Palin’s pick is WAR? Please Be My Friend!
His initials spell WAR. A wonderful “online magazine in the reality-based community” called Pam’s House Blend posted about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s new Attorney General pick. Besides his other right wing credentials, he’s publicly used the words “immoral,” “perversion” and “degenerates” in reference to the queer community. Scary thing is, I’ll bet his mother really is proud. Unless she’s a dyke…
As a “degenerate” on so many different levels, I’m often dismayed at the gulf that seems to divide the left and the right. But it seems that different playbooks, different assumptions drive each. Cultural liberals want to let folks be, we’re comfortable with a range of behaviors, as long as our own personal choice is intact. We can allow that contradictory ideas can both be true and that the different ways our neighbors live are enriching for our children. Cultural conservatives like structure and having things defined in absolutes. I guess then you don’t have to wonder if you’re right or if ideas need updating. They’re absolute. The Bible is a favorite source for absolutes. Strangely, my liberal Christian friends have the same book with the same words in the same order. But their book says very different things…
On facebook, fundamentalists and liberal activists play this out. After the Pope’s remarks that condom distribution only makes the AIDS epidemic in Africa worse, one woman wrote about handing out condoms on her campus. A “friend” shot back that, if everyone would just follow God’s law there would be no homosexuality. After a few exchanges it turns out that his logic was this: Homosexuality may or may not be hardwired for some people. But since “God’s law” is no sex before marriage, and gays can’t marry, well then no homosexuality…
Problem with his plan is, I follow “the goddess’ law.” Sex is sacred…and our gulf remains.
As long as we keep talking past each other over the gulf, every political battle just feels like another in a constant barrage of skirmishes, some lost, some won on a battlefield where the majority rules. I support that fight, but I feel empty that virtually everybody goes home with the same ideas they came with.
My mother, left (literally), is a political science major, a political animal. I have always been called to activism, but as a marcher, not a lobbyist or pundit. I am not a political animal, probably because I’m too emotional. Someone starts arguing me down and I just want to hug them or defect to a warmer climate. My vehicle for change has always been personal action, living by example, networking to transmit my ideas and culture, witnessing for justice and my beliefs as situations arise.
To me, not going shopping is a radical act of social justice.
So is there a way to bring the country closer together? (Note to the Invisible Forces of the Universe: I’m not asking for another 9/11 or Katrina here. I’m asking people what people can do. Butt out. We’ll handle this.)
A friend who’s a sex therapist brought SAR to my attention: Sexual Attitude Reassessment. I’m interested in this sort of thing on a grassroots or cultural level. But I’ll probably start by trying it within Intentional Communities, those wonderful laboratories of cultural change. Play, play, play!
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Spring Cleaning: Sweeping Technology and My Blahs Out the Door
I was recently posting on a facebook polyamory discussion board and the spellcheck underlined the word polyamory. I was miffed; I hate being culturally invisible. So I typed a note of that, and it underlined the word spellcheck…
When Heathcote Community’s food co-op manager faxed this month’s order, only the first page was received. So only the items on that page were delivered. So he went to our locally owned grocery and ordered cases of what was missing. My favorite vanilla rice milk arrived as eighty cartons of original flavor. And the brand of whole grain flax bread he bought to tide us over has 4 different kinds of sugar in it. The most powerful words always seem to be in the smallest print…
For over a year now, I’ve received zero notices from my favorite networking site, gaia.com. After following Matthew’s advice to adjust my spam filter, I received mountain ranges of spam but no gaia notices. Now Siona tells me my problem is my icky, paranoid comcast email address. She can give me a lovely non-judgemental gaia.com one…
Armies of my facebook friends have been lovingly offering me lil’ green patch flowers and plants to save the planet, a few bytes at a time. I’ve been dutifully suspicious. How is this saving the planet and who gets a slice? So I looked into it and, on first glance, looks like lil’ green patch has raised scads of money for Nature Conservancy’s rain forest efforts. Oh well, no HCD expose. Still, I wonder. Has anyone compared the impact of planting a virtual flower vs. a real one? I sometimes get five or more lil’ green patch invitations per day. What if all those friends went outside and spent the same amount of time digging in real dirt, planting non-digital plants?
Not that I want to turn you away from my own site here, but it’s spring! Go outside. You’re looking kinda pale. You need vitamin D. I’ll see you there. Really. I’m planting a daisy for you. Come find it!
