Author: kyce

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Dark Nights, Getting Brighter

(Or, an update on last month’s small change–making room in our life to observe an eco-shabbat)

 

Take the day and give thanks–thanks for the work, the rush, the busy-nessĀ and the gifts they bring.

(Life made rich and, truly, possible, by all thatĀ doing.)

Say thanks, and enough.

Mark the calendar with the evenings that are ours alone. Guard them as precious.

Let darkness fall unhampered. Full upon the home.

The heart –our dinner table!– lit by candles, oil lamps.

So much to say in that warm light

(Oh, my husband, how good it is to sit here with you, in the darkness that returns us easily to each other.

To ourselves. To the music we make.

To the love we discovered those many years ago in what could be another world,

but lives, renewed and fed by these quiet evenings.)

A night of watching the candles burn low, the oil run out, the wood turning to ash.

The source of our warmth and illumination no longer removed and intangible,

but here before us–solid and finite.

When the light goes, and the stars and moon come through,

and we find ourselves beneath the same night sky as our ancestors,

(My, the many dark nights we emerged from!)

we can take our time finding the words to that old, half-forgotten song.

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Postcards from Mama and Papa’s House

In the home:

On the land:


We took a little journey this week to my parent’s house.Ā They live in paradise (a very long drive from everywhere, I might add). There’s magpies sailing through the big sky, generous storms, majillions of stars, the heart filling smell of sagebrush all around, and a landscape that has nourished our family for many good years.

In a few months my folks are taking a big step and moving to a house just down the road from us here in the big city. We’re so excited to have them closer. I mean, how wonderful is that pastel/water color board my mama turned her coffee table into for Cora? It is exciting to have our family coming together at a time when it will mean so much to Cora. To all of us. Still,Ā I can’t help but be a little bit sad to lose regular contact with the other member of our family, this beautiful land that we all love so well.

There are many landscapes I love and consider a part of me. But this one is so wrapped up with my identity, my experience “coming of age,” that it will always be sacred to me.Ā Like family, the land we love runs through our veins and memories. It lives in our stories, and is the link between our future and past. It sustains us as surely as any kind of love.

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One More Small Change: Walkabout

Sometimes my walkabout view looks like this, and we get to cruising at a nice fast clip, getting all sorts of things done.

Other times my view is more like this. And I realize there really wasn’t anywhere we needed to go, after all.

My goal for this month’s change is to keep the car parked. Not always. We won’t miss playgroup. We’ll keep driving to the mountains whenever possible. Inevitably I’ll make at least one big trip to the grocery store with the car. But I do want to cut back and see how life opens up when I don’t just pop into the car all the time.

Here’s the plan: If it’s within a mile and a half of home, I’ll walk. If it’s farther afield, I’ll try to find a closer alternative, shrinking my orbit when possible. AndĀ when I want to go farther than I can walk, I’d like to take the bus. For a variety of reasons (it’s super lame, being the main one)Ā I’ve only taken public transportation once in ten years of living in this town. But life has changed a great deal for me since that ill-fated outing. And if a stay-at-home mama with a little one enamored with busses can’t make it work, who can?

I have already noticed how this requires a whole new relationship to going out and getting things done. Often it means doing much less, not letting too many errands build up, making fewer stops, and sometimes just not getting things done with my usual efficiency. But since having a child, this is what I’ve been doing, anyways.

The last piece of the puzzle is to get the baby seat on my bike instead of E’s, and actually learn to comfortably and safely ride with a passenger and panniers so that me and my little compaƱera can get our bliss on all over town.

A new month, another new beginning. How are your small changes going?

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Thanks to the Turning Wheel

That wheel is turning, oh yes it is.

With thanks to warmth and sunshine,

kindness and friendship, and the open hearted joy of it all.

So sensual and lovely, it’s as ifĀ I’m the one thawing out!

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Before the Blossoms

I think I might have discovered that happiest of mediums that March is all about.

Time enough to finish the sweaters and wraps while it’s still cold enough to want to.

(Come on spring storms, show me what you got — I need all the time I can get to finish that red one!)

