There and back again...

Can I do anything but a collage of pictures these days?? I don't know.
I have been going a little heavy on the fabric shopping...must stop...now!
I read this in like a day and a half at the beach. I hate to say it because EVERYONE is reading it, but I LOVE IT! Like brain candy, finally a book I could finish, I don't know why, but yum!

I had been reading this...which EVERYONE is reading also...BUT it is not holding my interest. I love Barbara Kingslover's fiction, but her prose seems a bit heavy handed and just not "good"(I know that I am going to be unpopular for writing that...sorry.) I will finish it, but I felt like this was a FAR better commentary on America's eating habits and modes of procurement. I liked the parts that she wrote about her own garden (I thought that this was going to be the "meat" of the book, but it just wasn't for me.) I like the factual articles that her husband had in the book. Maybe it is because I am truly a scientist and gardener at heart, but I felt that she oversimplified things to make her points and that her audience is actually smarter than she gave them credit for. All of my piss and vinegar aside, I totally support what she was/is trying to do and say. I live in a "crazy-environmental-liberal-hot bed" type of town so perhaps I am not her target audience...I can accept that.

***NOTE! I just looked at her web site and it does seems like she is also trying to make a community for people interested in the local food movement and THAT is something that I can really back....so I am a picky crab, I still liked "The Omnivore's Dilemma" better.

SO to sum up, I plan on blogging more as the days shorten. I am still trying to milk the sweet parts of summer, so that when the dark, crispness of fall rolls in, my memories will be full of laughter and times with friends in the sunshine. Hopefully this will keep me satiated through the our wet Oregon winter. The blogging will wait.
JMB

Hive mentality...

Have you heard? There is a decline in pollinators in our fair world. For those of us not familiar with Plant biology here is the down and dirty... Many plants need pollen from other plants to produce "fruit" (things that we like to eat from nuts to apples to squash...think about it, when you break it down everything we eat is a "fruit" from something---EVEN the meat-eaters out there are eating corn through the food chain) Pollen can be spread by the wind, water, animals, and insects.
It is these little workers that have been weighing on my mind lately. I am an avid reader of our little daily paper (It is pretty bad in terms of writing, but it is what I've got.) and in the last year I have read at least 3 large articles talking about the decline of bee populations. This makes me think that the problem is getting serious if a town daily has reported on something formerly of only "scientific" importance...I guess, like the whole "myth" of global warming, the decline of pollinating species is becoming mainstream.
I like to eat. I like gardening. I like a world full of living green things.
So, I am proposing something rather radical--let's stop spraying chemicals on our land (see previous neighbor rant post) AND let's plant some pollinator friendly plants. My theory is just this...if you plant it they will come (wasn't that from a movie??)

I have noticed over the past 8 years, in my garden, that the (friendly) insect levels have increased year after year. Due in part to some of the bushes and plants here and there in the yard that they can use as habitat and a food source. I believe that they in turn stay around to pollinate my food plants and eat some of the pests. I choose to think of my yard as a micro-ecosystem, if you please. Some of my easiest keepers (that are pollinator friendly) are:

Ceanothus (California Lilac)-- I love this bush. It grows fast, but is amendable to shaping and the "blue" flowers are so pretty. ALSO this lovely plant is drought tolerant after it is established.(I have tested this)

Rosemary-- I love this too. The bushes grow the most beautiful sculptural branches. You can cook with it, and it smells good too.

Raspberries-- LOVE THIS BERRY. I have planted a few different varieties so that I can have berries all summer. (the early summer berries are always the tastiest, but I would never turn down those last berries in September.)

Butterfly bushes-- In my state I believe that this plant is going to go on an invasive plant list in the near future, if it isn't already there....BUT I think for town dwellers this is a great plant for bees and other insects. It is hard to kill, and it drought tolerant after it is established. I did manage to kill my white one, but it was only after I pulled it out by it's roots and moved it. I think that I didn't leave it enough root...but so it goes.

Artichokes-- Great to eat...but even better, the purple flower that appears if you let one of the "chokes" go is a bee magnet. The color is so beatiful, it almost glows. I like the textural aspect of this plant also, but the leaves are prickly and you have to handle them with care.

