Being with What Is means that I’m paying attention to the fact that I have a sweet, fluffy cat curled up next to me.  The wood stove is warming me.  Tom is tappity-tapping something on his laptop a few paces away.  Our progeny is asleep upstairs, no doubt with her golden locks arrayed on the pillow like a shimmering fountain.  We are full of local lamb-with-garlic and local spinach.  All is quiet.  Despite the temptation of two events tonight (game night at Owl and Raven, and a lecture called “Rebels in Paradise: Sketches of Northampton Abolitionists”) I decided I was too discombobulated to go out.  This was a wise choice, I think.

Part of what is so profoundly cathartic and healing about this blog is that writing makes me take stock, check in with myself, and then write whatever it is I need to see in front of my face.  There have been long stretches when I haven’t written here at all; writing felt too raw.  I was afraid to reveal myself.  I’m still afraid to reveal myself, but I’m getting clearer and clearer that when I write here, the writing is primarily for myself.  If others gain benefit, all the better, but it’s not the main focus.  And the idea that there are people out there sitting in judgment of me because of what I write here, well, that can’t be the main focus either.  It can’t.  When I allowed the fear of judgment to be the main focus, I was unable to write at all.  What good is that?  I’m also learning to let go of the fear of being boring; if someone reads this and is bored, well, geez, there’s only the whole rest of the Internet for them to look at.

Continuing to Be with What Is, I note that I’ve been feeling a great deal of anxiety and sadness.  It helps to know that this is a well-trodden road for the collapse-aware.  Who wouldn’t feel anxious and sad, knowing the path we’re on?  The latest fiasco with the finances of Europe is only a small manifestation of the systemic problems that surround us.  Meanwhile, fountains of methane, a greenhouse gas, are bubbling up out of the Arctic Ocean.  I will not continue listing all of the things to freak out about, not to be in denial, but because that information can be found elsewhere, and I need to reserve this time for my own response to it all.

Today I was struck by a juxtaposition of frames of reference.  Last night I was reading “A First-Hand Account of Long-Term SHTF Survival” by a man who survived civil war in Bosnia.  Then I was reading a book, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit.  How is it that in some difficult scenarios, people are ready to shoot each other, and in others, they are ready to risk their lives to save others?  What makes the difference?  I’m hoping that Solnit’s book will shed light on this question.  It seems that building trust between people in a community is possibly the single most important aspect of community resilience.  Even in the Bosnian example, where there was clearly an emphasis on having ammo at the ready and danger from neighbors all around, the writer emphasized that having friends and family was essential; that those who tried to go it alone ended up dead, no matter how much ammo they had.

Friends.  Is there anything more potent and beautiful in this world than friendship?  I include family in this.  Aren’t dear friends a sort of chosen family?  Who are we without friends?  Do humans make any sense as a species without friends?  The forces that drive us apart are diabolical indeed.  The culture of competition and domination, as pervasive as it is, erodes the basis for trust and friendship.  Of course, trust and friendship pop up anyway, like happy weeds growing through the sidewalk of Competition/Domination, but damn it, that concrete is thick.  It’s the concrete of the “industrial economy”, the system that tells us we must spend the vast majority of our waking hours in a state of separateness and numbness.  How many people get to connect with friends as often as they need?  How many people are getting the hugs, the understanding, the appreciation, the laughter they need?  How many other needs go unmet?  What gets in the way?  You know what gets in the way.  You and I could come up with quite a long list of what gets in the way.  And this behemoth Thing that’s in the way, if we bundle it all up into a Thing, needs to die, because it is killing everything in its path.

So I say, go forth and be with friends.  Be real with them, and make room for both laughter and weeping.  Revive the fine art of hanging out.  Was there ever so fine a thing?  If you work too hard to see any friends, quit your job.  If you study too hard to see any friends, quit school.  When you die, will you wish you had worked really hard, or spent time with those you care about?  Granted, this doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition, but it serves to illustrate a point.  Every day we’re alive is numbered.  See here, it’s December 12, 2011, and this is day #___ of your life.  That means you have ___ days left.  You know this is true.  So how are you going to spend the rest of your time?  I might add, that in addition to meeting your deep human needs for love and friendship, that you might consider spending time on addressing issues of justice and doing the right thing.

Well.  I didn’t actually set out to be dispensing advice like this.  Especially since I just said I was writing primarily for myself.  Go figure.  This is kind of fun, turning on like a faucet and seeing what comes pouring out.

