Message from a Lot Owner
A reflection of the past
Message from a Lot Owner
As I've aged, I've become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend..
I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.
Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM or sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60 &70's, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love .. I will.
I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set.
They, too, will get old.
I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things.
Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody's beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face.
So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.
As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore..I've even earned the right to be wrong.
So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day (if I feel like it).
MAY OUR FRIENDSHIP NEVER COME APART ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART!
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery... if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor."
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot ...they "didn't have a pot to iss in" & were the lowest of the low.
The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell ... brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all came the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof... Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold
overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old." Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with
tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the "upper crust."
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night - "the graveyard shift" - to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."
Submitted by John Demeter.
Suspiciously Delicious Cabbage
I cook a lot of cabbage during the winter months - there aren't too many other options for greens if you're trying hard to go with local produce! Most often I cook traditional recipes I learned from my mom, but you've got to switch it up sometimes. This was an experiment based very, very loosely off of a kale recipe I was intrigued by (though looking back at the kale recipe now, it's actually totally different, oh well). When we were eating it with dinner my husband exclaimed, "what did you put in this cabbage?! It's suspiciously delicious. Is it actually meat or something?" No meat involved though. The cream picks up the browned bits from browning the cabbage as though it were the base for a gravy. It also mellows out the spicy ginger so everything practically melts together. It makes a delicious cold weather side dish, and I bet it would also be lovely tossed with pasta. - fiveandspice
Serves 4-6
* 1 medium green cabbage, cored and thinly sliced
* 1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
* 2 garlic cloves, minced
* 1 tablespoon (heaping) grated fresh ginger
* 2 tablespoons butter
* 3/4 cups heavy cream
* salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1. In a very large pan, heat the butter over medium heat until it is melted and starting to bubble a little. Stir in the onion and garlic and cook for about 5 minutes, until softened.
2. Stir in the ginger and cook for about a minute. Then, add in the cabbage, stirring well to coat it with the butter and other flavors. Cook, stirring occasionally for about 15-20 minutes, until the cabbage has softened and caramelized.
3. Turn the heat to low and stir in the cream making sure to scrape any browned bits up from the pan bottom. Cover and cook over low for about 10 minutes. Uncover, add salt and pepper to taste. Then cook for a few more minutes, stirring once or twice, to let some of the liquid evaporate. Adjust seasonings as desired and serve.
Submitted by Ann Macgregor.
The end of the world as we know it
Our Express program of weekly public events is taking the week of Canada Day off. In the meantime, we present the following text of a presentation which Robert MacDonald delivered on Saturday, June 25th at TEDxOkanaganCollege in Penticton.
I'm going to begin with a story told by John McKnight, which was inspired by E.F. Shumacher:
In 1673 Father Marquette encountered a village in Wisconsin surrounded by fields that had provided maize, beans, and squash for the aboriginal Sauk people for generations reaching back into unrecorded time.
When European settlers moved into Sauk territory in the 1840s, the government forced the native Sauk people out. These new settlers brought John Deere's new invention, the steel plow, with them and used it to open the area to a new kind of agriculture. They ignored the traditional ways of the Sauk Indians and used their sodbusting tool for planting wheat.
It took the Europeans and their new technology just one generation to make the prairie into a desert. The Sauk people, who knew how to sustain themselves on the prairie, were banished to another kind of desert called a reservation. And even they forgot about the techniques and tools that had sustained them for generations.
And that is how it was that three deserts were created - the Sauk prairie, the reservation, and the memories of the people.
More than a century later, the land of the Sauks is now being populated by the offspring of a second wave of European farmers who learned to replenish the soil through regenerative practices that are probably very similar to those that enabled the Sauk people to be so productive.
We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling.
Anyone who didn't get the message from the recent, and continuing, global economic reset is either in deep denial, or dangerously asleep at the wheel. That was just one of the many wake-up calls that have been, and will continue, coming our way.
Let's take, for example, water:
· It takes up to 1500 litres of water to grow enough biofuels to move one car 10 kilometers.
· 2000 litres a day are needed to feed each one of us.
· It takes 140 litres of water to grow enough beans for a single cup of coffee.
There just isn't enough water for all of us. I know it, and you know it.