These are only a few of the plants in my yard, but they are a collection that the pollinators seem to like, almost year round, in the temperate climate of the pacific northwest.

While I could dwell on the disgusting things that we do to the earth and it's creatures, I am choosing to do a small bit of something positive and I hope that is some encouragement to all of you to do a bit of the same.
JMB

Maybe you should just write a letter...

I love the town that I live in. I realized the other day that I have lived here for 20 years! 2 decades!

So, while I love living here because of the location and climate, watching our city political machine trying to effect change is like stabbing myself in the gut with a dry piece of spaghetti-- irritating and totally ineffectual. My town has these slogans "We're the whole enchilada" and the "Best of this and that IN THE WORLD". The city council has these meetings and meetings and meetings and by the time the $75,000 consultant has been paid, the point is moot, because there is a budget crisis. Sorry citizens, maybe the pits downtown will be filled in the fiscal year 2050.

OK, so I am a bit dramatic, the spaghetti thing was WAY over the top-- lo siento!

The hot topic of the last few years has been the demise of our downtown. There are a lot of reasons that it has happened, but if you raze all your historic buildings and rebuild in the seventies... your downtown is going to be filled with a whole lot of ugly. Anyway my own theory is...if people have a reason to go some place, they will go, there will be commerce, investors will want to rebuild...you know, my usual pie in the sky idea.

One late night in February I wrote the mayor an email (amazing, everyone is on the net these days....hee hee) about moving our Thursday afternoon/evening Farmer's Market downtown?? Like it is on Tuesday mornings and Saturdays....not a big stretch conceptually, I just assumed that someone else had thought of it.

The mayor didn't write back. I waited.

A few weeks later I was civically irritated again and so I wrote a new letter to her and added my old one as an attachment. This time she wrote back and said that she would pursue the idea.

Let's just say there was an article in the paper today about the "New" Thursday market...yep, it is going to be downtown. It is going to be great, people are going to go, there is going to be commerce...who knows what could happen?

Maybe it wasn't my letter...but what a coincidence!!

My marvelous notion for the day is this... is there some thing that bugs you?

1)Think of a positive solution.

2)Write a letter/email/make a call.

3)Let someone know what you are thinking.

4)Tell them again, if you think they didn't understand you.

Change can happen.

JMB

Obama-o-rama

I got to see him tonight.
I got to hear his words from his own mouth--real time.

It was amazing, mostly because I don't like these types of things. I don't like being in large groups of people with crazy amounts energy. But, I do have to say that tonight it felt good. It felt really good to look around our local basketball arena and feel people, hear people, see people wanting change. For the most part things stayed on the positive--what we WANT as Americans instead of what we don't want. It is powerful to look around a huge room and see people wanting to be a community. A community of people who care about their neighbors, who want them to have healthcare, opportunities in education and employment, clean air, and a government accountable to the People and to the Constitution. I think that people around me have always wanted these things, but because of the divisiveness of popular politics--it has been "very out of fashion" to admit to wanting these things.

Obama spoke of "being willing to challenge ourselves to be better neighbors, and better parents, and better citizens, then there would be no problem that we could not solve, there would be no destiny that we could not fulfill."

The thing is--- I actually believe this, I have for a long time and I have just never heard a Presidential candidate say it out loud. He was the first for me, that is why I am going to vote for him. I have heard people laughing about comments like this as being naive and that Barak really is just telling us what we want to hear...blah, blah, blah. Well, I will take the earnestness of a man who is calling upon each of us to unite, take responsibility for, and make something of our country over the cynicism of the status quo ANY DAY. If I can't believe that these things are possible, I just can't go on living in this country. The only way that I can see to go on, to instill in my children a desire to leave things better than when they found it, to help others when you are able, to be accountable for your actions, is to believe that change is possible....in large and small ways.

No matter what happens in November, no matter who is in the White House, It was wonderful tonight to hear someone speak words that I feel in my own heart. It was wonderful tonight to look out on a sea of faces and recognize within them that there was that same desire that is within me-- a desire for Community instead of division, Growth instead of stagnation, and Hope instead of fear.

Two Words that I kept seeing tonight:
HOPE
followed by
ACTION
I like that--simple, yet doable in so many ways.
JMB

Part of the Journey...

