Letter to an old friend

still here

we are slowly converting our temporary buildings into “permanent” ones. peace of mind.

we have an intern here from nyc and one from sf. this is quite a change in geography and life style for both of them. the one from sf milked the goats and now won’t even consider tasting the milk after having done so. they both have cell phones.

i remember when i used to feel scared when i lived in that little basement apartment in wilmington and i had to pass by the woods to get from the parking lot to my door. i don’t really understand whether i was afraid of people in the woods or wild animals or if it was just a childhood bogyman thing. i used to get such a sense of security living in the city (phila, sf, portland) when i could hear people making people noises at all hours of the night. its hard to believe that we walk every night through jungle to get to our tiny sleeping space (no electricity, can’t even stand up). that would have been an impossibility for me in the past.

nature? sometimes i still think “thanks but no thanks. i’ll take the ballet and high tea and tweeds.”

my days of “fighting fires” look like dealing with a neighborhood dog pack rolling our mongoose trap or stabbing holes in the barn tarp roof to relieve the “bathtub” of water collecting from 40 days and 40 nights of rain, or walking a colicy horse for hours with my entire arm up to the armpit up his ass trying to find the blockage in his intestines. my favorite days are working with scott and the interns, sweating, laughing, taking a break in the got sun with blended ice, local honey and our limes (a slushy), or getting so carried away with some tangent during homeschooling with lauren that we get hopelessly behind and we don’t care one bit.

lauren is in high school! here is a r. steiner quote i just sent to her dad:

“We shouldn’t ask: what does a person need to know or be able to do in order to fit into the existing social order?”

“Instead we should ask: what lives in each human being and what can be developed in him or her? Only then will it be possible to direct the new qualities of each emerging generation into society. Society will then become, what young people, as whole human beings, make out of the existing social conditions. The new generation should not just be made to be what present society wants it to become”

Malia rides again

the vet was out a few weeks ago and gave our injured horse malia the thumbs up. he said there is NO sign of lameness from her injury. he gave us the ok to take her riding, so lauren and i took java and maila on a brief jaunt around the neighborhood.

malia is a sweet and honest horse. she has been very patient with the extensive treatments and fussing with her legs. she has gotten weary of having her back legs touched but lauren and i have been working with her and lauren is doing horse yoga on her legs. malia is more easily spooked than when she arrived and we are working with her on rebuilding confidence.

there is a parelli horse trainer who has started to board her horse next door! how lucky for us. lauren met the trainer when maila was transported to the horse farm up the street for the first week. it may be time to put our round pen to use (it has living posts so we were waiting for the roots to securely take hold).

After receiving a forward about prayer in school

i actually have an issue with prayer in schools ONLY because it generally means CHRISTIAN prayer. what would allowing (only) christian prayers in a non religious, tax payer supported institution be saying to the jews, the hindu’s the moslems etc. who have a right to their religions practices being valued? it reeks of colonialism and missionary arrogance. i don’t hear the law separating church and state as saying no prayer, they are saying if your religious ceremonies/prayers are “exclusive” then keep them out of here. that policy meets my need for fairness.

Need for stuff

while lauren was in taos, she and her friend were invited to an ice cream social. it was held in a church. the two girls had a great conversation with one of the father’s of a child attending. he guessed that they were both homeschooled because they seemed “confident and intelligent!” eventually he asked them which church they attended. long pause. lauren’s friend said she was jewish and lauren called herself a “free spirit” which I think is a great way to describe what she is. well, the man looked shocked and quickly left.

i think c.s.lewis said something like “there is nothing wrong with christianity, in only wish i know someone practicing it.” gee, maybe it was mark twain.

one thing i noticed about lauren from the time she was little compared with other children: she was not always pestering me to buy her stuff. i often wondered if it was because she didn’t watch tv. i used to give her an allowance but she never spent it so i just stopped.

she asks for so little, and not in a scarcity, fearful way. she just doesn’t seem to need much in the way of things. just before christmas she said “mom, i really don’t want people to give me a lot of stuff, its too hard to take care of.”

she asks for much less than me. but then i’m still moving away from my addiction to “buying my solutions” to all my problems.

