b o t t o m l a n d

think outside...

I've been in a pretty good funk for a while now, but this week I decided that getting outside would help (um... duh!) so Little C and I set off on an afters-chool adventure on a new trail we discovered.

We found so much beauty and air to breathe and even some fairy houses...

 

bragging rights

There are two special people in my life that I am especially proud of on this rainy morning.  The first is my husband, who has his first published article in last Friday's edition of the Englewood Review of Books.  He wrote about a book that has been inspiring a lot of people lately--Ben Hewitt's The Town that Food Saved.  In a time when people are often overwhelmed with other people's opinions about "sustainability," Hewitt tells the story of a small town in Vermont that "went local" and lived to tell the tale.  From Dave's review:

 

The problem with reading books about sustainability, ecology, and responsible agriculture, is that the authors seem irresistibly drawn to recitation of “the litany”: that long, horrible, tragic list of ways that we humans are destroying things on our world. It’s as if reading this litany one more time will push readers over the edge to finally admit that, “Yes, western industry and the lifestyles that make it necessary are doing so much harm in the world that I am NOW determined to make a change (trumpets please)!" I fear the litany has become a dirge, inspiring nobody.

Thankfully, Ben Hewitt has resisted the list! In his book The Town that Food Saved about the burgeoning food economy in Hardwick, Vermont, Hewitt gives us a story both timely and laden with import for our food crisis. I say story because that is what it is. The book, instead of introducing readers to issues, introduces us to people. The cast of characters involved with the food economy in Hardwick and the narrative outlining the evolution of the dynamics between them captured my attention and created a human context in which Hewitt could explore the questions about the food economy. Of course, some of the statistics and issues frequently appearing in the litany do appear in his book but it is as a contextual aside to the primary task he pursues: Finding out if the changes in the food economy in Hardwick are as beneficial to that community as those driving the movement claim.

 You can read his full review here.

The other person I'm especially proud of is my dear friend Kelcey.  She is an artist, mother, blogger and homesteader extraordinare in NC, and she and her husband recently launched a line of jewelry made from her art.  The earings are unique and lovely, and I hope you all go check out her new etsy shop.  She's having a giveaway on her blog to celebrate the new shop, which you can find here.  Also, check out her main etsy shop for all the beautiful art she sells under the name Sweet Mess.  Yay for artists and the beauty they bring to our world!  

look out

 

Look Out

by Wendell Berry

 

Come to the window, look out, and see

the valley turning green in remembrance

of all springs past and to come, the woods

perfecting with immortal patience

the leaves that are the work of all of time,

the sycamore whose white limbs shed

the history of a man's life with their old bark,

the river under the morning's breath quivering

like the touched skin of a horse, and you will see

also the shadow cast upon it by fire, the war

that lights its way by burning the earth.

 

Come to your windows, people of the world,

look out at whatever you see wherever you are, 

and you will see dancing upon it that shadow.

You will see that your place, wherever it is,

your house, your garden, your shop, your forest, your farm,

bears the shadow of its destruction by war

which is the economy of greed which is plunder

which is the economy of wrath which is fire.

The Lords of War sell the earth to buy fire, 

they sell the water and air of life to buy fire.

They are little men grown great by willingness

to drive whatever exists into its perfect absence.

Their intention to destroy any place is solidly founded

upon their willingness to destroy every place.

 

Every household of the world is at their mercy,

the households of the farmer and the otter and the owl

are at their mercy.   They have no mercy.

Having hate, they can have no mercy.

Their greed is the hatred of mercy.

Their pockets jingle with the small change of the poor.

Their power is their willingness to destroy

everything for knowledge which is money

which is power which is victory

which is ashes sown by the wind.

 

Leave your windows and go out, people of the world,

go into the streets, go into the fields, go into the woods

and along the streams.  Go together, go alone.

Say no to the Lords of War which is Money 

which is Fire.  Say no by saying yes

to the air, to the earth, to the trees,

yes to the grasses, to the rivers, to the birds

and the animals and every living thing, yes

to the small houses, yes to the children.  Yes.

 

Tonight I am saying yes to the promise of spring, even though our fields and woods are still covered in an icy grayish-white crust.  I am saying yes to the rise of sap in the trees, another promise of spring, even though it keeps my husband out till all hours of the night.  I am saying yes to two precious babies whose imminent arrivals will be heralded tomorrow, and the mothers who will be blessed and showered, each in their own way.  I am saying yes to the hope of peace, even though the world seems to explode with war.  I am saying yes to myself, and going to bed in peace with myself.  