Well, my camera and my phone did "give up the ghost" as they say, and it is leaving me to feel like a technical pariah. I was never one to like cell phones...and I was REALLY far behind in the switch from film to digital...but now it has been so sad, like forlorn sad. Last night I was feeling really dramatic, like I just might die without my technology crutches. The cable Internet was on the fritz and my podcasts kept timing out....the list goes on and on.

AND we are at war, people!!!! I am freaking out about my inability to email/photograph/download/Internet surf and we ARE AT WAR!!! What is up with that?

I think that it is just my small, very human desire for control...something, within my small scope of the world...my electronic gizmos. To deny (kind of, if only momentarily) the greater ills of this world. I can rage about the inadequacies of Comcast's service because it is just not too horrible for me to think of...when I start to dwell and educate myself on what is going on in Iraq, Iran, Israel/Palestine, Kenya, Darfur...the list goes on and on, I kind of freak out. And what can I really do? What can WE really do? The only thing that I can come up with is to love our families, love ourselves and love our country enough to vote.

I am what some may call a conservative liberal...OR a liberal conservative...I don't care what you may want to call me but I think that we, EACH of us (transcending political parties), need to look how we are living, take responsibility for how we are living, and participate in the Process (VOTE!!). I am fully aware that we all ARE NOT going to agree, this is OK by me as long as people are AWAKE and participating. This is a presidential election year (VOTE!!). We need to let the candidates know what we want, where we want our country to go, how we want to be in the world as a country (VOTE!!). What I am advocating here is simply that "we the people" have an opinion (because I know that we all do, as diverse as they are.) and that we need to make that opinion known to our elected officials, rather than just sit and stew about it.

We can participate by involving ourselves in the election process, informing ourselves about the issues and MAYBE even informing the candidates about OUR issues.

WOW...that was a lot for me... something does have to be done. I need to fight the apathy in myself and I think that any movement forward counts! Please vote in your state's primary election and then please make the small effort and vote in November. It is worth it.
JMB

Because life is a blur sometimes...

Fear less, hope more;
eat less, chew more;
whine less, breathe more;
talk less, say more;
love more, and all good things will be yours.
~Swedish Proverb

Love more, love more, love more.
JMB

Jimmy Carter and Amy Sedaris, wow (Podcast ALERT!).

Jimmy Carter sez:

Peace is more then just the absence of war. People everywhere seek an inner peace that comes from the human rights to voice their views, choose their leaders, feed their families and raise healthy children.

I read this on Ali Edwards site and it touched me. If "we" could just realize that this is a truth for everyone, it would be (for lack of more eloquent speech) cool.

What I had intended on posting about was Amy Sedaris and a panel of crafters. (that I am (right this second even) listening to) She is on this week's episode of Craftsanity podcast. She is so funny, sometimes a bit raw spoken....SO FUNNY. I was listening to it while I was watching my eldest play "Ernie's Space Adventures", which is amusing, but I was laughing out loud at Missy Sedaris and my guy....was just tickled that I found Ernie so hilarious. The podcast is actually a recording of a panel type discussion from a conference called BlogHer 2007. (I have to stop before I bore myself with a description...) But ANYWAY Crafsanity podcasts are well done and this will not disappoint...listen to it.

**ALERT, Vista update...

BORING, right...that is what I am thinking. I got a new computer and my sweet and lovable husband picked it out and now....WE GOT VISTA. Anyone who knows me, knows that I hate change. I fight it kicking and screaming. Deep down I know that it is good, but the transition period is THE WORST.

1. After looking and looking for all of the scattered components of what used to be my old computer....trying to reload the software... I am realizing that some of my Photo-phixing things (circa 1998?) are not compatible with this "new" Vista thing...PLEASE! The program is only 9 years old, I just figured out how to make it do the things that I want LAST year. (it is probably hundreds of years old in computer years.) (Why me?)


2. Then after skyping with my pseudo-Swedish friend for over an hour without my webcam (It is so distracting not being able to make faces and fix my hair when we skype) I found the camera only to try and install it and be told that it is not supported on Vista...how's them apples? NOT EVEN A YEAR OLD, well almost a year old. I guess that is how they GET you for being so cheap that you only spent $34.99 on the pie-snapper. GRRRR.