With the blessed return of bees and birdsong and bursting little shoots in the garden saying,

fear not, woman, we’re almost there.

Which is good, because storms or not, I’m planting peas in just two more weeks.

And that’s the beauty of March.



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Change of Heart

(photo by E.)

Again and again this is my fear: not so much of our being judged in the future as having been the last generation to possess the potential and the possibility–even if hugely diminished by the trajectory, momentum, and infrastructure of all the generations that preceded ours–to effect change of the most profound kind: not a change in knowledge, but in entire systems of logic, or even further, changes within the heart.

–Rick Bass

A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life.

–Wendell Berry

When people ask me why we are taking this plastic fast, the easiest answers to articulate are the surface things. There’s our concern about the pollution associated with plastic manufacturing, the ocean’s plastic soup, the ramifications of a disposable consumer society, and the risks posed by plastics to human and environmental health.

But the truth is, I’m not doing this because of my concern about hormone disruptors leaching from the linings of tin cans (though I still think this is a good reason to avoid plastics, hormone disruptors are, sadly, so prevalent as to be unavoidable). It’s not because I think forgoing tortillas in plastic bags will save the lives of a marine turtle (my concern about the gyres is very real, but my contribution to it from New Mexico, where our rivers hardly make it out of town, let alone all the way to the sea, is negligible.) I am concerned about our plastic filled landfills contaminating ground water, but when we have plutonium waste up and down the other side of the watershed, it seems a bit nitpicky. So why plastic? Why bother?

Until I read the lines quoted above, it wasn’t easy for me to articulate the real reason behind our plastic fast. But it’s simple: We had a change of heart. Which changed our lives.

Yes, certainly — of course — we are undertaking this action as a symbolic protest and act of solidarity with the earth. But, as one of my pragmatic friends pointed out, plastic is not really the problem.

We are.

The reason we are doing this is because it was time to do something. Something more than we ever had before. Something we didn’t think was possible. Something that reflected our desire to live with less convenience and more intention. As in, intention that our grandkids will know we started waking up, and started changing our ways. Even in symbolic ways. Or especially in symbolic ways.

I know it is enormously overwhelming when we start thinking of all the things we think we should be doing, that we want to do. Where to begin? Where to end? (Is there an end point?) For us, plastic was the starting place. It could have been anything, really. But it was this. A small, simple action that nevertheless felt like a powerful way to change our lives. And it has, friends. It has.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground, Rumi said. Same goes for living more lightly.Ā All we need to do is touch our hearts, and begin.

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February Reckoning

Goodness, is it already time to tally up our monthly accrual of plastic waste again?

More milk caps, a lollypop wrapper, a plastic lined macaroni and cheese packet, some wrapping from something or other, rubber bands and plastic tags from produce (you can safely bet that there were a few more of these that got swept away during dinner cleanup).

Now is as good a time as any to bring up the butcher paper quandary. It’s surely plastic lined. We’re eating a lot less meat these days, but still, it’s not something we’re ready to give up completely (and no store will let me bring home raw meat in my own container). So that’s one area where I’m compromising. You don’t see that here because saving paper with raw meat juice on it would be a health hazard.

One other slip I had this month was buying fresh local lamb at the farmer’s market before I realized it came in a plastic vacuum sealed bag. Did I already tell you about that? It was a bummer.

Other than that, and the mail ordered yarn with plastic labels (it was wholesale!), Ā we seem to be doing well.

Now this pile is from our CSA. It has been an ongoing challenge for me to find ways to make the CSA experience a waste free one. This winter our CSA, which we otherwise love, has gone a little plastic bag crazy, pre-bagging just about everything. I end up carefully emptying the food from it’s plastic bags and putting it into my cloth ones. The plastic ones I give back, but sometimes they aren’t reusable–torn or dirty. Yes, it’s wasteful-ish. But I want to make the point that this is unwanted. The plastic shown in this picture is from things I couldn’t do that with — they had frozen veggies or fruit in them. I could have turned the food down, but I’d already paid for them and it’s a strange grey area for me. Would you say no to pomegranate apple juice with your name on it? On the bright side, a CSA is a great place to actually have an influence about changing wasteful practices. My voice has been heard and they are slowly making changes. And the benefits of the local, seasonal fare are worth fighting for. Besides, each of those baggies will get re-used about a hundred times around here, so they aren’t really trash yet.

