b o t t o m l a n d

more mother's day musings

The true story of Mother's Day precedes Hallmark cards and flower delivery services.  It originated as a day of mothers gathering to demand peace in the face of the carnage of the Civil War, and Julia Ward Howe's original proclamation and rallying cry reads as all too pertinent to our current global situation.  Of course, a day to celebrate our mothers and our mothering selves is great, but our culture is all too quick to trade action for consumption.  As mothers it is our sons and daughters (and husbands and selves) who are turned into killers by the machine of war.  As mothers it is another woman's child being killed by our own.  As mothers we hold the power of human life in our bodies, and we hold the moral authority to declare that all of life is sacred.  If we hold our tongues, who will speak for peace?  If we are so easily silenced by the command from on high to consume as usual, who will show the moral fiber to name this madness for what it is? 

A great short essay describing the evolution of Mother's Day is here, written by a UC Davis prof, and below is a poster from my very favorite artist Nikki McClure, which can be purchased here.   Also, many awesome women's peace organizations exist today, such as Code Pink and Mothers Acting Up.  Check it out, and let's think together about what kind of values we want to instill in our children, and what kind of world we are creating for them.

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Raw goodness

There it is, our beautiful raw milk, supplied by our neighbors and new friends Zach and Marianne.  We get two of these 1/2 gallon Ball jars full of deliciously sweet milk with the cream sitting on top.  One gallon of standard, industrially produced milk in the grocery stores is $4.39 right now.  We happily pay Zach and
Marianne $5 for a gallon, which feels like a steal to us!  We like knowing that their three Milking Short-Horn and Jersey cows are pasture-raised, eating hay and alfalfa in the winter, and that they are treated with respect and care.

Not all milk is created equal.  This is something that I've known for a long time, but am only learning about from a scientific perspective more recently.  When I was a kid we got raw milk for a while from a local farm, and I have fond memories of skimming the cream off the top to have with fresh-picked strawberries in June.  That was when I first learned how much better raw milk tastes.

Then, when I was a senior in high school, I had my first education in factory farming via an outraged friend.  After seeing graphic photographs of what the chicken and beef looked like before it reached my plate eliminated any appetite for meat for the next few years.  Over time I began to eat meat again, (prompted at the time by international travel and a lousy break up) but have remained an uneasy carnivore ever since.

What many people don't know is that the dairy industry is just as industrialized as the meat industry.  The modern dairy farm has thousands of cows who live in very tight quarters in enormous hangers.  Most of them literally never see the sky or eat grass.  Cows are grazers, but on modern dairy farms (even most small ones) they are now fed a corn-based diet with plenty of other nasty scraps mixed in, which changes the acidity in their stomachs, causing heightened levels of bad bacteria.  This then necessitates that the milk must be highly processed.  When milk is pasteurized is is heated to temperatures as high as 280 degrees Fahrenheit, which kills not only the bad bacteria, but all of the good bacteria and most of the vitamins and nutrients as well.  The calcium that remains has been so transformed by that point that it is difficult for our bodies to process it.  Vitamin D is then added back in artificially, but much of the immune-boosting benefits are lost for good.  Additionally, because cows weren't designed to thrive in close quarter eating non-grass food they need heavy doses of antibiotics to keep them healthy, which are certainly passed into the milk.  Furthermore, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is used to up the amount of milk each cow produces.  RBGH has been blamed for altering the hormonal balance of humans, especially women, and bringing the age of the onset of puberty down into the single digits for girls.

Raw milk has it's risks, but when you know it's source and trust that the farmers are using careful sanitation and able to keep close track of the health of their cows, the risks are vastly diminished.  Many raw milk producers are unable to find any traces of E-Coli and other dangerous bacteria in their milk or cows.  When the FDA freaks out about raw milk, they aren't talking about the product we get from Zach and Marianne, but about industrially produced milk on it's way to pasteurization.  I wouldn't drink that stuff either!   There are lots of good resources available about the health benefits of drinking raw milk.  Check out the Sustainable Table web site's Dairy section, or the Weston A. Price Foundation's Real Milk campaign.  Also, I highly recommend this article from Salon.com.  The article concludes:

In the end, it seems, raw milk is a lot more complicated than the FDA and the AMA would have consumers believe. Like sushi, raw milk is a nutritionally rich food that can be contaminated if it's not fresh and prepared in an immaculate, sterile environment. Just as raw milk devotees buy their milk from farmers they know and trust, so sushi connoisseurs tend to patronize the same few high-end restaurants -- and know which days the fish is freshest. But the government isn't lobbying to make raw fish illegal (yet). That may have everything to do with sushi's status as an exotic Japanese import -- a food usually enjoyed (in this country) by city-dwelling adults. Milk, on the other hand -- wholesome, nourishing cow's milk -- is more than just a healthy beverage; it's a symbol of the American heartland. It's a drink Americans of all income levels feed their children unthinkingly. And the behemoth dairy industry -- in 2006, it made $20 billion from milk alone, according to the National Milk Producers Federation -- would like to keep it that way. As Dalrymple put it: "Milk is big business. When you think milk, think Exxon."
...
Meanwhile, the FDA has just announced that it's safe to eat meat and drink milk from cloned animals. In such an Orwellian universe, where raw milk from cows that have two biological parents is considered dangerous, while pasteurized milk from cloned cows is safe -- is it any wonder that a growing band of consumers don't trust FDA decisions?