What are you saying yes to tonight?

PS:  The picture above is of last Saturday's magical "Super Moon" as it rose over my friend's field and birthday celebration.

PPS:  I'm saying yes to my new computer which arrived this afternoon!  Yeah to functional technology!

because it's march

...because my road looks like this...

... and my driveway looks like this ...

... it must be time for this ...

happy monday everybody!  i hope your day was as sweet as mine was (pun intended!)

and thanks for all the duke love.  your comments and support mean a lot to all of us.

xoxo,

caren

late november light

A walk through woods and fields that I have known since I was 5 years old.  I like that...  Thanks for getting me outside, Kat.

cape cod part 1

Little C and I had a great time at Cape Cod (and on our other adventure, but more about that later...)   The highlight was wandering the beach--we came home laden with rocks and shells to keep our nature table rooted in the sea through the long winter months.

**PS:  I'm having fun taking lots of pictures and fooling around with the processing of them.  I'd love any feedback as to what images you especially like/dislike and why.  Thanks!

a book you might like

I am delighted to share a book recommendation with you all.  My friend Andrea, priestess extrordinare of urban farming in Camden, NJ has a chapter in a new book on interfaith ecological justice.  I have yet to read it, but it looks fabulous.  It is proposing a simple and yet radical premise:  in this age of religious polarization and mutual suspicion, perhaps the one thing that can bring people together across the dividing lines of creeds, traditions and denominations is our shared location on this here planet.  The earth is the common heritage that people of all or no faith can claim, and if we are going to mend our hurting planet, perhaps we need to start here, with what we have in common.  From the introduction:

I have writen this book to encourage people of faith to address this question:  Can religious people save the environment?  And I have discovered along the way that there is a second and equally important question to be addressed:  Can the environmental challenge save religion?  ...

Humanity is facing a collective brush with mortality.  It is time for us to reflect, as Noah did before the cataclysm in his time, on what we truly need.  In the face of this sobering challenge, we must look towards a new beginning and make it a reality.

Environmental problem solving usually encompasses some element of self-denial, of less.  I believe that if we rebalance our spiritual and material hungers, our environmental repair may yeild a time of more--much more: more connections, more wisdom and more abundance.

Find more information from the publisher at this link. 

facebook, home, and Wendell Berry

I recently joined facebook, caving under the information that some of my old girlfriends from college had recently been rediscovered by another friend (with whom I am still in touch).  I still feel wary of it's addictive capacity, and also it's seeming inherent superficiality, and hope to only be on it for a few months while I hunt down and get addresses for some old friends.  

In the meantime, I'm having fun being "friended" by all these people from high school who I never thought I would talk to again.  I am not in touch with a single friend from high school, (or hadn't been till joining facebook!) which has always felt a little weird to me considering the fact that I once again live in the town in which I grew up.  As far as I can tell, none of my classmates live around here anymore.  I have never had the experience of running into someone who humiliated me in ninth grade in the produce section of the grocery store. Am I the only one of all those ninety six students to come back and make a home here?  Certainly, the going line in my small, rural high school (we had 500 students and drew from seven towns) was "I can't wait to get the hell out of here..."  I didn't feel that way.  By that point I'd fallen in love with the mountains and woods, and spent hours exploring and adventuring instead of the normal high school activities of drinking and going to the mall.  So maybe that's why I came back and others didn't.  Or maybe it's because my dad grew up here too, and I love the idea of my own daughter growing up in her grandfather's old stomping grounds.  

Whatever the reason, my classmates are the norm, not I.  Very few Americans live in the area in which they grew up these days.  It seems quaint to think of extended families growing up within shouting distance.  Many Americans can't even say they "grew up" in one place, having moved around so many times.  And according to my old pal Wendell Berry, this rootlessness is one of the underlying issues fueling our current environmental and economic crisis.  He writes, "In order to be able to desecrate, endanger or destroy a place, after all, one must be able to leave it and to forget it. One must never think of any place as one's home; one must never think of any place as anyone else's home."

What would it look like for us to come home again?  Is that even possible or desirable?  Are you at home in the place where you live?  What kind of commitment can you make to your local area?  Jesus commands us to love our neighbors, but first we have to know them.  I am writing all this because I feel challenged in my own life to commit in a new way to the place I live.  I have moved too many times to admit in the last 6 years, but I'm done moving, at least for a while.  This gives Papa D and I the chance to settle in and participate in what Mr. Berry calls "the care of neighbors."  I am breathing more deeply now, and I want to live here, really live here.