Let's look at another example - food:
The path to our current food abundance was littered with unpaid bills, most borne by the environment. Agriculture has become the single greatest source of negative human impact upon the planet as a result of soil salinization, deforestation, loss of habitat and biodiversity, fresh water scarcity, and pesticide pollution of water and soil.
It has also taken an enormous human toll. Witness the rising tide of obesity, diabetes and other illnesses.
Fertilizer use worldwide increased 500 percent from 1960 to 2000, and this contributed to an explosion of "dead zones" in seas and oceans, upsetting a process of nutrient cycling that has existed for billions of years.
Just this week we learned that a catastrophic species extinction event is predicted for our oceans in our lifetimes. Say goodbye to seafood.
On land, we learn that the peak of phospherous production was passed 20 years ago - much sooner than the anticipated peak oil crisis - which will pretty much put paid to the much-ballyhooed green revolution.
So what we're witnessing is the first indications of the collapse of the agro-industrial food systems that we take for granted, and depend on.
All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history.
We, as citizens and consumers, are completely funding obscene windfalls for executives and controlling shareholders of big business, and we are expected to continue doing so, indefinitely.
The taps seem to have been turned off on the promised trickledown effect.
The commons - public lands and resources that belong to the people, not the government - are being given away at fire-sale prices.
Struggling nations are being robbed, bankrupted, poisoned with our toxins and our utterly unregulated industrial and extraction activities in those countries, and driven into brutal wage slavery.
Trade agreements and global trade practises are gutting social and environmental regulations, and protections, in countries rich and poor. Deregulation is enabling more and more corporate fraud, abuse of workers and the poisoning of our air, our water, our soil and our food.
We must face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.
The steady worldwide diversion of wealth towards the wealthiest was previously financed by borrowing from the future. Bubbles of credit and ecological debt made it possible for governments to create the illusion of economic growth and for wealth to concentrate.
Further financial or ecological borrowing from the future is a strategy for disaster. The world must quickly change to pay-as-you-go and resiliance - and past accumulations of assets are the only source of wealth sufficient to support this change.
It's only a matter of time before the poor, the starving, the disenfranchised, the disenchanted and the angry reach some kind of boiling point. The looming collision between the "classes" cannot be eluded by any fortress mentality - such as skepticism, materialist escapism or security fencing.
Pandemics, civil unrest, political instability, armed struggle, ecosystem collapses and financial turmoil can harm anyone anywhere - and those with the most have the most to lose.
We must realize that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves.
The urge to advance is so fundamental that there is a tendency to imagine progress and development even when it isn't happening. The looming collapse reveals a civilization that has lost its way, where self-interest is misdirected into making things worse for everyone, rather than better.
We must challenge the stories which underpin our civilization: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from nature.
Is it still progress when a billion people go to sleep hungry? When ecosystems are exploited to the point of collapse? When debts outpace incomes? When nations seek peace and security behind walls of weapons? When accumulating waste gases re-approach the inhospitable atmosphere of the primordial past?
The looming collapse is progress in reverse, with systematic losses of financial, societal and ecological stability that undermine any realistic prospect of security, in any region.
These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.
Progress is a myth. Our recent modern and post-modern industrial ages, as well as our present information age, have been rooted in the assumption that ever more evolved technology will bring ever more benefits and therefore a better and happier future for all. It hasn't worked out like that.
Technology alone cannot guarantee our well-being. It cannot even guarantee the sustainability of technology itself.
Progress cannot guarantee our well-being - just ask the 50,000 people who died of starvation yesterday, and the 50,000 who will die today, and the 50,000 more that will die every day from now until we do something about it.
We must write new myths to carry us forward: stories of harmony, regeneration and collaboration.
Our daily meals need to once again come from the strong hands and creative minds of individuals in regenerative food-producing communities, not from avaricious biotech giants or global agribusiness.
Traditional agricultural, nutritional and culinary knowledge needs to again be passed from one practitioner to the next.
This knowledge about how to sow, harvest, cook, preserve and regenerate the natural world around us is key to our survival as a species and worth discovering, discerning, documenting and celebrating. We need to tell those stories.
It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to learn how to build a homemade hydroponics system, how to preserve and can produce, how to find edible wild plants and mushrooms, how to make butter, cheese, and yogurt, how to brew beer, how to take care of animals, how to build a smokehouse and smoke meat, and a bunch of other simple, practical off-grid skills.