Kassia & Sky’s Euro-Commune Adventure
I recently had the pleasure of attending a very beautiful, entertaining and informative slideshow at Chrysalis Community in Arlington, Virginia. Two former members of Twin Oaks Community, Kassia and Sky, had just returned from an extensive tour of European Intentional Communities.
Now, I realize that many people would rather endure twenty-four hours of non-stop electrolysis while replaying Dick Cheney speeches than watch some friend’s vacation slides. This isn’t that.
Sky and Kassia, longtime communitarians, did quite a thorough comparison of IC’s, from squatter communities to upscale ecovillages. And they are all quite beautiful, architecturally and in the murals and gardens people have added.
I invite you to click here to view their online slideshow. Enjoy!
And if it puts you in the mood to visit Intentional Communities, my own Heathcote Community has Visitor Weekends monthly, and ic.org can put hundreds more IC’s at your fingertips! See you soon,
Earth Hour: Things for Hippies to Do in the Dark
“…it is not about what country you’re from, but instead, what planet you’re from.” —Earth Hour website
Join Earth Hour, the annual movement to raise awareness by turning off your lights this Saturday, starting at 8:30 pm, local time wherever you are.
Now, some of you harried activists and eco-geeks who don’t spend a lot of time sitting under trees pondering what bug just crawled into your skirts might be wondering what you’re going to do for an hour in the dark.
If for some reason you need to eliminate sex as the answer (sports injury, recovery program, Mom visiting, whatever) here’s a list of ideas:
- Play Marco Polo with the mice in your veggie bus.
- Order Chinese delivery or pizza by sending owl calls down the block.
- Invent moon tea.
- Tell the history of the Rainbow Coalition in a puppet show using glow-in-the-dark condoms.
- Go caroling up and down your street, singing Holly Near and Shekhinah Mountainwater.
- Liberate race horses into suburban neighborhoods to replace gas-powered riding mowers.
- Have an egg hunt in your yard using those rotten ones you haven’t brought yourself to compost yet.
- Let the cat out and follow her. Back off if she becomes paranoid.
- Sneak into the Wal-Mart parking lot and paste every car with the bumper sticker, “Mall-Wart, Your Source for Cheap, Plastic Crap!”
- Find the most manicured lawn in your neighborhood and plant it in milkweed for making paper and fabric.
- Throw a series of glow-in-the-dark frisbees off a school building and see if anyone calls in a UFO sighting.
- Clean out the fridge by playing truth or dare with leftovers.
- Practice riding your exercise bike for when you figure out how to power the hot tub with it.
- Box up random items from each others’ rooms and take them to Goodwill, to work on unattachment.
- Perfect your impression of Leonard Cohen doing show tunes.
- Let the dog out and follow her. Be sure you have pruning shears, your picture ID and a change of socks with you. Twine is optional.
- Host a naked drum circle, massage party or sing along in your front yard and when the neighbors show up with the police, tell them you left your permit in your other pants.
- Figure out Morse Code using the light of your cell phone. Then use it to debate your neighbor across the road over the physics of What the Bleep…
Whatever activity or inactivity you choose, this is a wonderful chance to create community by unplugging. Or, if what you need from the hour is stillness, then here is a gift for you and the Earth! I’d love to hear your experiences afterwards!
Gender and Consumerism: Healthy Debate vs. Meaningful Conversation
The second type of masculine energy, which may be called the Testicular Masculine, is a protective and restraining energy. It provides limits on the unbounded creativity and need for resources of the Uterine Feminine. As in “sorry honey but you can’t have a bigger house, unless we figure out a sustainable way to do it. Think of the destruction of rainforest that will provide the floor boards. Think of all those who are expropriated in order to get and process that wood, steel and copper. Maybe we could build out of local materials? Maybe we could share with others? What is it you really need?”
Most feminist responses to what I have written about the connections between consumerism and gender have been angry or dismissive. Attempts have been made to silence, humiliate, ridicule or throw food at me. On the one hand, this makes me think that I may be onto something, because the same responses were given to early feminists like Margaret Fuller (with the exception of the food throwing) and other thinkers who have exposed what I call Naked Emperors—that is things about a culture that everyone in that culture knows at some level of consciousness, but ignores or represses on another. On the other hand, perhaps I am simply wrong. But then why the anger? People can say things that are wrong without eliciting anger—for example, if someone said the earth is flat. Maybe the anger is a reaction to all the oppression of women by patriarchy (and it’s mythical/religious manifestations), and a perception that I am only going to perpetuate that oppression with my theories. In other words, people may be thinking that I am a patriarchal reactionary. I think this is a misunderstanding, and I want to explain in detail why I think that.Like most feminists, I share the following values. I would like it if:
1. People are free to express themselves in any joyful way without being constrained by their gender. In other words, I believe that gender fluidity is desirable, and I am not a biological or cultural determinist.
2. People could find an inner balance between masculine and feminine energies, so that they don’t project what Jung called “the Shadow” onto the other gender, but instead have a good understanding of both masculine and feminine energies, through their own experiences and introspection.
3. People are free to experiment with these energies not only within themselves, but within larger groups and relationships, such as dyads, triads, etc. In other words, much joy could be created if for example, one member of a dyad has more feminine energy, and another more masculine energy, then if both are more feminine or more masculine. Both these people could be male or female or trans, although it might be easier if the person with the predominant masculine energy is physically male, and the one with the predominant feminine energy is physically female, as there is more endocrine support for these energies that way.Things that I am NOT saying (followed by clarification of what I am actually saying):
1. That biology has nothing to do with masculine or feminine energies. Like most sexually reproducing animals, humans are sexually dimorphic. It seems improbable that hormonal, morphological and gene expression differences would not be translated into some psychological differences. But this biological propensity is not deterministic, only correlative and historically originated the meaning of the words masculine and feminine. E. O Wilson had ice water poured over his head for stating the more general observation (which I agree with) that biology has consequences at the level of psychology and sociology.
2. That culture has nothing to do with gender differences. Many feminists and leftist thinkers think, at the other extreme, that differences are due mostly to culture. I disagree and take a more moderate position, but this is not critical to my analysis.
3. That women are responsible for consumerism, or that men are responsible for patriarchy. Both consumerism and patriarchy are systems with many interacting parts. I think the feminine energies of nest-building and the need for comfort and security, when out of balance with male energies, are major (but not only) factors in consumerism.
4. That men need to keep women under control with their testicular masculine energy. The best form of restraint is internal, so both men and women would be less consumptive if they exhibited more testicular masculine energy.
5. That advertising has nothing to do with consumerism. It does, but the advertisers are only successful because they understand basic psychology and appeal to primal things like the needs for comfort and security (in both men and women).
6. That comfort and security are bad. They are necessary for creativity and a good life. But there is more to life than comfort and security. Adventure, joy, curiosity and the comfort and security of others (including future generations) are also important. When comfort and security are everything, they murder the soul, as Khalil Gibran said.
7. That nest-building is bad. Nest-building is natural and beautiful. Only when it is not balanced by a bigger vision and an understanding does it become problematic.
8. That men do not need comfort and security. Of course they do, but less than women who are starting to think about getting pregnant, are pregnant or have children.
9. That men are not factors in consumerism. Of course they are, but I think the main reason is that they do not express enough testicular masculine energy in this present moment in this culture, and moreover are not expressing enough feminine energy within themselves, thus needing it from external sources, consuming mainly to obtain the comfort of female companionship.The survey, the main experimental tool of sociologists would be useful in testing some of these hypotheses. The experimental procedure is fraught with obstacles though. In the first approximation, one could look for differences between men and women. It would be harder to test differences between masculine and feminine energies, or between the presence and lack of testicular masculine energy. Many controls would be needed, for example, men and women from middle eastern cultures (where men still have a lot of testicular masculine) who have immigrated to the West, could be compared to each other, and also to men and women from our culture. Motivations would need to be examined, not just money spent. For example, if a man buys a house, is he buying it for himself, or for his wife and children? Would he be content with a smaller house? Would his wife? How much money is spent on housing and related industries, vs other things and who cares more about housing, men or women?