Below I included the whole text of this great article from the Dallas Morning News.  I was just going to post a link and share some quotes here, but the whole thing is SO good that I put the whole darn thing in.   Enjoy!  And if you want to print it, here's the link to the original.

Rod Dreher: Wendell Berry's time is now
05:04 AM CDT on Sunday, October 26, 2008
Could any man be less relevant to the politics and culture of our time than an old Kentucky poet-farmer who is so out of step with the times that he refuses to use a computer and still tills his earth using draft horses? And yet, given the converging crises of this extraordinary moment in American history, it just might be that in the winter of a long and honorable career, Wendell Berry's moment has arrived.

Why? Because in his numerous essays, poems and novels, the traditionalist agrarian writer, now 74, has stood steadfastly for fidelity to family and community, self-sufficiency, localism, conservation and, above all, learning to get by decently within natural limits. Our nation and our world have reached a crucible of near-cataclysm in our economy and – with climate change – in the environment, chiefly because we have refused to live within our means.

If Mr. Berry's politics can be summed up in a single word, it would bestewardship.Admittedly, it's not a sexy concept. You will not hear Keith Olbermann or Sean Hannity rallying partisans around the idea of dutifully taking care of business. But, really, is there a more urgent calling? People are feeling it. Anne Clurman, a consumer behavior expert, tells Salon.com that the economic crisis is midwifing what people in her industry call "the new responsibility marketplace."
"It's coming, and slowly but surely we're going to see this rolling out," she says. "People are realizing on some level that it's time to pay their proverbial piper."

Mr. Berry, who as a young man left a promising East Coast academic career to return to ancestral land to farm, write and raise a family, has long been both behind and ahead of his times.
Though to all appearances an old-time Democrat, his faithfulness to his iconoclastic vision makes him an uncomfortable presence among the mainstream left and has won him new admirers on the dissident right. He is a moralist hostile both to big government and big business. He is a Christian who can't be understood apart from his deep religious conviction that humankind is under divine command to be good caretakers of creation – the land, its creatures and each other.

If you build your politics on this foundation, you will find yourself standing outside the camps of our parties. Most Republicans don't care for him because he is a harsh critic of industrialism, consumerism and the unfettered free market as a destroyer of land, community and healthy traditions. Most Democrats regard him as out of touch because he is a religious man who holds autonomous individualism, especially the sexual freedom it licenses, to be similarly destructive of families, communities and the sacredness of love.

In short, the Kentucky gentleman is an ardent and prolific foe of liberty without responsibility. In that, he embodies Southern writer Flannery O'Connor's charge to "push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you."

The relevance of agrarianism
Faithful stewardship is the philosophical core of agrarianism, a way of understanding the world based in the traditions of farming and rural life. To say that agrarianism has nothing to offer modern society, where only a tiny remnant lives on farms, is to misunderstand the concept.
Mr. Berry is no agrarian ideologue and does not propose that everyone must farm or leave the city for the country. Rather, he argues that "everybody has agrarian responsibilities" – meaning that wherever one lives, one is obliged to do so according to an ethic that places paramount importance on the cultivation of love and care for one's particular place, its people and its traditions – and to resist all things that separate one from that responsibility, which is not chosen, yet required of all.
People today, he says, are involved "in a kind of lostness," in which we destroy the sources of our own lives without knowing what we're doing. "At the same time, many of the same people fear and mourn the destruction, which they can't stop because they have no practical understanding of its causes."

He explains the problem as a clash of irreconcilable visions: the Industrial vs. the Agrarian. The Industrial is utilitarian, seeing the world as material to be manipulated according to the wishes and desires of individuals, limited only by the laws of physics and efficiency. The Agrarian, by contrast, sees the world as a mystery to be embraced, with human conduct proscribed by limits intrinsic to our nature.

In Mr. Berry's construction, the Industrial is rational, the Agrarian is sympathetic. As he wrote in a 2002 essay, "Two Minds":
The Sympathetic Mind leaves the world whole, or it attempts always to do so. It looks upon people and other creatures as whole beings. It does not parcel them out into functions and uses. The Rational Mind, by contrast, has rested its work for a long time on the proposition that all creatures are machines. This works as a sort of strainer to eliminate impurities such as affection, familiarity and loyalty from the pursuit of knowledge, power and profit.

Interesting, perhaps – but what does that have to do with our current challenges? And how could Mr. Berry's agrarianism improve our lot? Here's a short list:

The economy
By now, it hardly needs elaboration that the vast computer-driven world of high finance has brought the global economy to the brink of catastrophe. That an entire nation – Iceland – would be bankrupted virtually overnight because of toxic overseas investments by its private banks, and that four Norwegian towns could go belly up because of bad mortgages in Southern California – this is what you get when the economic destinies of communities fall into the hands of financiers and money men who have no connection to local folks and are not sharers in their fate.
Moreover, the multitrillion-dollar market in derivatives and credit-default swaps central to the widespread collapse originated in the minds of mathematical geniuses, who put us all in the position of trusting their algorithms and computers. As novelist Richard Dooling recently put it: "Wall Street titans loved swaps and derivatives because they were totally unregulated by humans. That left nobody but the machines in charge."

These machines created an unimaginably large economy built on nothing but the moving around of numbers. It wasn't real. But the suffering caused by its abrupt disappearance is all too real. We should reject the abstractions of globalism, says Mr. Berry, in favor of building local economies that are as self-sufficient as possible.

And: "The first thing we must begin to teach our children (and learn ourselves) is that we cannot spend and consume endlessly. We have got to learn to save and conserve." Since he wrote those lines in 2001, the personal savings rate in the U.S. has fallen into negative territory for the first time since the Great Depression. The idea that we can be free while leveraged to our eyeballs is a fantasy.

The severe recession breaking upon us will occasion a great relearning of agrarian wisdom. It will be skeptical of abstract systems and the benefits of technology and supportive of personal thrift and self-discipline as the road to freedom from the servility imposed by insatiable consumer appetites.

The environment
Wise stewardship of our economic resources requires responsible husbandry of our natural resources, Mr. Berry contends. He is best known for his passionate advocacy of environmental conservation, which he holds inseparable from our economic habits. We are commanded to love, respect and care for the natural world, a duty we abdicate when we treat the land and its resources as mere objects to be exploited.

Our present energy and agricultural policies, for example, amount to "use all that we have," he says, with no thought for future generations. Given the cataclysmic disruptions forecast from climate change, in which humankind's carbon emissions play a role, and considering the informed forecasts of diminishing world oil supply, to continue to live this way amounts to "national insanity."
Unlike mainstream environmentalists, Mr. Berry won't separate "the environment" from humanity. He once told me that he will not sign on to the environmentalist cause until activists recognize that ordinary people and their needs are part of the natural world, too.

Our food
Influential food journalist Michael Pollan recently penned a lengthy "letter to the next president" in which he observed that "the health of a nation's food system is a critical issue of national security."
Mr. Berry has for decades warned about damage to cropland and the danger to food security from industrial-scale farming and food distribution. It's far more prudent to develop strong local food economies and distribution systems, he argues, for the sake of self-sufficiency.

Happily, this is a case in which the culture, with the explosive growth of farmers markets and a revival in backyard gardening, is catching up to Mr. Berry.  As he cheerfully wrote: "I know from my friends and neighbors and from my own family that it is now possible for farmers to sell at a premium to local customers such products as organic vegetables, organic beef and lamb, and pasture-raised chickens. This is the pattern of an economic revolt that is not only possible, but is happening."

American foreign policy
Many admirers of Mr. Berry generally part company with him on his pacifism. But his implacable belief that the U.S. has no business emptying its treasury and sending its young people abroad to wage war unless absolutely necessary is gaining traction, even on the right, in the wake of the Iraq debacle.

In his recent book, The Limits of Power, conservative soldier-scholar Andrew Bacevich contends that Americans believe blindly in the ability of our military to project our national will anywhere, an illusion that, among other deleterious effects, corrupts the American spirit.

The old Kentucky farmer has been saying something similar for years, arguing that war enlarges the power and reach of big government, tears up families and communities, and stains our own souls. "Militarization in defense of freedom reduces the freedom of the defenders," he writes of the loss of civil liberties in wartime. "There is a fundamental inconsistency between war and freedom." Furthermore, he believes that there is no national cause, save the defense of the homeland, worth the sacrifice of our children, and others' children, in war.

That is a position with which many Americans would take issue. But taken in light of Iraq, as we enter an era of starkly drawn limits, surely his pessimism about the efficaciousness of the military "solution" to conflict is worth examination.

A sense of place
Mr. Berry's argument with the U.S. foreign policy establishment, the industrial leadership class and, indeed, with most of his countrymen, depends on his most radical critique of modern American life: its rootlessness.

