Oh it's beautiful! The grapes flourished- wild native california grapes, tiny, veryvery sweet; I met a woman at work who grew up foraging for most of their family's food; she said it was a wonderful time, but probly a lot more fun in retrospect... at least she knows how to do it now. These days she makes jelly from wild grapes & blackberries- says no grape is as good as the wild ones. Next year we plan to harvest & put up some jellies. The olives are few, but ripening- I'm processing them by packing in rock salt; hopefully we'll have those delicious dry olives I've only been able to get from delis in the past.
Like many of us, I've spent years in denial, depression, repression, hopelessness & fear regarding the sorry, sorry state of human social justice, consciousness, & our egregious gobbling of natural resources. The usual discussion revolves around outrage or head-shaking, & most often, especially during the Bush years, alarm & dismay that "people don't get it". Possibilities for change are generally broken down into working for change within the Man's system- voting, organizing, marching/demonstrating etc- or revolution, tearing down the Man's system. My issue with those possibilities is that either one requires close engagement with the Man- either changing the nature of or dismantling the global corporate-government hegemony. The conversations generally end with something along the lines of "well, whatcha gonna do?" followed by a change of subject. The questions I ask myself in response are well, what ARE we going to do? and How are our own actions/relationships essentially any different than the Man's? Isn't giving up our little pennies to the corporate, our time, our personal resources, our imagination, to maintaining a roof & transport & light & heat & food- all dependent on the Man- another way of supporting the system we despise? If the emperor truly has no clothes- and we know that- why are we still standing in the crowd, watching the parade? Another common subject is the Crash, generally defined as a time when the resources run out, the government collapses, civilization as we know it is over. Sort of like The Rapture, only no one gets to fly off to Heaven. The thing is, I realized, the collapse is happening right now. We're sort of like the proverbial frog in a heating pot of water- as it gets slowly hotter, the frog adjusts & thinks it's fine. Finally the water boils & the frog dies- never having noticed what happened.
The School of Pam is my personal attempt to learn to step away from the parade. Step away with compassion for my ignorant limitations. Explore & practice what I will & can do rather than what I should do, or theoretically could do if I wasn't too lazy, too poor, too tired, too hopeless. Well, I'm definately too human, with all the personal versions of cultural hypnosis and short term comfort- seeking that implies. So I'll work with what I have, instead of waiting till I'm "ready", better educated, better able. I'll live with my outright failures and mistakes. I'll just keep trying to step away from the dreadful parade, whatever my perceived limitations or foolishnesses. I'm doing it anyway.
Life Goes On, by Barbara Minor
When a friend said, "I'll be glad when this is over so I can get on with my life" I smiled. Life is never on hold. There is no "time out."
Now, in what seems to me a prolonged illness I hear myself say, "If I had more energy I'd..."
And I remember There's no room for "if only's" in life. It goes on.
Life is not a cautionary tale. It's a gift. Enjoy it.
The Library: Public Health
The Coming Plague, Laurie Garret, Penguin Books, 1994
Betrayal of Trust: the Collapse of Global Public Health, Laurie Garret, Hyperion, 2000,
The Library: Wildlife and Insects
Insects Through the Seasons, Gilbert Waldbauer, Harvard University Press, 1996,
Your Backyard Wildlife Year, Marcus Shneck, Rodale Press, 1996
Peterson Field Guide: Insects, Donald J. Borror, Richard E. White, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970
Bugs, Beetles, Spiders, Snakes. Ken Preston, et al, Quintet Publishing Limited, 2004
The Library: PLANTS WE LIVE WITH
Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not-So-Wild) Places , Wildman Steve Brill, William Morrow/Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 1994
Who Named the Daisy? Who Named the Rose? Mary Durant, Congdon & Weed, Inc., 1973
Wayside Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest, Dr. Dee Strickler, The Flower Press, 1993
Natural History of Vacant Lots, Matthew F. Vessel and Herbert H. Wong, University of Californisa Press, 1971
Edible and Useful Plants of California, Charlotte Bringle Clark, University of California Press, 1971
Common Weeds of the United States, United States Department of Agriculture, Dover Publications, 1971
The Library: MEDICINE
You Are Being Lied To: The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes, and Cultural Myths, Editor Russ Kick, The Disinformation Company Ltd., 2001: see esp Poppycock, Jim Hogshire, pg 245
Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West, Michael Moore, Museum of New Mexico Press, 1979
Making Plant Medicine, Richo Cech, Horizon Herbs, 2000
Where There Is No Dentist, Murray Dickson, Hesperian Foundation, 1983
Where There Is No Doctor, David Werner, Hesperian Foundation, 1980
The library: Gardening
The Gardener's Guide to Common-Sense Pest Control, William Olkowski, et al, The Taunton Press, 1995
Gardening With Nature, Leonard Wickendon, The Devlin- Adair Company, 1953
WEEDS- Guardians of the Soil, Joseph A. Cocannouer, Devlin- Adair Company, 1950
The Backyard Orchardist, Stella Otto, OttoGraphics, 1993
Oh it's beautiful! The grapes flourished- wild native california grapes, tiny, veryvery sweet; I met a woman at work who grew up foraging for most of their family's food; she said it was a wonderful time, but probly a lot more fun in retrospect... at least she knows how to do it now. These days she makes jelly from wild grapes & blackberries- says no grape is as good as the wild ones. Next year we plan to harvest & put up some jellies. The olives are few, but ripening- I'm processing them by packing in rock salt; hopefully we'll have those delicious dry olives I've only been able to get from delis in the past. 
1 comment:
Yummmmm....!!
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