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Kali, Goddess of Chaos, Rewires My House
As part of my commitment to low impact, simple living, I live in a tiny, very low-tech house and try to keep my possessions and clutter down to a manageable hum. I basically have two rooms: a open first floor with areas of living room, library/yoga space and a kitchen, and a spacious upstairs sleeping loft. I work and live here with my two dogs and a sweetie, Iuval, who keeps extending his “visit” in fits and starts and chunks. We’ll see how that goes…
I love my little cabin in the woods, plywood shack though it may be. But the electrical hasn’t been updated since it was built in 1972 and all the outlets, lights, refrigerator, etc., inside the house were run to one breaker! This might have worked for back-to-the-landers in 1972 but it has been frying this Hippie Chick’s computers, so something needed to be done!
Since I live at Heathcote Community, repairs and renovations are approved by and paid for by the community. And often a member with the germane skills may complete the work. But since we’re finishing Polaris, our new straw bale grouphouse (see a slideshow of the construction here), my rewiring job wasn’t getting completed quickly enough for me. I was living in a house with wires coming out of cuts in the walls and wires rolled out this way and that across the floors, very Medusalike. Enough waiting! It started to feel like my house might come alive, grab me and eat me.
Time to throw a party, I thought. Since being a squeaky wheel hadn’t gotten the job done, I set a date for a party and said that I needed the work done by that time. Iuval detected my suffering and volunteered to finish the job. Why not, I thought. He’s a physicist, so it’s possible I could have my house rewired and have a wormhole to the fifth dimension installed for no extra charge. He would finish the job in time for me to host Heathcote’s Inauguration Day party. I thought this was the end of my visit from Kali, the goddess of chaos. But no; She laughs yet. People are her toys, her candy.
And deliciously, people come in flavors, different operational styles. Some like to have things decided while others prefer to endlessly collect data. Some like to work in teams, others are lone wolves. Iuval and my community mate John are, shall we say, from different sections of the candy box. So when minimalist Iuval took over the job from by-the-book John, sparks flew, and not from my outdated wiring.
Some background on the players:
Iuval is very passionate about eliminating the enslavement of workers around the world who make our products. He tries to minimize what he owns, what he needs. He lives so simply that all his electrical needs are supplied by solar panels atop his converted school bus. He repairs the inexpensive products the rest of us might throw away. He does his own car and home repairs and is making plans to grow much, if not all of his own food. His own electrical needs are minimal and he projects this onto others with some judgment–because of our consumption of coal and nuclear driven electricity and because of the exploitation of the Third World workers who made the wire, boxes, switch plates, screws, clamps, etc., not to mention the endless gadgets we plug in.
John prides himself on jobs well done and on his listening and compassion. He wants his clients to feel he’s responding to their needs. So when he heard my requirements for updated electrical, with the computers, kitchen appliances, etc. that I wanted to protect, he studied manuals and came up with a design that follows code to the letter and puts as light a burden as possible on many circuits. He designed a three-way switch that would allow me to turn a light on at the bottom of my stairs and turn it off at the top. I’d requested this because of, well, you know, snakes. Also, Heathcote is a place where we care about codes. So John cares about codes and if he can complicate things this way and that and feel that, as a result, my house won’t burn down, well, he likes that.
I, Wren, can tend to assume too much and not ask clarifying questions. I like to delegate and I take people literally. So when John originally told me he could rewire my house in two days, I kept believing him long after he himself let go of that myth. And I didn’t ask details about his plan, including some aesthetic aspects that mattered to me later on. I’m not a fan of the “industrial look” in interior design, for example…Also, I have not educated myself about electrical wiring so I would not have known what clarifying questions to ask or how to assess John’s answers. And I haven’t taken over the job myself, although I considered when my friend Jas suggested that I just do it myself. To be honest, I’m playing the helpless female here.
So for those who haven’t already done the math, Iuval was quickly annoyed at the scale of John’s design and enraged that I and other Heathcoters would live so opulently, addicted to the global economy and its toys, apparently with no concern for our enslavement of workers who produce the endless parts needed. John, in turn, feared that Iuval would minimize the safety practices needed, ignore the improvements we were trying to achieve and burn down my house. As they went round after round with each other and each separately with me, I wanted to become an electrician. A lesbian electrician. A deaf lesbian electrician. Or I could sidestep the time and expense of trade school and the tragedy of never hearing music again if I would just date a lesbian electrician. Yeah!