3. The last Vista gripe for tonight is this....I received a "super" printer from my in-laws for Christmas. Because I have two small boys and a propensity for piling on the computer desk, the new printer has been a footstool while I blog for 8 months now. I FINALLY found the install disk (after looking for an hour and several calls to my dear sweet husband)....I insert it into the maw of this beast with a great sigh of relief....AND IT DOESN'T WORK.... Since I had already been through all of the other "dinosaur" excavation and extermination this evening, with a small prayer in my heart I searched the HP website and HALLELUJAH there was a new driver. (which I don't really want to know what that is, I just know that I need it.)

So, for tonight, I think that I have done enough for the future of technology in our house. I feel pretty geeky, but only in the sexiest way.

--I won't even tell you how cruel HP is to give you 4 free trys at "Cake Mania", no, I won't even start on that!

JMB

What changed my mood....

If there is light in the soul,

There will be beauty in the person.

If there is beauty in the person,

There will be harmony in the house.

If there is harmony in the house,

There will be order in the nation.

If there is order in the nation,

There will be peace in the world.

Chinese Proverb

A nice woman left this for me in my comments and it really turned around that HOT HOT grumpiness in the previous post, thanks Diane!

This is my quilt, my one for my self....

I started it after having my first son's first birthday, after reading an article in Quilter's Newsletter (I think) about design and the Fibonacci sequence, (this is not the article, but kind of goes into what inspired me.) I decided to just wing it and I designed on some graph paper and before I thought about all those little pieces...I started it.

2 years later, having run out of the weird pinky-orange fabric 2 times (lessons learned) and getting ready to birth son #2...I finished piecing this. Now that boy#2 is over a year it seems appropriate to start again on this piece and follow it to a conclusion...maybe by next summer??

I have decided to add a border with this cool applique technique that I learned in Portland a few weeks ago at cool cottons . I will update when possible.... we'll see.

JMB

A challenge for those who really want to love where they live...or Embracing "the Golden Rule"

This idea of mine is really still forming, but it is how I have been thinking about life for a while now. I don't want to get all political. I vote, I encourage people to vote and I sometimes am idealistic enough to believe that it makes a difference. (See, the cynicism is always there, trying to find a way to get me down.) BUT, I want to issue a challenge to each of the 3-5 people that read this little blog:

Stop waiting for someone else to start it, WE need to MAKE our home/community/state/country/world someplace that WE would like to LIVE.

OK, so it sounds a bit vague, but let me flesh it out for you. I am really tired of being fearful about the world that my kids (and myself) are living in. There is only so much that I can control, and the things that I can control are these:

1)The way that I treat people. (They can be rude or whatever, but if I respond in kind it ends up making me feel even worse.)

2)The way that I see people. (I am a mom, I love my kids...other people are parents too, hey, I bet they love their kids too. That there is some common ground that I think WE can build upon.)

3)Speaking up when I see things that are great and speaking up when I see things that are not right. (It may seem cliche, but a smile and a genuine "thank you" at the grocery store/coffee shop/drive-up/where ever is only going to make someone feel better.)

I want my kids to grow up in a community/country/world where if we get separated and they are scared that some nice mom or dad is going to help them find me.....so you know what I am going to do....if I see a crying child, I am going to help them get safe. I am going to encourage my kids to be polite to people and say "please" and "thank-you" because I like it when people are civil to each other. Also, when I am at the park with my kids, I talk to other kids like they are real people not "just kids", because I think that my kids deserve that as well. I think that we all do.

So, this is not some totally "designed" manifesto, it is raw, but there are so many little things that we can do every day to make our surroundings better, not only for ourselves but for our neighbors and our children.

JMB

**Note to you cynics who want to write me off as some "Pollyanna-type"**

I know that there are Bad Bad things and Bad Bad people out there....I read the paper and watch the news...but there is more good, it just doesn't get publicized. Let's not take it for granted, let's not perpetuate apathy in future generations. I am challenging you and all of your friends and friend's friends to get out, enjoy your community, treat people like you would like to be treated.

DON'T WAIT FOR SOMEONE ELSE, DO IT FIRST!

You must be the change you want to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi