Call me Anat.
אהבת אדמה
Now 
18th-Nov-2009 12:34 pm - Tua
mystery
[info]bruorton is better; we're going to have lunch in the cafeteria and then head home, where I wil do super-last-minute revisions to my paper so I can print it out before I leave early tomorrow morning. I'm calling in absent from my knitting class to spend the evening with Tua and just relax.

Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, and e-hugs! :)
31st-Oct-2009 02:59 pm(no subject)
goddess
 Tua's at home reading a book he needs to review for class Monday.  A 6-page review, if you can believe that!  I'm an editor for book reviews, and 6 pages is super long.  Oh, well, maybe they do longer book reviews in anthropology circles.  Anyway, he's hoping to finish the book today and write the review tomorrow.  I hope we get some time together besides when we're asleep.

I'm in Randolph eating salad and catching up on all the email I've ignored this week.  I got two colds in a row in the last two weeks, with a short respite for last weekend, when we had our Day of Action on Climate Change celebration at Church (Saturday) and I had to preach (Sunday).  They both went well - Tua did a teach-in on the effects of climate change on Vermont, and he was fantastic.  We rang the bell 350 times, everyone doing at least 20 rings.  Good triceps workout!

Things are more low-key this weekend.  Tomorrow is All Saints Day, and I'm remembering Lori, Wyn, Leonard, Miriam, Isabelle, and Aaron.  I'll see you all again someday.
30th-Oct-2009 12:31 pm - Knitting Class, etc.
falcon
To keep myself sane this fall, I joined a knitting cass in Montpelier.  It gets me ot of the house once a week, is an excuse to drive all the way to Montpelier, a city I love, and forces me to interact with other people.  My first class was this past Wednesday; I had cramps, was recovering from a cold, and had very little voice, but I went anyway to remind myself of the basics - casting on, knitting and purling, etc.

It was pretty fun, although the instructors have dubbed me "the shy one," since I didn't talk.  We started on a dishcloth, which is a good first project - no one cares if you make a mistake on a dishcloth!  There were two patterns, a simple one and a basketweave one, and I'm doing the basketweave.  It turned out that I've been knitting longer than anyone else in the class (since I was 12 or 13), even the instructors (who both learned to knit 4 years ago).  However, I know nothing about following patterns or doing anything beyond the basic stockinette stitch, nor have I ever kitted in the round, so there's a lot to learn.  Next week we're starting a hat.

It's been a long time since I've been in a group of women, and it was not as refreshing as I'd hoped.  In the past I've sought out feminist groups, and even founded one, and I'd gotten into the habit of thinking a group of women means a feminist haven.  So the heteronormativity of this knitting class took me aback.  It seemed almost aggressive, the assumption of husbands and children and traditional gender roles. 

In other news, Chunks just caught another mouse (she got one yesterday at around this time, too).  At our vet's advice, we let her kill and eat them; as Dr. Martin said, "mice are a whole food!"  However, I think my in-laws think I'm hard-hearted since I no longer ty to save the mice and release them outside.  (They were taken aback by my suggestion that we eat the guinea fowl, alas.  Apparently their interest in local and sustainable food doesn't extend to animals, since they'll order factory-farmed meat in restaurants.  Hmm.)

Anyway, those are the highlights of my week.  Last week I emailed Chapter 2 of my dissertation to my committee; only heard back from one out of three.  Feeling a little discouragd there.  At least I've got my knitting to fall back on.
7th-Oct-2009 12:23 pm - Birthday
heroines

Happy birthday, [info]ellyane!  I am so thankful for you!  :)
27th-Aug-2009 12:19 pm - Gov. Douglas
falcon
Ben just came over to tell me that Jim Douglas has announced that he will not be running again for governor.  Callou, callay, o frabjous day!  (Although I didn think that, as the only governor ever to have two vetoes overturned [much less two in the same legislative session], he would definitely be defeatable.)

Progressives and Democrats, start your engines!
27th-Aug-2009 11:43 am - Season of Creation newsletter intro.
falcon

I was visiting my cousin M. in rural eastern Massachusetts once in early October when, at the last minute, we decided we’d like to visit the local Episcopal church.  We arrived to find the congregants milling about outside the church building with pets and farm animals: dogs and a goat on leashes, a lamb, a duck, a piglet, and several cats and chickens carried in arms.  There were a pet lizard and a pet rat, and several fish in bowls.  The congregation moved into the building and began the oddest liturgy of morning prayer I’ve ever been a part of – dogs panted and looked around for faces to lick, chickens clucked, the lamb let out a few hungry baaas.  Instead of the usual sleepy morning looks and yawns on the faces of the human worshipers, there were smiles and tears and laughter.

Then came the actual blessing of the animals.  The priest first called forward the dogs by size – small, medium, and large, and then the cats, then the birds, and so on.  When she got to “other,” the boy with the rat came up, as well as a boy with a little terrarium for his hermit crab.  M. wrote to me years later and said that “Bless, oh Lord, this hermit crab,” remain the most beautiful and holiest words she’d ever heard in church.

Some wise men and women have told us that our mission as the church is nothing less than partnership with the Holy Spirit in establishing the kingdom of God on earth.  What we sing and pray about, what we preach in our sermons, what we do in our work in the world – all these things indicate what we value, what is precious to us.  The ecologists tell us that “everything is connected.”  Genesis tells us that God calls all things good; indeed, creation in its wholeness is “very good.”  What, then, can be more appropriate and good than bringing our earth, our mountains and our rivers, and even our animals into church with us, into the circle of God’s New Creation? 

“As the mountains are round about us, so the Lord is round about his people . . . O taste and see that the Lord is good!”


18th-Aug-2009 02:03 pm - Mmm, mmm, good!
goddess
Had a massage today with a new massage therapist but at the old office.  My new MT's name is Shodie (unfortunately pronounced "shoddy"), which means "happiness" in Persian; "yes, my parents were total hippies," she said.  She was excellent; I could feel her literally pulling my muscles apart from each other, but it didn't hurt (much).  My upper trapezius muscles are actually soft; I haven't experienced that in years!  It's kinda weird.  :)

Going back next month, after our vacation (5 hours in the car each way).
heroines

by Claire Hope Cummings; review

One of the most important books anyone could read.  A readable explanation of the science and anti-science behind genetic engineering, the scientific and legal history, gene patenting, agri-chemicals, globalization, seed-saving, farm debt, colonialism and its impact on indigenous agricultural practices, storytelling and food, religion and farming.  200 pages of insight about the most basic thing about us: how we feed ourselves.

Each chapter is located in a particular place and a story about that place: The little-known destruction of a seed bank in the Abu Ghraib neighborhood of Baghdad (and US attempts to establish Iraqi dependence upon genetically engineered seed), genetic engineering field tests in Hawai'i and the contamination they cause in one of the most fertile places on earth, corporate control of research at land-grant Universities, focusing on the UCal Berkeley site, etc.

Each chapter then addresses the scientific, political, economic, nutritional, and pragmatic issues inherent in each story and each place.  Some of the stories are appalling and heart-breaking, some made me feel fiercely proud of my fellow human beings.  Some were so beautiful and hopeful they brought tears to my eyes.

The last three chapters (2 chapters and epilogue) stand on their own.  In them, Cummings illustrates the wisdom of indigenous approaches to farming and food, the contamination of the birthplace of corn and the likely consequences of that contamination.  She discusses the need to tell stories about our food and its growing, to link food to place, to have and teach a hands-on approach to growing food, and the spirituality of seeds.  (She points out that, in the event of an oil crisis, natural disaster, or food-security crisis, communities that know "how to get along with each other," are autonomous, diverse, and engaged in growing their food, will not need to rely on the dubious comforts of FEMA or Homeland Security [181].) 

In the Epilogue, Cummings reminds the reader of the story of the Garden of Eden, and discusses its similarities to other creation narratives, in which the Creator gives abundant food to human beings, with a test or string attached.  When the humans fail the test, their relationship to their food becomes fraught with hardship and heavy labor.  The act which causes them to fail the test s often a act of transgressing a boundary: trying to become gods, ignoring their place in the community of the living, repudiating their dependence on and interdependence with other parts of nature.  Since this is a big part of Chapter Two of m dissertation, I was delighed to see evidence that I'm on the right track.  But I think everyone can learn from this chapter, and the book as a whole, that food and the new life of seeds are sacred things, full of the potential to give life in new ways, and that "our survival depends on returning to a sense of the sacred" (186).

She includes Howard Nemerov's poem, "A Cabinet of Seeds Displayed":

"These are the original monies of the earth,
In which invested, as the spark in fire,
They will produce a green wealth toppling tall,
A trick they do by dying, by decay,
In burial becoming each his kind
To rise in gory and be magnified
A million times above the obscure grave.

"Reader, these samples are exhibited
For contemplation, locked in potency
And kept from act for reverence’s sake.
May they remind us while we live on earth
That all economies are primitive;
And by their reservations may they teach
Our governors, who speak of husbandry
And think the hurricane, where power lies."

Amen.

 

5th-Aug-2009 12:22 pm - Patriotism
falcon

by Ellie Schoenfeld

My country is this dirt
that gathers under my fingernails
when I am in the garden.
The quiet bacteria and fungi,
all the little insects and bugs
are my compatriots. They are
idealistic, always working together
for the common good.
I kneel on the earth
and pledge my allegiance
to all the dirt of the world,
to all of that soil which grows
flowers and food
for the just and unjust alike.
The soil does not care
what we think about or who we love.
It knows our true substance,
of what we are really made.
I stand my ground on this ground,
this ground which will
ultimately
recruit us all
to its side.


24th-Jul-2009 05:58 pm - Invocation
falcon



Come out of the dark earth
Here where the minerals
Glow in their stone cells
Deeper than seed or birth.

Come under the strong wave
Here where the tug goes
As the tide turns and flows
Below that architrave.

Come into the pure air
Above all heaviness
Of storm and cloud to this
Light-possessed atmosphere.

Come into, out of, under
The earth, the wave, the air.
Love, touch us everywhere
With primeval candor.


by May Sarton
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