We find it all too easy to misuse and abuse our own places, and the places of others abroad, because so few Americans in our highly mobile society come from any place anymore. He writes bitterly:
"In order to be able to desecrate, endanger or destroy a place, after all, one must be able to leave it and to forget it. One must never think of any place as one's home; one must never think of any place as anyone else's home."

Fidelity to one's place and the people in it, not to upwardly mobile careerism, is a fundamental moral principle of Mr. Berry's thought. In a commencement speech last year to college students, he wondered aloud why we support an education system devoted to preparing young people to leave their homes.  Ours would be a far better country, he believes, if folks would learn to love their own little piece of ground and be loyal to it. As he concludes his poem, "Stay Home":

I am at home. Don't come with me.
You stay home too.

A philosopher for an age of humility
The root of our collective crisis is as old as humanity itself: We've been overcome by a colossal sense of pride, which entails the Luciferian belief that we can be as gods. "The problem with us is not only prodigal extravagance," he writes. "but also an assumed limitlessness. We have obscured the issue by refusing to see that limitlessness is a godly trait."

In the months and years to come, we all will have to learn the meaning of limits. Wendell Berry is no dour scold who preaches a joyless austerity. To the contrary, he tells us that what we truly seek in life is not comfort, but meaning – and that you don't have to live a life of rigorous asceticism to find it. Rather, we only need to order our lives around the ancient idea that happiness depends on virtue – virtue lived in community. We can only be fulfilled by living within the bounds prescribed by our nature, and in fidelity not to our selfish desires but to the greater good of our families, friends and communities.

This year's balloting is supposed to be a "change" election, as well it should be. But if people believe significant change will come from Washington, they're mistaken.  "Why should anybody wait to do what is right until everybody does it?" Mr. Berry has written. "It is not 'significant' to love your own children or eat your own dinner, either. But normal humans will not wait to love or eat until it is mandated by an act of Congress."

Now, with the nation potentially ready to embrace the "new responsibility," Kentucky's wizened farmer-patriot should find the audience he has long deserved.
Rod Dreher is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. His e-mail address is rdreher@dallasnews.com.

at the fair

Even though this was only our second year, I can sense the Common Ground Fair quickly becoming a favorite family tradition.

This was our kind of fair!  Super family friendly, complete with an incredible Children's Village.

We were joined at the fair by some new friends, the B's.  Little C is ready to join their family, as you can see from the picture above (that's her on the left).  N. and I snuck off to a felting workshop together while the brave papas took the kids to see the eight mule hitch!  I don't know who had more fun at the fair, the kids or the grownups!

Fair treats!

There's nothing like small-batch raw milk ice cream!

Everywhere we looked there were the most amazing colors...

... and beautiful handmade items.

There is something so beautiful and peaceful about the quiet clanging of harness and snorting of the horses as a field gets plowed without petroleum--foreign or otherwise.

The hay jump is an ever-popular activity.  She's so much more confident this year!

More incredible autumn colors!

And the sweet baby alpacas.

So, yes, we had a wonderful two days at the fair.  Even the drive was fun, because we carpooled with Farmer Kat and Zac (he's a farmer too--our raw milk supplier--but for some reason Little C hasn't dubbed him such).  We went to workshops on seed-saving, felting, wood-lot management, healing with herbs, and many more.  We slid down a hill on cardboard and ate the most incredible food, ALL of which was sourced in Maine!  (No coffee or chocolate at this fair!)  Mostly we hung out in the Children's Village, because really, that's the best part of the fair.  There was face painting, nail hammering, and of course, the hay jump.  There was also a crew of young fiddlers and tons of arts and crafts, so we pretty much had a ball.  The best part of the fair (besides just hanging out with all my peeps!) was just being in these masses of people (Um, yeah.  50,000 over 3 days!) who all CARE to some degree or another about our human existence and how we can live on this earth in harmony.  It was just so great to be able to look around and say, "SEE??!!  I'm not crazy!!!"  But I didn't do that.  I just got my Sweet Ani crown and reveled in being *normal* for a little while.  Ah, yes, a good time was had by all.

Another highlight was running into some old friends from college, and getting to meet their wee one for the first time.  They also have a very cute 5 year old, with whom Little C flirted in the hay! 

SouleMama has some great Fair pictures at her blog as well!

we're home!

This is our tired crew leaving our second very full day of goodness at the Common Ground Fair.  I just lost the post I did about it, and now I need to go to bed, so look for more Fair news and pics in the next day or so.  We had such a great time, though being in crowds of 20,000 or more is taxing in a particular way!  I hope you all had joyful, full weekends as well!