• Northampton Winter Farmers Market in the basement of Thorne’s.  (Every Saturday, 9am-2pm.)  How I love thee, farmers and neighbors!  Always such a joy to run into magnificent people at the farmers market.  And what profoundly wonderful food.  This is food worth weeping over, because it is so beautiful, so delicious, and produced with such love and hard work, right here in our shared home, this gorgeous bioregion.  So I weep over it.  It feeds every part of me, as well as feeding my family.  Today I got beets, butternut squash, and eggs from Crabapple Farm, spinach from Wild Sky Farm (and Kristen W. is both my neighbor and farmer, living just down the road from me), sweet potatoes and orange, yellow, and deep-maroon carrots from Winter Moon Farm, baby arugula from Town Farm, and lamb stew meat from Leyden Glen Farm.  Plus I saw Amanda from Mockingbird Farm and lots of other familiar faces.  Too much goodness for words.  Ran into my neighbor Craig Fear of Pioneer Valley Nutritional Therapy, who was so incredibly kind to my family last week and brought us homemade chicken soup.  Also ran into Stella, assistant farmer at Crimson and Clover Farm, which was a treat.
• While Tom was at his appointment getting his back examined and exercises recommended, I finished up going to the farmers market and then had time, all by myself, in downtown Northampton.  Gasp.  So of course I went to Raven Used Books and puttered around looking at books, then went to the Artisan Gallery and admired the display of mugs by local artists.  This all confirmed that I still like words, ideas, pictures, and beautiful handmade objects.
• Drove to Boston, saw my parents, picked up Lily, and drove back.

Wait, could I have written that in such a neutral manner?  I walked into my parents’ place and saw Lily and wham, it hit me, the full force of the love I feel for this luminous child.  Lily beamed, tackled me to the floor and we laughed and kissed each other.  She really enjoyed tackling me so she did it again five or six times.  Thank you, Lily, for keeping me grounded, and for being a giant ray of sunshine.

The aforementioned incredibly jarring moment happened when I went out for a walk with my dad to visit a furniture store.  (My parents are determined to give me a grown-up dresser for my 40th birthday in April.  The bedroom furniture I have now is the same furniture I’ve had since I was a child.)  We walked down Newbury Street in Boston.  If you know this street, you know that it is the height of consumer hell.  (Or heaven, if you prefer.  To me, it’s hell.)  It was packed with people who were shopping their little shopaholic buns off.  They were all striding purposefully around, laden with bags, dressed fashionably, immersed in the seriousness of their task.  It suddenly hit me that today, TODAY, if all hadn’t gone awry, I was supposed to have started my solitary retreat at Temenos.  I was supposed to be in a place that was the precise antithesis of Newbury Street during the holiday season.  I was supposed to be in the woods with no electricity, in the quiet, sitting by a wood stove with my journal and tea, or walking between the trees, listening to the earth breathe.  I was NOT supposed to be rushing down an urban sidewalk at the urging of my parents, between the throngs of shoppers; I was not supposed to be focusing on buying stuff; I was not supposed to be around people at all.  This realization felt like a punch in the stomach.  I also felt sick to think of all the focus on buying stuff that I engaged in yesterday.  (Granted, I was buying useful stuff at my local hardware store, but I still think it’s important to discern that it is NOT buying stuff that really matters.)

After returning to my parents’ place, my mother mentioned that she had something she wanted to show me, something I had specifically requested to see, with great urgency.  It was a journal that my late grandfather, Luigi (“Gigi”) Foschi, had compiled with genealogical information, with details, vignettes, photos, photocopies of old letters, etc.  WHOA, whiplash.  Goodbye 21st century consumerist hell out on the street, hello 19th century tale of my great-great-grandmother Luigia (“Giotta”) Moretti Magri dying in childbirth (something about a “black pox of childbirth”), written in loopy handwriting by my great-great-grandfather Antonio Magri, who would die a few years after.  Hello to the little note written by Gigi inside the front cover, that read “Grazie a Jen per questo libretto.”  (‘Thanks to Jen for this little book.’  I had given it to him as a gift.)  Hello to a picture of my great-grandfather Francesco Foschi, in military uniform, ready to fight in World War I.  Hello to Gigi’s characterization of his father: “Buono e generoso.”  (Good and generous.)  This made me start bawling my eyes out.  My mother insisted that she wouldn’t show the journal to me if it was going to make me cry.  Lily came running to find out why I was crying so hard.  My father wanted to know what had caused this outburst of tears.  I explained, “The last words Gigi ever said to me were, ‘Ricorderò sempre la tua bontà e generosità.’” (‘I will always remember your goodness and generosity.”)

Thank you, dearest Gigi, for reminding me from beyond that what really matters is goodness and generosity.  Perhaps all of the events of the last week conspired to lead me to your words.  You will always remember.  I will always remember.  The ancestors are here if we look for them.  I will be guided by bontà, generosità, and love that reaches beyond death.

It has been a deeply weird week.  All the illness and stress has been disorienting.  Tom not going to work for so long is disorienting.  Then my parents volunteered to come get Lily and take her to Boston with them for a few days, and not having Lily around is disorienting.  I miss my little ray of sunshine.  And on top of everything, I keep reading the news.  The problem with reading the news is that it never leads to feelings of calm and groundedness.  Instead, my fretting has mounted and mounted.  I don’t even have Lily here to distract me from it, to remind me that sometimes all that really matters is running around in circles, or drawing in a dot-to-dot book, or snuggling together and saying to each other, “I love you so much I’m going to explode.”

So this morning I woke up and had a bit of a freak-out.  What if the banks are all going to crash in rapid succession, interconnected as they are, in a matter of days or weeks?  Have we done everything possible to prepare for such a thing?  (Of course we haven’t done everything possible.)  What is the current state of our food storage?  What about tools?  What about all the projects we were going to do on this house and garden where we’ve only lived for four months so far?  Should we take money out of the bank?  If so, how much?  Where would we put it?  How can we possibly prioritize everything that we should do, as soon as possible?