Much to my weary annoyance, I could see we were the three of us faced with an AFGO–another fucking growth opportunity. So I tried to stick with it, deeply listening to each of them and rallying them to join me in discerning the highest good on every question of an unnecessary outlet or streamlined wiring job. But I have to admit I was jaded and distracted in this noble work by my experience at Heathcote. Over my fourteen years here, I’ve seen quite a few members come through with varying levels of expertise in electrical, plumbing, building, etc. And I’ve noticed one universal about them all. No matter if they’d been doing such work for six months or six decades, each one would arrive at Heathcote, point out several repairs or installations done in the recent or distant past and say, “Jeez, that guy didn’t know what he was doing!!! This is the worst job I’ve ever seen!!! You otta let me pull that whole thing out and do it over. I’ve done it a million times…” Do they teach this stuff in trade school?
You’ll never be out of work if you can point out imperfection.
So, as much as I love them both, having no wiring knowledge of my own, I couldn’t play Solomon. But our clear common ground, that we all wanted the job completed, kept us talking and trying. Iuval stayed with it. And John kept supplying him with tools and slave made materials. Iuval actually enjoyed the challenge and the work itself. And John was eventually relieved that my job was getting done, as his other job took more and more of his time. The two-day job is into it’s third week or so…Iuval disputes this and insists that I tell you he only worked on it here and there, a couple of hours a day. Fine. But it was dark outside and he was in his pajamas when he started each day, and it was dark outside and he was in his pajamas when he finished each day so, maybe physicists measure hours uniquely. He’s so cute in his pajamas…
As I write this, Iuval and John are in the loft, playing nicely and hanging a donated ceiling fan which I plan to thoroughly enjoy. My loft having an A-frame ceiling, I loose so much heat from my pellet stove in the peak. This ceiling fan should make my loft warmer and cut down on the overall amount of pellets I need to use each winter.
The Ozarks or Bust? Even Money!
I’ve been prodding my partner Iuval to adapt his “treatise” on sustainable living, simplicity and intentional community into a book. But after two years of debating the issues with him, I’m starting to think I’ll write the book instead! It would be an epic of the great struggle between his view (that we should all revert to Neandertalism–living in caves, eating nuts and road kill, bathing once a year whether we need it or not,) and my belief that we can find a simplicity that provides quality of life and practice conscious consumption of goods and energy that makes ecological sense yet doesn’t enslave workers while still keeping our cell phones and washing machines. (Iuval denies my claim he’s Neanderthal. Here’s an old rant about primitivism.)
My debates with Iuval have reached a fever pitch as I visit him at the veggie oil schoolbus homestead he’s established on a mountainside in Murray Valley, near Jasper, Arkansas. He and I have blended the last two months with traveling for family and staying at my cabin in the woods of Heathcote Community, north of Baltimore, Maryland. Now I’m visiting him where he’s put some of his simplicity into action and our differences are showing!
I joke about him wanting to live in a cave, but his veggie bus sits on a shelf within sight of a sizable cave where Iuval’s landlord, Shelby Badders, lived for many years. Shelby now lives in a comfortable cabin on his land. He believes fungus or something else in the air of the cave effected his lungs. Still this mountain man in his seventies had no trouble helping a crew of us cut up and haul off dozens upon dozens of trees that had fallen into the dirt roads on his mountain in the recent ice storm.
Shelby says he’s pessimistic that the simple, autonomous life he and his family tried to live when they settled there can be had. Yes, they built a comfortable cabin, gardened and homeschooled their kids. But he notes that they never succeeded in growing all their own food. And Shelby, his ex-wife and children having moved on, still depends on propane for cooking and still drives to town for provisions.
Iuval maintains that Intentional Community is one of several improvements he brings; that where Shelby went wrong was to try to make it as a single family homestead. Iuval would find land, build large group houses and invite as many as one or two hundred people to live there, growing most if not all their food and eventually making everything they need–shelter, clothing, technology–all from materials found or made locally, meaning within fifty or a hundred miles.
Until he finds such land and begins his community, Iuval has been living on his converted schoolbus, named Shadowslo. This is after Shadowfax of LOTR, of course! Here Iuval experiments with technologies that are gentle on the environment and provide independence from the global economy. Iuval wants to avoid any of his monetary energy going to exploited or slave labor, although he admits this is impossible to completely avoid today. All his electrical needs are satisfied by solar panels on his roof. He pipes water in from a nearby stream. And he has built a rocket stove for cooking and heating. He gathers materials from neighbors and junkyards but still needs to buy some tools and equipment for his systems from local stores, which presumably buy on the global market.
Iuval and I have a running joke now. Whenever I want to buy something, say, a printer for my computer or a scarf, Iuval will say, “You don’t need that. You can do without it or share it or make it yourself. When you buy it, you’re just being lazy. You don’t need it but if you really want it you should make it!” Then I make faces, shift weight from foot to foot and insist that he whittle me one. He’s been put in charge of whittling me spark plugs, a cell phone and countless other luxuries but he’s not gotten out his knives yet. He must be lazy…
Of course, the truth is, I could live with less than I do. Even as I have dedicated the last fifteen years of my life to simple living, I sometimes become complacent and comfortable. I rest on my laurels. I appreciate Iuval prodding me to do better. But after a few days on the veggie bus, I’m ready for a shower and a laundromat. And a movie. And a veggie burger.
No, Iuval, don’t whittle me one! I want it bought and served to me in a restaurant with natural fiber tablecloths and Paul Simon on the sound system. I hope they seat us, ripe (reaking) from our hippie habitat!
Hippie Chick Power Lunch
I’ve just gotten back from a “power lunch” with my HippieChickDiaries.com IT team! Paul Phillips, Roni Noone and I are ready to take this site to the next level, bringing my complicated adventures in simple living to a larger audience.
We met at the Red Brick Station in White Marsh, Maryland. Roni, our blogging expert, posts about dieting so she knew this eatery would have a few nice vegetarian choices for me and Paul. He and I were wondering whether Red Brick Station would have any vegan choices, or if all the dishes would contain meat and/or cheese. I was pleased to see a couple of vegan options, although I was frustrated that all their salads come with meat. Roni ordered what I was about to order, the Katie’s Veggie Wrap, and she showed me a better way to have it: She substituted steamed veggies for the chips/coleslaw side. I copied her and had a guilt-free, feel-good meal.
A couple of years ago, I lost about 50 pounds. I did it the realistic, hard work way of reducing my portion sizes, avoiding sweets, fats and empty carbs and exercising my ass off. Roni also lost lots of weight a few years ago and began to blog about her experience. Her site caught on and now she blogs on several sites full time, tapping people into resources to do real, not fad weight loss. Her company is skinnyminnymedia. Now she’s using her knowledge to help HCD find and expand its niche audience.
Paul Phillips has lived at Heathcote Community with me for many years. Previously, he was one of my partners in my fair trade retail venture, Heathcote Earthings. He runs Co-OpTek, a software consulting firm structured as a cooperative. When he and Roni wanted to help writers communicate with their audiences through profitable blogs, Paul thought of me, having followed my writing career through the years. And so HCD became their guinea pig.
So how, you ask, do blogs become profitable? Yep, ads. Our long term goal is to hand select advertisers we want you to know about because we’re excited about their product or service. In the meantime, you’ll soon see context-based ads appearing in subtle corners of our pages. This means that, if I’m blogging lots about eating organic foods, you might see ads for organic foods. Also, because computers don’t know any better, you might see ads for organic fertilizer or organic shampoo. I dunno. I invite you to surf the ads with your goddess-given discernment. I will also post about products I think are great. That you can take as my endorsement.
Also, I’ll be forming an affiliate relationship with Amazon.com. So when I recommend the Communities Directory because it’s just a crazy fine must have resource, you can click on a link and get your hands on one! You can link directly that way to the music I’m listening too, books I’m reading or recommending, etc.
Thanks to my readers for your ongoing support. HCD isn’t a little girl any more!!!
Hippie Archeology
I’ve held my ground on this steep slope for fourteen years. This land’s been communal since 1965. And as runoff washes into our stream at the bottom, I’ve learned that the soil of this hill gives up the secrets of the residents who came before me: These hippies were freakin’ LITTERBUGS!!! Were they too stoned to carry a can up to the road on trash day? I mean, please!
For my first six years at Heathcote I lived in the springhouse (below), an idyllic stone hut on the stream, built into the hillside, over a natural spring. I was always finding new pieces of broken glass emerging like prima donna dinosaur bones out of the dirt. I never got ahead of the curve. More glass or metal coils or nails were always appearing out of the subtle erosion.
When I moved to Hina Hanta (below), my current cabin high above the mill, there were new and varied things to excavate. This cabin, formerly called Hillhouse, was built in 1972. Various families and singles have occupied it since then, including a professional environmental activist who lived here fourteen years himself. The building is not quite at the top of the slope, so erosion does uncover what composting leaf litter tries to conceal.
Coming up from the ground I get endless plastic seed pots and plastic sheeting and carpet pieces. Heathcoters used to garden a terraced plot where I now have a goat pen, before the woods grew in too thickly for crops. But much of the carpet isn’t from gardening. It’s just heaped in the woods, feet from the cabin. And it doesn’t compost quickly.
I’d always picked up little bits of plastic containers I’d find or lengths of wire or cord. But recently, while waiting for fencing helpers to arrive, I went walking in my woods with a workday energy. I was stunned to find bags of trash, laid out in the woods. They’d clearly been there many years. I’ve lived here eight and I didn’t put them there! The piles were low to the ground and the plastic on top had degraded, so each collection appeared to be laid out on a sheet of plastic that was, I guess, the bottom of the bag. Inside, no identifying papers to name any guilty parties. They could have already degraded. But what remained? Lots and lots of athletic shoes, actually in decent shape; plastic and metal food containers; many bug spray cans and motor oil jugs; a briefcase; a two-burner hotplate; stove parts; a bathroom scale; small electrical appliances and extension cords; building materials; clothes and linens; window panes; a tea kettle; pots and pans; a lawn chair.
I don’t keep new plastic bags just for carrying trash, so I reused bags from my wood pellets. I’d give you a count on the number of bagfuls the woods was holding but the work isn’t close to finished. Let’s call it ten and counting.
After the moral outrage, I was overtaken with curiosity. I became a detective working the scene. Who walked their trash out, one-hundred feet from the cabin and abandoned it? Did they come from the cabin, or did they trek it through the woods from the neighboring farm? Surely they weren’t Heathcoters! Some of the food containers were for meat items. I would like to believe that this proves the innocence of my vegetarian community. But if they could dump trash and not get busted by the hippie police, then they could sneak meat. Maybe that’s why they diverted their trash to the woods–They wanted to hide their carnivorous indiscretions! Oh, this is getting juicy!
Now, I’m not just a suburban chick gone feral in the woods. Actually, okay, I’m exactly that. But my point is, I know the history of trash. Generations of my family burned trash or dumped it in the endless limestone sinkholes on our Kentucky dairy farm. The practice continues with current generations. I remember my cousin knocking on my mother’s door: “Have you got any noxious substances you want to throw out? I’m heading to the sinkhole…” Much to the hypocritical dismay of my grandparents, people were always dumping pickup truck loads of trash, furniture, tires, chemical drums and anything else in the woods of our farm, which hugs a long stretch of little traveled country road. There’s even a car, maybe a 1930’s model, that someone drove up into our woods and abandoned. I used to play in it, ala Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Still, I want to believe that, since 1965, Heathcote’s particular chunk of our beautiful Gaia, our bountiful Turtle Island, was held differently by the tribe that settled here. And I’m annoyed that former residents may have left a mess I’m now having to live with or clean up. Quite a microcosm of the planetary issues we face, isn’t it? A previous generation’s expediency becomes our burden, even in Hippieland.
Not all trash at Heathcote is annoying. When we renovated the mill, we found bottles, dishes, etc., that may date back one-hundred fifty years. That was awe inspiring. But I don’t want to leave this trash in the woods long enough to become exciting archeology.
Anyone for a feel-good workday in the woods? Maybe we’ll find the clue that will close the case of the hippie litterbugs! I’ll supply the pellet bags…
D.C. Area Heart of Now Weekend Still Has a Few Openings
From Wren:
I’ve had the pleasure of attending an evening introduction to Heart of Now, a weekend workshop in “being who we want to be in the world,” that was developed at Lost Valley Community. I had previously experienced some of the exercises as part of ZEGG Forum facilitator training, held at my home, Heathcote Community. Besides giving me food for thought and tools for my self work, Heart of Now is a wonderful opportunity to meet new people, make close friends and become a more grounded, honest, loving soul in the world.
As of this writing, there are 5 spaces remaining!
Here is HON trainer Debby Sugarman’s announcement:
Registration is now open for the DC area Heart of Now weekend course!…
I am happy to announce that the second DC area Heart of Now workshop will be held the weekend of November 21-23, 2008 in a beautiful location just outside Winchester, VA.
After many wonderful introductions, triad practice groups and triad assistant trainings over the last 2 years, I am excited to be offering a full workshop once again this area!
What is Heart of Now?
Heart of Now is about being who we want to be in the world. Throughout our lives many of us have been encouraged to hide our feelings and ignore our bodies. Were taught stories of how were supposed to behave at school or work. We’ve been told not to make mistakes or certainly not to admit it.
At Heart of Now we look with curiosity at the stories we’ve been told. We pay careful attention to our bodies and our emotions. We learn to listen to ourselves deeply and trust what is in our hearts.
Heart of Now is not just about ourselves but about our communities and our world. When we are present and honest with ourselves, we open space for intimacy, easy working relationships and creativity that are the building blocks for creating a better world.
Time: The course will begin on Friday evening, November 21, and will go until Sunday evening, November 23.
Location: Our location is The Land Celebration, a beautiful retreat center in Gore, VA, just outside of Winchester, VA. Visit www.thelandcelebration.org.
Cost: The cost is $350-$650 sliding scale. A fee of $200 is requested when you register, the rest of the fee will be due by the end of the course. Financial assistance is available. Please inquire about this if the fee is a barrier to being able to join us for the weekend. The cost will include lodging for 2 nights and all vegetarian meals.
Assisting: If you have previously been through a Heart of Now weekend (previously called Naka-Ima), you are invited to assist the course. Assisting is as much about continuing your own growth as it is about service to the students. Assistants of any level of experience are welcome. Assistants are asked to make a donation of $75-$125 sliding scale to cover room and board. The assistants’ program starts on Friday afternoon. Contact Debby if you are interested.
To Register: Our website, www.heartofnowdc.org is under construction but will be coming soon! In the meatime you can register by contacting Debby Sugarman at 716-479-1490, dsugarm@efn.org or Darrell at 202-667-8728, d@duane.com. For more information about Heart of Now, call us or visit www.heartofnow.org.
Thanks for laying all of these ideas out carefully and thoughtfully. I appreciate all the nuances of each thought, as I have the forty-seven other times you have expressed them.
I hear you. I disagree with you.
When you use gender as a descriptor or a way of explaining what you see, either by physical sex or the four gendered energies as you describe them (whether or not your understanding matches your source material), you build walls between you and people like me who would like to partner with you to reverse the culture of consumerism. Seeing consumerism through the lens gender patterns is not a path to an enlightened view that suddenly makes us realize our wicked ways and cut up our credit cards. It instead makes women, or this woman, want to throw food at you. Does this mean you’re “onto something?” Possibly, just as it is possible that you are in fact a patriarchal reactionary, although you would like to believe you’re not.
Everyone, male, female, intersexed, trans, needs to get real about how our culture of stuff is killing us and the planet with us. We need to find a level of simplicity we can sustain, and find satisfaction in more non-material pursuits. I’d love to hear you talk more about consumerism as a substitute for spirituality. I resonate with that. But making the discussion about gender, or at least trying to understand the trends through perceived gender differences, is offensive, not informative. The food landing on you and your difficulty in recruiting community members are evidence that your world view is dividing people, not bringing us together.
Good luck on that intentional community thing. Better plan for lots of food fights in the dining hall…
Also, although you may see this as useless effort, I think you should go on to describe how each of the energies moderates the others. And if the dynamic of the testicular masculine tempering the uterine feminine is best played out internally within an individual of either gender, then I think your example should show how that works, rather than being an example of a man tempering a woman, which is incendiary.
In my Open Classroom project, I wanted to have a kid version of the various personality type indicator models our there–Myers Briggs, Keirsey Bates, enneagrams, etc. The kids and I started considering our energies based on the four elements, fire, water, earth and air. This was familiar to them. Using these elements as descriptors, I would give the feedback that your writing is a lot of fire, which is wonderful and exciting until it’s untempered by other elements. As a person who can tend to be earth to a fault, I simply end up feeling scorched by your message. I may rebuild and regrow, but I don’t feel all warm and cuddly and thankful to the fire for dismissing and wiping out what I’ve achieved. I don’t suddenly want to join the fire in its mission.
Love ya Sweetie!
Wren Tuatha