What a crazy world we live in!  So, got milk?

First glimpse...

We recently met a neighbor with a beautiful small organic homestead.  He lives on 38 acres, 32 of which are placed in conservation easment.  The farmhouse was built in the 1780's and is beautiful inside and out (though an endless amount of work, as old houses tend to be...)  He lives simply and is refreshingly reliant on his little corner of the woods.  Four raised beds and a small orchard provide the bulk of his food needs, with plenty left over to sell to the Proctor dining hall (the local boarding school where he used to work).  The house is nicely situated to maximize the sun, facing south-east, and what little electricity is needed is provided by a solar panel.  Woodstoves in each room of the house provide plenty of heat, powered by the abundance of timber on the property.  Water is pumped in from a well, using either an old-fashioned hand pump, or an electric one.  A cozy and neat outhouse sits behind the main house, and human waste is composted in it's own bin system along side the regular home and garden composting system.  A newly-built barn has a green-house on the front where veggie plants get their start in the cool New Hampshire spring.  Gorgeous perennial gardens surround the house.  The last quarter-mile of the road is only seasonally maintained, so our neighbor skis or snowshoes in the winter.  The house sits in a little hollow and the feeling a person gets when approaching the house is one of perfect stillness.  All in all, it is a magical spot.

So this new friend of ours is planning a move to Nicaragua where he will work with a non-profit doing sustainable agriculture and design/building.  He is looking for the right people to buy his little farm.  Do you know anyone who might be interested?

 

Simple Prosperity

The director of the library where I work recently ordered this book and set it aside for me, thinking it would be right up my alley.  She was right.  I'm only a few dozen pages into it, but it is already articulating so much of what I'm passionate about, and challenging me to think in a more focused way about my priorities.  The basic premise of the book (by the author David Wann, of Afluenza fame,) is that living more moderate, sustainable lives actually brings us more joy and fulfillment than the social climbing, upwardly mobile lifestyle which centers on consumption.  Ahhh!  The economy of ENOUGH rather than the economy of MORE!

This book proposes that when we change a few key priorities, many of our material wants will cease to be obsessions...  Our lives will be filled with the real wealth of sanity, health, hope, caring, connection, participation, and purpose....

When we choose real wealth, we can have things like healthy, great-tasting food; exciting hobbies and adventures; work that challenges and stimulates us; and spiritual connection with a universe that's so much larger than we are.  Instead of more stuff in our already-stuffed lives, we can have fewer things of higher quality; fewer visits to the doctor and more visits to museums and to see neighbors.  More joyful intimacy, more restful sleep, and more brilliantly sunny mornings in campsites on the beach--bacon and eggs sizzling in the skillet and coffee brewing in the pot.  Greater use of our hands and minds in creative activities like playing a flute, knitting a sweater, building a table, or harvesting the season's first juicy, heirloom tomato.  These are the things that matter and we can choose them, if we spend less time, money and energy being such conscientious consumers.

Thank you David Wann for stating things so eloquently!  This is what I know is true so deeply I can feel it stirring in my bones: we can choose a different life, one that is more full of what we all really want.  And I see the stirrings of a movement all around me.  People scratch their heads at the newfound popularity among young people, women and men, of knitting and other hand-crafts.  It is simply this truth that Wann is talking about above:  making things ourselves is somehow grounding and makes us feel more human.  While our society is catapulting itself at a breath-taking speed down the consumption track to... where? some of us want to get off the train and create an alternate reality.  Not because we're anti-American (ahem) or curmudgeons or hippies, but because we are literally suffocating under the weight of mainstream American culture.  As someone who lives with the demon of depression, I know that when I go to WalMart I feel awful and when I needle-felt something for my daughter I feel good.  I'm not trying to be overly simplistic here and blame WalMart for my depression, but some things contribute to our health and some things detract from it.  The more aware of myself I become, the more convinced I am that very few things are neutral in this regard.

So here's to more things made by hand and cooked from scratch.  I'm not a die-hard "do-it-yourself-er" but all we can each do is our best.  As Maya Angelou says, "We do the best we can and when we know better, we do better."