All this fretting led to:

• a brainstorm with Tom, with accompanying list of procurable stuff
• a hastily hatched plan to visit EcoBuilding Bargains, Florence Hardware, and River Valley Market (as well as Yankee Mattress Factory to pick up the mattress I had ordered before Tom’s back went out)
• a call to the dear, affable, helpful Hannah, who willingly agreed to join the shopapocalyptic freak-out and mattress retrieval
• an actual visit to Cup and Top (oh, right, lunch), Florence Hardware and to the mattress place; the other destinations were scrapped for today.

Clearly, anxiety can only get you so far in a single day.  I started hitting a wall of overwhelm pretty fast.  It doesn’t help to be in a store filled with lots and lots of potentially useful products, only to be semi-paralyzed with fear of running out of time, fear of making ill-informed decisions, fear of not having one’s priorities straight, and fear of being perceived as a veritable lunatic.  (In talking with the owners of Florence Hardware, they seemed to settle on the idea that the shopping frenzy was prompted by a combination of us being new homeowners along with the recent power outage.  Or maybe they’re nodding to themselves, saying, “Yep.  Preppers.”  They did seem suitably impressed that one of the first things we did upon moving in was get the wood stove inspected, the chimney cleaned, and ordered and stacked our cordwood.)

After all of that, I was so sure I was going to make it to River Valley Market at least, but it didn’t happen.  It was all I could do to make a cup of chamomile-lavender tea in a feeble attempt to calm myself herbally.  The agitation continued.  It doesn’t help that I am still sick with a cold.

I went to Owl and Raven in the evening, which was a marvelous choice.  There was excellent company and good cheer.  I also learned that there is a full moon tonight, which seems to explain a lot.

Hopefully my new mattress will make me zonk right out.

Right now, though, I just don’t give a crap.

At the risk of appearing ungrateful, I think I will go right ahead and vent.  I will vent like a girl.  I will vent until I feel a wee bit better.  I will, annoyingly, vent, on this here blog.  Surely there are 5 billion blog posts floating around in the ether that are similarly grumpy and annoying; this one will join the others in that vast cesspool of digital blather.

So with that warning, onward.

On Thursday, Tom called in sick to work because of back pain.  It was bothersome, but we didn’t worry too much about it.  On Friday, he called in sick again, for the same reason.  By Friday night, it seemed to have cleared up considerably.  Then on Saturday afternoon, the pain came back with a vengeance.  Overnight, my husband became a recliner-bound invalid, unable to move or do anything for himself because of the pain.

Meanwhile, I have been in the throes of a bad cold and feeling like all I want to do is crawl in bed.  Instead, I’ve been taking care of Lily, taking care of Tom, worrying a lot, enduring the onset of an especially heavy and crampy menstrual period, blowing my nose and coughing all the time.  Also, on Sunday afternoon and this morning, I spent six hours at farmer interviews for Grow Food Northampton.   (The incomparable Moe was instrumental in making this possible today, by watching Lily and transporting Tom to his appointment with the chiropractor.  Lily was heartbroken at the prospect of Moe having to go back to work after lunch.)

Tom was pretty devastated after the visit with the chiropractor.  He was really hopeful that he would be feeling a lot better when he walked out.  Instead, the chiropractor said his lumbar vertebrae were definitely out of alignment, and that he might have a disc issue and probaby needs an MRI and that he needed to call his primary care physician right away.  There was no quick fix.  Tom hobbled out with the cane he bought from CVS today and I loaded him into the car.  This is day 5 of back pain for Tom, and getting worse all the time.  He is very worried about missing work.  We are both very worried about the seriousness of whatever injury he has; he’s simply unable to function, and I have 100% responsibility for taking care of him, Lily, and myself, in our various bedraggled states.

Tom is now lying on a mattress on the living room floor, since he isn’t using the stairs.  He is feeling very helpless and panicky and sad.  It breaks my heart.

Tomorrow Tom has an appointment with our family physician, who will hopefully arrange an MRI and stronger pain meds ASAP.

Meanwhile, I am needing to cancel everything else that was planned this week.  This includes my much-anticipated retreat at Temenos.  I am really, really disappointed.  I was so looking forward to it.  And now the chance has been snatched away from me.  I can’t leave Tom in this state.  It’s not his fault, of course.  I know he feels terrible about it.

Tonight I reached an almost comic state of wretchedness.  I developed a nosebleed that wouldn’t stop.  I kept applying pressure for 15 minutes at a stretch, and it just kept going.  This was right when I was trying to cook dinner and trying not to completely freak out.  I had to stop cooking in order to apply pressure to my nose and control the bleeding.  This made me more anxious because we were all hungry.  In the midst of all this I had the bright idea to describe the whole sorry scenario on Facebook and received a flurry of get-well wishes and offers of food and child care.  This cheered me up quite a bit but did not stop the bleeding.  I packed yarrow-tincture-soaked gauze into my nostril, which helped somewhat.  I almost took a picture of myself with a piece of gauze hanging out of my nose, because I was mesmerized by the wretchedness and wondered if it looked as bad as it felt.  At least I had both hands free at that point and could continue cooking dinner.

I thought it might be cathartic to vent like this, but it isn’t.

Photo credit: http://www.massretreats.com/temenos.html

From midday Dec. 10 to midday Dec. 12, I will be going on a solitary retreat at Temenos in Shutesbury, Mass.  Lily will be visiting my parents in Boston during that time; Tom will be puttering around at home; and I will be in the woods, sleeping in a little cabin with a wood stove, and no electricity.

I’ve been wanting to retreat for a long time.  Years.  The fact that I can go on a retreat at all feels like a massive accomplishment.  There are no demands in my life, currently, that can’t be set aside for this weekend.  I can actually do this and show up for myself.

Simultaneously, I’m excited and have some trepidation.  My usual neuroses are rearing their heads:  will I be productive?  will I make the most of every minute?  will I fail at retreating?  There is so much I want to get out of this one little weekend.  I’m trying just to observe these fears and make friends with them, as Pema Chödrön suggests.  This train of thought has led me to recall a poem by Rumi, which is apt:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

The fear of being alone is palpable: in the woods, with no comforting Internet to numb myself with, to distract myself from my Stuff.  You know, my Issues.  These are funny words, eh?  Stuff.  Issues.  Baggage.  Tidy little euphemisms.  What is urging me on, at a soul level, is the insistent call to allow grieving, resolution, creativity, torment, and above all, an openness to receiving visions.  I can’t know what those visions are ahead of time.  It’s fruitless to over-plan this.  All I can do is set the stage, perhaps set some ritualistic parameters around the endeavor (which a kind friend has offered to help me with), and await what comes.  And stand at the door, laughing, inviting in the visitors, no matter how beautiful, terrifying, shameful.

I’ve bought a new, blank journal and three roller-ball pens.  These will accompany me, along with warm clothes, hiking boots, snow-shoes if there is snow, all the food I will need, a pillowcase and sleeping bag, some candles.  When I spoke on the phone with Kavita, one of the caretakers at Temenos, she said, “I have this feeling that I’m supposed to put you in the cabin called Knoll.  It’s the most remote cabin, and as a woman by yourself, maybe this would not be what you most want or need.  What do you think?”  She also told me that the cabin was built around a living tree.  I told her that it sounded just right.

I’m trying to resist the strong internal impulse to over-manage this, over-think this.  When I started writing this blog post, I thought maybe I could make some sort of list (another list!) of everything I want to accomplish with this retreat.  But I deeply want this retreat to not be about accomplishing.  I want to tell myself, sternly, kindly, “It will be enough if all you do is rest.  It will be enough if you walk in the woods and feel the breeze on your face.  It will be sufficient.  You are sufficient.”  How can I banish these habitual thoughts that I must achieve something?  There is no banishing.  There is only holding the door wide open.

I hope that I will have space and time in this setting to grieve the accumulated losses and sorrows of the past few years.  There is much that is still roiling away beneath my consciousness, an anguish that is hard to express.  I want the solitude and the woods to give me the safety to release that anguish.  I hope, also, that I will be able to feel literally grounded, rather than spend so much time in my head; I want to be aware of the earth beneath my feet.  Maybe if it’s not too cold I will try to walk around barefoot a bit.

I’m debating whether or not to bring any readings.  I don’t want to distract myself too much, but maybe there are specific readings that would help me with the retreat.  I don’t know what they are, yet.

Welcome to the guest cabin, visitors, guides from beyond.

One of the effects of the storm was to prolong Halloween into the most drawn out event I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.  On Saturday the 29th, we went to hear “Season of the Witch” stories at Owl and Raven (with Lily in her cat costume).  On Monday the 31st, despite Halloween being officially postponed by the city of Northampton and many surrounding towns, we had trick-or-treaters come to our door nevertheless (and we were prepared with candles in the jack-o-lanterns and candy to hand out).  On Friday Nov. 4th we went to a rescheduled Halloween party in Shutesbury (again with Lily in her cat costume), complete with pumpkin bowling and eating homemade donuts off of strings without using hands.  And on Saturday Nov. 5th we attended our first Rag Shag Parade in Florence with our little kitty Lily.

Photo courtesy of the ever-delightful Julie Meyer, who we had the good fortune of running into at the event.

The Rag Shag Parade was very well-attended.  It was quite overwhelming, in fact.  Lily was transfixed.  I was fighting the urge to flee the crowd.  I tend to have panic attacks in very crowded situations.  But we marched along with the parade for a while, then took an abrupt detour to walk home and fell upon the lamb shanks I had braised.  Then the trick-or-treating began in earnest at our door.  We ran out of candy quickly, and had to blow out the jack-o-lantern candles and turn off the porch light to keep the sugar-craving ghouls from ringing the doorbell in vain.

*****

Halloween was greatly prolonged this year.  They say that this is the time when the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest, at this time halfway between the autumnal equinox and winter solstice.  I’ve been reflecting on my ancestors, their lives, what they might have hoped for their descendants, what recognition and memories they might wish from us, what sort of talisman or comfort they could offer to help guide us in these darkening times.  I’ve been feeling their presence very powerfully, through vivid memories of those I knew in life, as well as an inexplicable sense of connection to those who died long before I was born.

I am slowly gaining clarity on the most recent chapter of my life (approximately the past seven years) and realizing that this autumn has truly been the beginning of a new chapter.  Much of this new chapter so far has involved a lot of Stepping Back: getting space from all that transpired in cohousing, stepping back from the frenetic intensity of my involvement in Grow Food Northampton, shedding the constant work of marketing and selling and seeking and buying homes, setting limits on what I will commit to.  My body and spirit have insisted on this, vehemently pointing out that exhaustion and anxiety had built up to toxic levels.  My gut sense is that what I most need, and what my family most needs from me, is deep grounding, literal grounding.  I must be immersed in this landscape, with Lily and Tom.  I must focus on our home, the land, the forest, in a direct, unmediated way.  It must be tactile.  It must involve long periods of quiet listening.  It must not be rushed.  There are many haphazardly-bandaged wounds that need to be fully healed.  This is a process that cannot be managed through intellect.  It takes a great deal of effort for me to allow this to unfold.

My anxiety also rears up on its hind legs, demanding action from my prefrontal cortex, due to the global drama currently unfolding in the financial world.  My family is more prepared than most for systemic shocks, but it’s still unnerving and I still feel inadequately prepared.  This agitation doesn’t help me manage the internal imperative to rest, heal, and become deeply grounded.

Time for some more lavender-chamomile tea.

I’ve been avoiding this blog for a long time.  I would consider, intermittently, writing something, then tell myself, “No, that makes me feel too vulnerable,” or “No, I must attend to my child,” or “No, I am completely overwhelmed with work and moving,” or “No, everything I need to write about needs to be private” (but then I wouldn’t write it down anywhere else, either).

To be sure, there have been plenty of good reasons why I haven’t been able to write:

• Volunteering at a breakneck pace for Grow Food Northampton, then from March through Sept 1 2011, working as a staff member for GFN
• All of the effort involved in selling our house at Rocky Hill Cohousing (which finally sold in April 2011), then having to move twice– first scrambling to find a temporary apartment (in Hadley, where we lived for three and a half months), continuing to look for a house to buy, finding one and making an offer, getting to the inspection stage, realizing that there were so many structural problems with the house that we needed to start over, finding another one and making an offer on the spot because there were multiple offers at the open house, and finally moving into our new home in Florence on August 2, 2011
• Full-time parenting (need I elaborate?)
• Ramping up our activities around homeschooling
• Dealing with personal attacks (I will not be elaborating about that here)

Okay.  Enough.  This is already tiresome to me.  I think I would rather write about the topics that have captured my attention of late.

Homeschooling: what we’ve been up to in the past few months, how my thoughts have been evolving about ways to approach learning, what Lily gets excited about

Our new home: what it’s been like to be in limbo for years, what it’s like to be settled in a new home, my hopes for our garden and indoor living spaces, delight over the raspberries, exploring the neighborhood

Activism: local food, Occupy Wall Street/Northampton/Everywhere, preparing for systemic shocks

Food: growing it, eating it, foraging it, preserving it, making merry with it, organizing potlucks

The power of Hanging Out, with much gratitude extended to the incomparable community space Owl and Raven

Rapidly changing economic/political conditions and what the ramifications are

Clearly, this post is not meant to have a unitary topic, but just to list stuff and get things out of my system.  Okay, system, do you feel at ease yet?  It helps, at least, to know that I have precious few readers, and those precious few tend to be kind.

I wanted to let you all know what I’ve been focusing on in a big way for nearly a year now, and to make a request.  It’s time to provide an update and fill you in on what has captured so much of my attention, energy and enthusiasm!

Many of you know that I have deep concerns about global problems that have no easy solutions: the climate is shifting in frightening ways, we are facing limits to energy resources that we have relied on all our lives, the natural world is being abused to the breaking point, and many people around the world are living in conditions of horrible oppression and suffering.  Sometimes it is unbearable to contemplate how heavy these problems are.  Sometimes it feels easier to say, “There’s nothing I can do.  I’m only one person.  What could I possibly do to change this?”  There have been times when I’ve been in profound despair and feeling helpless about it.

But not now.

I have found myself at the center of an astonishing local food movement.  Never before have I felt so strongly that this is the path I was meant to walk.  By pouring my energy into supporting local food security and sustainable agriculture, I know that I’m taking some of the most powerful steps I could possibly take to address problems that extend way beyond my home, my region, my nation.

In the fall of 2009, a small band of grassroots activists in Northampton gathered out of concern about the fate of a piece of farmland in the city, the Bean Farm.  The City was proposing to purchase it and turn it into sports fields.  We said, “Hey, wait a minute.  This is prime farmland!  We need a discussion about community priorities and land use regarding this.”

That was when I jumped in with both feet.  I helped coordinate a petition effort to save the Bean Farm for farming, which was signed by 850 residents of Northampton (and even more signed from elsewhere in the Valley, the state, and even from out-of-state).  A lot of voices started to be raised out of concern for the community’s food needs as well as recreation needs.  It was exciting to be part of a series of public forums where this conversation took place.  I made a short speech on the importance of local agriculture at one of them, with my knees shaking and feeling like I was going to faint with 300 people watching me.