Life, at it's most elemental, has two components. First there is stuff. The second is our relationship to that stuff, the elements of our inner or mental experience which results in our attitude toward, engagement with or indifference to whatever is happening.
The unavoidable fact is that most of our challenges will be most effectively solved, not just by tinkering around with stuff (such as better, cleaner fuels) but also by radically changing our relationship to it (such as not needing or wanting to travel in the first place).
So what we need to start thinking, writing and talking about is changing our minds, changing our relationships, and ultimately changing our behaviors.
It's not just consumers and food producers who need a reset. Our architects and builders, our designers, healers, artists and teachers, and other critical creatives need to relearn that to serve the best interests of people, nature and communities, rather than corporate interests, is the best way to foster resilience.
We must reject the blind faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of problems in need of technological, ideological or political solutions.
In communities everywhere, people are starting to create their own resilience, and that of their families and communities, so they are better able to withstand the hardships that are already here, and those that are coming.
These are creative, common-sense, no-tech, low-tech and smart-tech approaches to meeting people's needs now while planting the seeds of a more regenerative world for us and the biosphere.
Food is a good example here too. More and more people are planting backyard gardens, building greenhouses, raising chickens and bees, starting farmers markets and reclaiming watersheds for foraging - not just because fresh and local is delicious and cool.
These efforts are in part a response to the lack of fresh and healthy food in urban and rural "food deserts." Food self-reliance is one way people are seeking security and community in an uncertain world.
Theodore Roosevelt said, "Do what you can with what you have where you are."
We need to be able to imagine, adapt, and celebrate. And we need to develop a tolerance for uncertainty.
We humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. We must be caretakers, not controllers. We must sow, as well as harvest.
These signals and stories should make it clear that if we want to even start to create regeneration, we must evolve our entire present human systems, including our patterns of beliefs, values and behavior as a species.
We must look at the economic and governing systems that determine our impact on the planet and each other, as well as the scientific and spiritual concepts which form their context and rationale.
Our regeneration as a species must begin with our stepping outside the human bubble of vanity and greed.
The best human technology has always been inspired by nature. We have imitated spiders spinning and weaving, termites building multi-level mud dwellings, moles and badgers burrowing, cetaceans diving, clams making superglue, birds flying, bats echo locating, mammals calculating and negotiating.
The nanoworld has an evolutionary history billions of years longer than the macroworld we see with our naked eyes. We now have the instruments to see how nature produces the most amazing materials.
While we forcibly "heat, beat and treat" hydrocarbons to manufacture our products with 96% waste in the process and enormous pollution, nature makes her fabulous materials, such as spider silks and mother of pearl, out of carbohydrates at ambient temperatures with no waste at all.
By careful attention, we must re-engage with the natural world.
Nature's manufacture is, then, far more sophisticated than our own, and it is high time we accorded it due respect and learned its ways. We must learn to see ourselves as a integrated part of nature, rather than as a species apart that sees nature merely as a unlimited resource for its own use.
Once we see ourselves within nature's awesomely complex living systems, we will make rapid progress towards collaborative sustainability as a species. Then, having solved the basics of living, we will be free to explore and develop our uniquely creative carrying capacity.
We will co-create a better world only if we're willing to get dirt under our fingernails.
Property has value only when people live harmoniously with it to work, and play and grow things, like food. Sustainable community development must be centered on the creation and perpetuation of affordable housing, affordable workspaces, affordable shared learning and gathering spaces and affordable food production spaces.
We must invest in property, not to get rich quick, but rather to ensure our survival. The future requires a shift in beliefs and assumptions about property from one of ownership to one of stewardship.
Together, we must find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.
I began with a story and I'm going to double down now that I'm at the end. One from Nic Marks of the Happiness Project, and the other from the poet and farmer Wendell Berry.
Marks states, "Happy people don't only create successes for themselves; they also reach out to others and create societal benefits through their generosity and creativity." He proposes, "We urgently need a positive vision of our future. We need to stimulate people not to run away but instead to engage, to have compassion, to be open, to be flexible, to be creative and innovative."
Together, we must all become gardeners.
The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop.
Berry maintains, "We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it."
Let's start now.
Submitted by Ron Dewhurst.
Kambaku Tent (48 M2 / 518 Ft2)
Cost : $27,542.00 to $58,121.00
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