Please note: This doesn’t represent all the plastic we threw out this month, only new items we purchased post 1/1/10 and have already used up. Not included are pre 2010 yogurt containers used to freeze food, many times re-used bread and produce bags that are just too funky to keep around, toothpaste caps, and other things from our pre-fast days that are just now leaving the home. Also not included are things given to us by friends–if someone brings a pint of fresh olives or a bag of chips to the house, we follow No Impact Man’s lead and enjoy the generous gesture and camaraderie, and take a break from tallying.

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Kicking Corporations Out of the Kitchen

Recently my friend Jenny and I were waxing poetic about cooking from scratch.Ā We covered the joys of self-reliance and creativity, frugality and reduced waste, and then she reminded me that many health food brands are owned by corporate food companies. So I added “act of protest” to my list of reasons why the Lost Kitchen Arts matter so much to me.

Curious to know more, I did a quick search and found this interesting chart that breaks down ownership of brands that would be familiar to anyone who shops at health food stores. Hmm. Food for thought, indeed.Ā I’m not going to try to interpret this information. Just putting it out there in case you, like me, want to know just what you are supporting with your grocery money.

I will say, though, that I now have one more reason to celebrate the beauty of mixing a few simple ingredients into as pure a form of edible love as I might ever find, all the while reclaiming my role as a provider of true sustenance.

And no, that’s not for sale.

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Homemade Crackers

(Oops, I accidentally posted this while still in draft form. Here’s something more coherent.)

I had an epic day in the kitchen this week, mostly involving my big sack of New Mexican whole wheat flour. As the snow swirled down outside, I puttered away, making bread and yogurt, then two cherry-peach tarts (with frozen fruit from last summer), then egg noodles and goat milk ricotta for ravioli. I figured while I had the big sack of flour out and getting all over the place, and the oven roaring, I should make some crackers, which after our long deprivation, we seem to inhale by the dozen.Ā It was a day of creativity and sustenance, the steady rhythms of measuring and mixing fueled by inspiration and an adventurousness that used to find its powder day outlet in the mountains rather than in the kitchen with flour flying everywhere.

::

Maybe crackers seem like an obvious thing to make from scratch, but to me they were a final frontier. So necessary, and yet soā€¦impossible. Or did I think them boring? But theyā€™re lovely and oh so simple (how could they not be given that so many other things that have no business acting like crackers often do?). Best of all they contain only the ingredients I actually want to put in, rather than all the white flour and cane sugar and what all the store-bought ones contain. It should also come as no surprise that they are cheap. This recipe is a simple foundation, a blank canvas for your culinary genius. No part of it is set in stone, and everything is up for adaptation.

Whole Wheat Crackers

Sift

2 cups whole wheat flour, or flour of choice. (I like to add in at least a 1/2 cup of cornmeal or rye. Adjust accordingly.)

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

blend

1/2 cup melted butter or oil

1 spoonful (you decide which spoon!) honey or molasses

2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

About 1 1/2 cup of water, but not all at once.

Note: The right moisture content is key to happy rollingā€“add water in small amounts until the dough is smooth and elastic. My flour seems like a sponge, it takes in so much moisture (weā€™re all a little dry here in the high desert) so what works for me might be way too much for you. Do not attempt to roll out crumbly dough. It might make you cry in frustration and curse my name. If the dough becomes too sticky, sprinkle with flour.

Roll dough out thinly, and cut out with cookie cutters or into strips or squares.

They can bake at 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes, until golden. They might come out a little soft, but will turn crispy when cool.

Variations:

~ lightly press poppy or sesame seeds into top of rolled doughā€“we call these birdseed crackers

~replace water with apple juice and add a few dashes of cinnamon

~brush with olive oil and sprinkle on dried herbs and parmesan

~brush with egg and top with raisins and sliced almonds

~replace 1/4 cup butter/oil with 1/4 cup nut butter

~add a dash of Ā your favorite curry spices, and granulated garlic or onions