Fast forward a month or two: suddenly, we were no longer talking just about the Bean Farm, but about the adjoining Allard Farm as well.  The City was proposing to buy enough acreage to meet recreation needs (24 acres) and preserve the floodplain forest along the adjoining Mill River, but the remainder was agricultural land that they were not planning to purchase.  Suddenly, our band of activists were approaching every organization we could think of to find out if they would buy the land and manifest the vision that so many in Northampton were getting excited about: a community farm with CSA shares, farm education programs for all, community gardens, local organic food that would feed our community, farm-to-school programs, farm camps, and the corresponding community vibrancy and resilience that would result.

Not only is the Bean/Allard land beautiful, fertile farmland, but it has historical significance as well.  It was a stop on the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves in the 19th century, and an area known as the Locust Grove on the land (where locust trees still grow today) was the site of anti-slavery conventions.  It was also farmed by a 19th-century utopian community, the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, of which the African-American abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth was a member.  Generations ago, this land sustained people working passionately to address suffering and injustice; we follow in these giant footsteps, also seeking to right the wrongs of our culture.

There were no organizations ready to take on the project of buying the Bean/Allard farmland.  So one night in February 2010, we gathered, took a deep breath, and voted to incorporate Grow Food Northampton as a non-profit.  We were going to do it ourselves, from the ground up.  We started with no money, no established organization, little more than a dream and a small group of impassioned people.  We knew it would be a wild ride.  We knew we might not succeed.  But we were driven by our sense that not only should this land be farmed, we had to do everything in our power to insure that it would be a community resource for generations to come.

It HAS been a wild ride.  As Tom can attest, I have probably never worked harder on anything in the entire time we’ve known each other.  It has been a long-distance sprint for the past many months.  I have written grants, entered thousands of names into our donor database, attended endless board meetings, learned bookkeeping, read proposals from interested farmers, and attended to countless details and discussions about how to move this project forward.  I was also featured in a 3 minute film about our project which I invite you to view here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C917u7j1Woo

Most of you know that I’m also a full-time parent of Lily.  So please try to imagine, for a second, what I’ve taken on here: the equivalent of another full-time, unpaid job.  You don’t even want to know how many nights I worked on Grow Food Northampton work until 2am, because Lily was sleeping and that was when I had time.  (Almost every night.)  Why have I done this?  Why have I run myself ragged and questioned my sanity to do this?

Here is my answer:  Lily Hartley.

When I think about the future awaiting this child, I want her to be eating healthy, local food that wasn’t doused in petrochemicals in every step of its production, distribution, and processing.  I want her to know the farmers who grow her food.  I want her to know how to grow food herself.  I want her to love the land that sustains her and to understand that she is a part of nature, not separate from it.  I want her to sit in a field of strawberries and eat her fill until the red juice is running down her chin and she can hardly contain herself for joy.  I want her to experience the satisfaction of commitment to her community, through sharing food, supporting the local economy, and having a sense of place.  I want her to know that she belongs here, right here, on this land, where we are planting our roots and our hearts.

For that reason, Tom and I made the single largest donation we’ve ever made, to this amazing effort of which I am a part.  We stretched as far as we could stretch.  Our donation was made in honor of a magnificent person: our daughter, Lily.

I invite you to donate to Grow Food Northampton, and further, to make your donation in honor or in memory of someone you love– maybe your children or grandchildren, or your late great-great uncle who was a farmer, or even to the entire planet.

I know that these are hard times for a lot of people, financially.  What I most hope for is that people will examine their most cherished values as well as assess their resources, and give accordingly.

Another gift is to spread the word about this effort.  Feel free to forward this email, or adapt it if need be.  Post the Grow Food Northampton video on your Facebook or Twitter account.  Send me your fundraising ideas.

We don’t have a lot of time; we need to raise $450,000 by Nov. 15 and a total of $670,000 by Jan. 31 (the final deadline) in order to reach our goals.  (There is more detail about the effort at http://growfoodnorthampton.com.)  The timeline is very, very short, and not our choice, but it’s what we have to work with.

To donate: checks can be made payable to “Grow Food Northampton” and mailed to: Grow Food Northampton, PO Box 849, Northampton, MA 01061.  (We also have a Paypal option through our website, but I encourage you to send a check if you can, because then every dollar you send will go towards farmland rather than 3.2% of it towards Paypal fees.)

I’m profoundly honored to be working on something that is 100% in accordance with my values, on behalf of the health of my child, my family, my community, and the larger world.  Thanks for reading, and I wish you abundant blessings.

Love,
Jen

A short update, and then on to the topic that compelled me to write.  What has the past few months been about for me?  Let’s see: on the whole, mostly parenting Lily, working very hard on behalf of Grow Food Northampton, getting very little sleep.  Maybe in another post I will expound a bit on some of that.

Back to the topic at hand.

Where is home?  Where do I belong?  Which ground belongs under my feet?  Who are my “peeps,” as my friend Lilly recently asked me?  These are lifelong questions for me, as they are for so many.  I was reminded of these questions full-force when I went to the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst today for the first Sunday service of the year (UUSA doesn’t have services during the summer).

For starters, I was ambivalent about making the trek out to Amherst at all today.  What is my relationship to Amherst, now and into the future?  That has been a big question on my mind, since Tom and I had been thinking for quite a while that it would make sense for us to move to Amherst since he works at UMass.  Our house at Rocky Hill is still for sale, and we are still planning to move.  However, over the summer, I realized a few things: I am really, really attached to Northampton.  And my strenuous efforts on behalf of Grow Food Northampton have only strengthened that attachment.  Also, from a practical standpoint, property taxes are considerably lower, and there are some housing options that cost less in downtown Northampton and downtown Florence than in downtown Amherst (we are still committed to living close to a downtown area).  As a result, we’ve decided that if and when our house sells, we will relocate within Northampton.

This doesn’t erase, however, the efforts I made all of last year to spend time in Amherst and start creating a sense of community there.  The UUSA is a wonderful place.  Lily and I have also spent a lot of time at the Amherst Family Center and in the MotherWoman group that meets there on Wednesdays during the school year.  I used to work in Amherst.  Tom works in Amherst.  There are people I care a lot about in Amherst and the surrounding area.  Here in the Pioneer Valley, we talk about which side of the river (that would be the beautiful Connecticut River) one lives on or works on or spends the majority of one’s time on.  Which side of the river is my side?  I wish I could say, it doesn’t matter, Amherst and Northampton are close enough to each other, but the truth is that currently, all of the transport options have serious downsides, and time is precious.

The question Where is home? also raises the continuing sadness and ache over deciding to leave Rocky Hill, putting our house on the market, only to have it still on the market over a year later.  It has been hard to be in limbo for this long.  It has been hard not to know when our house might sell, or if it will sell at all before some calamitous event in the economy occurs.  It has been hard to lower our asking price several times and still have no success.  It has been hard to have cohousing neighbors come up to me again and again and again and again, asking, “So, is anything happening with your house?”  Some neighbors, that’s all they ask.  Some neighbors have expressed sadness about our leaving and say they hope we’ll decide to stay.  Some neighbors give off waves of anger, suspicion.  One new neighbor said to me, “I don’t want to get to know you because I know you’re leaving.”  I found this incredibly disturbing; the only response I could muster was, “Well, it’s not as if we’d be moving very far away.”  What am I supposed to make of such a statement?  That people who live at Rocky Hill only associate with other Rocky Hillers?  That people who live at Rocky Hill and then decide to leave will only break your heart and never want to have contact with you again?  Huh?  So even in my house, I am not at home, and I have not been at home for two years, since we decided we needed to move.  This, the home that I had hoped I would live in for the rest of my life, and had worked mightily to achieve.

Where is my spiritual home?  This is also an eternal question for me.  I am a Unitarian Universalist, but I was not raised UU; I was raised a Jew.  But even Judaism was never my spiritual home.  My mother was born and raised in Bologna, Italy and was Catholic like everyone else she knew.  She converted to Judaism in order to marry my father, but this was more a practical matter for her than a spiritual one.  In any case, witnessing the lack of a warm welcome among Jews towards my mother the shiksa (no matter if she converted or not), did not exactly endear me to Judaism.  I went through all the motions, the Hebrew school, the High Holidays, the Bat Mitzvah, and none of it made me feel like I really belonged.  I felt like an outsider.  It’s still a part of me, and I don’t repudiate it; there are aspects of Jewish faith and culture that I think are precious and beautiful.  But do I belong?  I don’t identify with being Catholic, despite the fact that my entire Italian extended family is Catholic (although I do feel a special reverence in the Gothic cathedrals that my grandfather Gigi so loved).  And what about being UU?  In so many ways, Unitarian Universalism seems like a spiritual haven for liberal religious misfits like me.  I wholeheartedly believe in the UU principles.  First Parish in Cambridge has an irreplaceable role in my heart: I met my beloved Tom there, I met so many of my dearest friends there, and it gave me hope in community and in my pursuit of truth and faith.  But I am no longer near Cambridge.  I become involved with the UU Society of Amherst while in a different phase of life, as a parent of a toddler and now very busy with Grow Food Northampton and other activities in an effort to bolster community and family resilience.  When I went to First Parish, I was in the Young Adult Group (YAG) and had time to dive into various committees, workshops and my adored Covenant Group.  Now I’m lucky if I can make it to a Sunday service.  I did participate in Small Group Ministry through UUSA, and even facilitated the small group I was a part of, but came to the realization that I’m just too overwhelmed to continue, although I will miss the group very much.

I did make it to the Sunday Service this morning, though, and there was the water ingathering ritual.  Everyone was very welcoming.  We sang my favorite hymn, “May Nothing Evil Cross This Door.“  I wept the entire time.  It brought up every ounce of longing that I’ve tried to suppress and dampen all summer, the longing for belonging and connection and unconditional love.  All I wanted was to crumple in a heap and cry.  But I still couldn’t discern if I truly belonged there.

