guys.

Questions? Comments? Additions? Funny stories?

No better place in the heat of August than on a mountaintop in West By-God (that’s West Virginia, perchance you didn’t know). Last weekend, I had the incredible opportunity to visit Snowshoe for their annual Symphony Weekend.

Allow me first to say that that not only is a mountaintop the best place to chill out in August, but August is likewise the best time to visit an erstwhile ski resort. Winter sports never agreed with me—I’m all knees and elbows and on my one attempt to learn to ski, my instructor actually requested that I never endanger their slopes again. I happily took his advice.

But the mountains! Oh! And the music! Oh oh!

Two full-length performances featuring the West Virginia Symphony, an incredible ensemble, a wonderful selection of music, I was beside myself. And when we weren’t being bowled over by the sounds of Elgar and Byron Adams and the lot, we were riding the chair lifts down wildflower bespeckled mountainsides, picnicking by the lake, and enjoying some well-deserved rest.

To top it all, an encounter with a black bear in the parking area, and deer everywhere! Now yes, I’m admittedly a treehugging dirtworshipper, and I have a ridiculous love for all dem critters great and small. These two species in particular have always held a place of magic and reverence in me. So I find myself out on the back porch of our little cottage, a doe and two fawns grazing far down the lawn. The doe makes her way in our direction, stopping to graze occasionally, and though I originally thought she just hadn’t seen us, she is clearly looking right at us as she approaches. She ended up about three feet from where I sat on the steps, so close I could see her breathe and smell the forest musk on her hide, hear her munching the lawn. Eventually her fawns came bounding over and they all moved on (mothers seem to think I’ll be a bad influence on their chilluns, in general), but I was breathless and dazzled with the encounter.

I’ve always gotten stupid around animals. There’s a great xkcd cartoon about it, actually. When I was a wee lass (still all knees and elbows, just on a smaller scale), I used to listen to the Disney recordings of various and sundry children’s stories, and somewhere along the way I conflated that Snow White’s secret in winning over her forest friends was in whistling sweetly and holding a finger out for the birdies to sit upon. Perhaps I felt a sympathy with our common complexion. Regardless, here am I, in full oversized dress-up regalia at age 5, attempting to whistle something vaguely reminiscent of a ditty, and chasing birds in the yard, thrusting my demurely-extended finger at them in frustrated crescendo. Poor traumatized birdies.

I like to think that my understanding of human/animal interaction has evolved. But the enthusiasm remains.

Yep. Mean people suck. This week at the Purple House, I almost fell prey to an online scam. We have all heard horror stories and have received e-mails about internet security, identity theft, and avoiding e-mail viruses, etc., but I have never ever myself actually been personally touched any of those incidents. But dear friends, my scam cherry has officially been popped.

In light of increasingly tight budgetary situation (I’m sure many of you can relate) I decided to advertise for a roommate to live with me in the Purple House, alleviating my monetary stresses. I placed ads in several local publications, as well as the Richmond branch of CraigsList. So far, I’ve gotten one bite, a bite better left unbit. An alleged female in South Dakota by the name Lucy Okuyade (just Google that, for fun) contacted me saying she wanted to move to the area, that she was a social worker, of German birth, plenty of personal information, and would be willing to pay a deposit in advance of moving here. We exchanged a couple e-mails, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss.

Perhaps I was just nervous because I couldn’t check her out in person, face-to-face, perhaps it was because I couldn’t get through on the phone number she provided for her uncle in England as a reference, but I began to dig. I started by mapping the two addresses she’d given me for her current address and her uncle’s England address. Neither looked to be residential, and the one in England was a hospital. Then, on a lark, I decided to Google her name. Instantly I got several results with her name, CraigsList, and “scam” all featured prominently.

Turns out, I cut it pretty close. “She” (probably an 80-year-old Chinese woman or child pirate or a sentient computer named HAL or something) has stolen thousands of dollars from others in the same scam, wiring enough money to the victim to cover security deposit, the full first month’s rent, plus money for the movers, then asks (not sure why) that the victim in turn pay a portion to that for the movers. Of course, the victim cashes the check, wires the money to the movers, and finds out in a week that the check was invalid and they are responsible for the funds. The movers, in turn, have made off with their money.

So, yeah, fun. I’ve been on the phone with the police and the Atty General’s office this morning. All I can say is – yay for intuition. Other than that, here are a couple things I’ve learned:

• Never give personal information over the internet, or as little as possible, until you have verification of the other person’s identity.
• Always ask for references, and always follow up on them.
• Google is your friend. Look up people’s names, addresses, etc. Although it’s sort of creepy, I was very grateful for the GoogleMaps street-level view – allowed me to actually view the scammer’s alleged address.
• If someone wires you money, always be sure it is for the exact amount due and wait for it to clear before moving ahead with your plans. If it’s bogus, you won’t be out money, just pride. Never forward on a portion for them, regardless of their sob story excuse.
• A lot of people, myself included, are inclined feel guilty about being suspicious. Always be suspicious, always ask questions, always protect yourself as much as possible.

I’m sure there’s more, so feel free to comment additional tips below. In the meantime, I am still looking for a roommate. Know anyone?

I was recently listening to an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air in which Terry Gross spoke with Bishop Gene Robinson. Fascinated, I listened as Robinson spoke of the role of prayer in his everyday life. His words were honest and simple when he spoke of how he had grown in prayer, that he (and most people) had started praying at first with words and requests, often repetitive, but as he aged and matured spiritually, his prayer grew into a deeper, non-verbal experience. I’m certain I’m not doing justice with my paraphrasing, but how he described this experience struck a chord…

Now I’m not a Christian, though I was raised in a Christian household, have studied it in-depth, and find it to be for the most part a noble philosophy. I have been struck time and again by the common experience of those walking a spiritual path. By spiritual path, I should clarify, I don’t necessarily mean a person who goes to church or temple or whatever motions designated as devout by their chosen religious group. A spiritual path, to me, is a commitment to challenging oneself and one’s ideas, of not taking anyone else’s (or any book’s) word for it, of living spiritually within this life, this world.

Such a path often leads to a common experience, and regardless of whether one calls it prayer or meditation, it is described with the same evocative images by people of all religions and paths: to be surrounded by a sensation of lightness/goodwill/peace/contentment, to feel that you are more expansive than your physical body, to rise above the mundane chatter and discomforts of the worldly moment, to gain a simple sense of clarity and objectivity and wordlessness, a sense of unity. One of my favorite authors, Phyllis Curott, describes it as a process of “unnaming.”

This led me to a thought: If so many have had this similar experience (putting aside the variations of vocabulary), why are so many convinced that theirs is the one True or Right way? Here’s the conclusion I drew.

We all start somewhere. Most of us got some early spiritual notions from our families, either conforming to or rebelling against their beliefs (or both!), but either is a reactive development. Our first independent spiritual experience is a coming of age, our first moment of being filled up to overflowing through prayer or meditation or just looking up into the vastness of a starry sky – it wells up, and we are changed. I’m certain there are people who go to church and never experience this bliss (to use Joseph Campbell’s term), as I’m certain there are people affiliated with no religious group or belief system that have nonetheless experienced it as profoundly as anyone.

Where we are when we have that first experience shapes our footsteps from that moment on. If we are in church, well, it stands to reason that it’s because of the Church or because of God’s love. If we are walking through the woods, it must be the encompassing energy of Mother Earth. Whatever we are doing, whomever we are with, whatever our affiliations or beliefs at that moment of lightness, like a duckling we cry out in recognition of that as our Mother (or Father), assuming that this is the reason this wonderful gift has been bestowed on us.

I think that everyone who attains this bliss, in that moment, is walking a True path, their personal True path, because it is what led them to that moment in the first place. Their path is not necessarily going to work for anyone else, and there is a beauty in that thought.

What a delightful thought, all these roads circling a globe and yet, in an impossible feat of physics, finding the same space and time, time and again!

Declaring a particular philosophy or dogma or religious group to be Right and True (generally to the exclusion of all others) is like plucking a flower. It is beautiful when first picked, but the very nature of the act separates the flower from its life force, its connection to that moment; it must be forced between the pages and trapped in time rather than continuing on in its own vital and vibrant cycles and seasons. Let the moment be. Nurture it gently, prune it occasionally, but let it grow, roots reaching deep into the earth of experience, leaves thrilling in a spontaneous wind.

It’s a long-standing rule of exchange that a thing is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. As necessary or prized commodities grow rare, they correspondingly increase in value. A few easy examples that come immediately to mind are oil, gold, corn, saffron, or art. And for some of us, touch.

This thought came to me yesterday when I went to see my massage therapist. It seems that our society, our culture, is increasingly becoming one of alienation. Our media overwhelms us and largely replaces what previously would have been gleaned from personal interaction or the expansion of our imaginations by (gasp) reading a book, gardening, creating art, or making music. A trip to the doctor’s office for many of us consists of sitting and waiting for an absurd amount of time, flipping with disinterest the pages of some similarly mindless magazine, trying not to draw attention from the restless natives. The payoff of this purgatorial penance is a cold, bright room, a doctor who rarely if ever looks up from his chart, a minute or two of rapid interview and a piece of paper to cure (or mask) your affliction.

How much I cherish the healing arts, those practices of wellness that thrive on essential human nurturing. The massage therapist, the chiropractor, the acupuncturist, these are vocations that focus on curing the cause, not just treating symptoms, and maintaining wellness and health, preventing dis-ease (a concept I wish, with all my heart, the insurance companies would embrace) – all of this through personal attention, intention, and touch.

Of course these interactions are professional and clinical, but also deeply comforting. There is a therapy that goes beyond kneading tissues and manipulating spines, a therapy of knowing the comfort of someone else’s hand on your body with healing intent. We open ourselves, we let down our defenses, we accept and are accepted. Such acceptance, that kind of touch, is a highly valuable commodity. Whether in the massage room or on the acupuncturist’s table, my meager funds are willingly traded for this deeper healing, with great gratitude to a person with such a calling.

Too many times have I withheld touch from someone, or when it’s been withheld from me, and the resulting and intense need that follows can be suffocating. On the other hand (and happily a much more common occurrence in my life), being welcomed warmly into a friend’s arms, being kissed fully by a loved one, the spontaneous and frank expression of fondness is a beautiful and simple joy. Touch, to me, is priceless.

Hooboy.

My dear darling wonderful gal pal Lauren just sent me this picture of her brand new bundle of joy, and I just had to share. I have to say, I’m glad that these parents are serious enough about parenting to know when not to be. Apparently the wee one conks right out after a few slugs from the jugs (oh I’m so sorry).

To the brave parents: Slainte! We salute you!