Who are my “peeps”?  Geez, Lilly, why did you have to ask me such a thing?  This question haunts me.  The response I gave to Lilly (who is the president of Grow Food Northampton) is that she is one of my peeps, which is undoubtedly true.  Yes, GFN folks are my peeps, for sure.  Local food activists, small organic farmers, permaculture people (aka “permies”), Transitioners, climate change activists, peak oil activists, these are all my peeps.  My family are my peeps.  The Valley is my peeps.  Communitarians are my peeps.  Librarians are my peeps.  Friends from First Parish are my peeps.  Tom’s college friends (aka the UB crowd, as in Univ. of Buffalo) are my peeps.

But I think what Lilly was driving at was not just who do I identify with, not just who do I love or feel loved by.  It’s more than that.  It’s, who do I hang out with on a regular basis?  Who do I count on at a moment’s notice?  That’s the part that haunts me.  Where are my peeps?  Why are there no peeps in my living room?  (Okay, Tom is here, definitely Peep Number One.  But he is on his laptop and I am on my laptop, and this is what we do.)

I want to sink my roots deep.  I have always wanted this, and it has always eluded me.

(photo credit: Vilhelm Gunnersson, via European Pressphoto Agency; original here)

So, um, what the heck does Eyjafjallajokull have to do with me?  Other than having traveled to Iceland about 15 years ago (and been very impressed with its astounding natural beauty) and having a gigantic (sadly unrequited) crush on an Icelandic guy when I was in high school, should I be giving this volcanic eruption anything other than a passing thought?

It turns out that Eyjafjallajokull is seriously affecting my short-term plans, as well as those of thousands and perhaps eventually millions of people.

If you are monitoring the news (and I know that at least some of my readers do not, by choice), you have probably heard by now that this awesome manifestation of Mother Earth’s power has created a cloud of ash that has covered most of Europe.

Lily and I were supposed to travel to Italy on Tuesday.  Much of the weekend has been spent scrambling to change those plans.  After a great deal of effort, we seem to have changed our travel dates to April 30 through May 17, although we seem to have been charged an extra $900 that we need to have refunded (the Continental website said we could make changes for free).  Since Continental is no longer accepting phone calls due to the chaos, we’re not sure when this will be resolved.  We’re also not sure if we’ll be able to travel at all.  Can you imagine the madness in airports across Europe, and any airport worldwide that flies into Europe?  Can you imagine the frustration of all those stranded passengers?  Can you imagine the airlines freaking out as they lose hundreds of millions of dollars per day, and dealing with a monstrous wave of rebookings?  I am a tiny bit comforted by the fact that at least I’m not stranded far from home with a fussy 3-year-old right now.

Meanwhile, Eyjafjallajokull continues to spew ash into the air.

There is the piddly matter of how this eruption affects me personally.  I do recognize that this is very insignificant in the grand scheme of things.  I am very concerned about how this is going to affect health, access to food, climate, and the world economy.  First, there is the small matter that a lot of this ash cloud is composed of microscopic glass particles which don’t seem very healthy to inhale, and the ash is falling on the northern UK (although it seems to be floating well above land at the moment in other locations across Europe).  Then there is the issue of Europe importing by air freight a large percentage of its fruits and vegetables, and perishable foods languishing in warehouses while air travel is stopped.  The New York Times, not a publication I generally think of for sounding timely alarms on important topics, has specifically named the concern of supermarkets running out of food.  Now combine this with a global economy that teeters on collapse, bound together by a rigged, fraud-infected financial system and an energy system facing serious, immediate threats to supply meeting demand– take that system and give it a big shove with a force of nature that affects all of Europe.

Folks, I think we will be finding out very soon just how much Eyjafjallajokull needs to speak to all of us, with a tongue of fire.

Now, I accept that some people may dismiss as a “doomer.”  Whatever.  Bring it on.  What difference does it make to call me a doomer if events have already been set in motion?  Not just the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, but the whole sorry mess of the global economy, the addiction to fossil fuels, the civilization based on dominance, competition, oppression and corruption?  The alienation of humans from the land and other species?  The alienation of humans from one another?  I ask you, if you choose to remain willfully blind to these events, if you choose to cope by marginalizing others through facile name-calling, what good will that do you when it’s time to pay the piper?

My family of origin and extended family lives in Europe.  My sister, her husband, and their four beautiful children live in Berlin.  My parents live in Bologna as well as my extended Italian clan.  They may not end up buried in ash, but I fear for their safety, along with millions of others.  We have yet to see what the ripple effects will be.  I will continue to hope that people will wake up in ever greater numbers and work towards the resilience of the community of life.

Looking at the silver lining: I read something in a news report online about an anti-Heathrow-expansion activist who was commenting on the exquisite peace and quiet that he was experiencing without a plane flying overhead every 60 seconds.  So there’s a quite a bit less noise pollution in the world, not to mention a decrease in carbon emissions over the last few days.  I believe it was found out that the grounding of planes after 9/11 caused enough of a decrease in emissions to affect the climate somewhat; this event may prove to be similar.  Also, there has been some disruption of military flights into and out of Iraq and Afghanistan.  I don’t want injured US soldiers to have their medical treatment delayed (they’re currently being flown directly to the US instead of Germany), but on the whole, anything that interrupts violence and the waging of war is something I can support.  In addition, millions of people may be awakening to the fact that we are dangerously dependent on air travel, and that we had better start making alternate plans.