Local

with food i notice i am moving towards eating one food group at a time each meal (versus combining starch, protein and greens as i was raised with). with community and friendship i am moving towards being here now with the people i can see, touch immediately.i love seeing the facial expressions, i love the silences, i love the integration.

keeping strong connections through the internet and even the phone is no where near as rewarding or enriching. AND i realize the cost to me of my choice.

when it comes to the size of my world, i am moving towards local: building materials from here, foods from here, friends from here, staying close to home (biking, walking), being aware of the local politics and ignoring much of the rest of the world.

when it comes to “work” i am moving towards direct work (which means to me that i build my own house, i grow my own food, i provide my own entertainment, i milk my own goats (well, lauren does), i teach people in the neighborhood what i have learned). these things feel – how do i explain it — natural, right, in integrity.

i know there are trade offs for these movements i am making. it is rather inconvenient to have to bike to a friends farm, do physical labor together and then still have to bike back home, but its also not even a choice anymore. i just do it. i’m not weighing the pros and cons so much. and i am living in two worlds as i transition AND i am sometimes giving up more than feels good (especially when it comes to visiting/connecting with friends and family who are not here).

our friend clive was here a few days ago helping us move piles of cinder to cover rocks in the horse pasture and he said to me: “karin, there is only one thing we have control over in our lives, and that is our thinking. we can’t control what happens to us, we can only control how we deal with it.”

i tell my friends and family, i want you to write when you feel inspired, i want you to expose yourself and reveal yourself as much as you want. i don’t take it personally when you do it less than i expect because i don’t expect. i want it to be a treat when i get an email from someone and i want to be able to absorb it and choose to reply or not. i have moved too far along this path of being true to myself and others to turn around and perform to anyone’s requirements. no friendship is worth that kind of pressure for me.

despite the occasional trade offs, this life is working for me is such a beautiful way. more and more i am present, i am engaged in an intimate way with what is before me and around me. it is far more real for me to spend an hour chatting with the hawai’ian guy who just delivered some cinder blocks and talk about his bad marriage, his beautiful kids, his love of stock car racing than to chat on the phone with someone a few thousand miles away or even think about the current cost of gas. i am not trying to live in a way that brings about the best possible result. that’s living for the future. instead, i am trying to live naturally and learn to accept all that it creates.

Homeschooling plan

we are hosting a Know Your Farmer Alliance workshop here about chickens. our friend ann is doing a section on ducks.

gearing up for high school and realizing that lauren’s education is going to be something i can feel proud about. i believe i will be able to say that i gave her the best i had in me. enough of the mainstream to have doors open for vet school and a regular life along with a more accurate picture of history, government, religion, money….

we have tracy teaching physics (2 separate courses), chemistry, earth science and biology each year. and tracy is one of those teachers you remember when you are all grown up because she made school fun and interesting. and lauren has had her for 3 years already and 4 more to go!

i am following a waldorf inspired curriculum and teaching not only literature, world cultures, but history from the perspective of the winners AND the losers using howard zinn’s book A People’s History. powerful book giving a rarely seen perspective on history. each year i am also teaching a block on all the stuff i wish i had learned in school: we are doing tom brown’s wilderness survival and the final “exam” is that we will walk off the land together with a backpack filled with what we consider essentials (not including food or a tent, just tool type objects) and we will spend 3 days (together) but living off the land. we will build shelters, find and make food…. can you imagine how confident you would feel if you knew you could take care of yourself and that nature is bountiful?

i am also teaching art classes but also including life skills like making baskets, weaving, spinning etc. we will be reading ishmael and studying quinn’s other book on religions. we will be learning the beauty of all religions. we will start the year with classes on how to learn, the skills to be an effective student.

we are all excited. scott is teaching a new kind of math. it was developed in response to the statistics showing that US high school students scored 23rd compared to 24 other countries, that most students hate math and that few remember anything they learned even if they did well on tests. this new math program is based on interactive problem solving using real and interesting situations. It introduces statistics by looking at a game of chance and gambling! kids work in small groups and work together to explore solutions. we are looking for other students to join the class.

we picked lauren up at the airport last night. i barely recognized her. i was looking for my child, not the young lady who walked towards me!

the goat we thought was pregnant , then thought wasn’t, well now we think she is. she is “bagged up” meaning her utters are engorged with milk. she is our favorite.

we have 2 interns coming up to work today plus a woman in the neighborhood who wants to work with us just so she can pick our brains about sustainable living.

Lauren is home

i know because i can hear the singing coming from the shower

: )

Mass transit

a few nights ago our community neighborhood association (scott and i are on the board) met and on the agenda was our response to our councilperson’s recent letter informing us of upcoming planned and proposed development projects. we wanted to let him know that not everyone wants bigger faster roads everywhere. part of our discussion centered around “when will the cost of gas cause people to consider mass transit alternatives?” i rec’d this from my father today. he lives in southern delaware. This was the first time they had taken the bus.

We are doing well and spent yesterday going to Rehoboth via our bus service. We learned a lot. Like check the time a bus will be leaving the hub that the one from the beach returns us to. On our way back to the hub our driver let us know that the scheduled bus leaving the hub to Long Neck would not be leaving until an hour and half after she would drop us there.

She suggested we ride back to the beach with her, in the air conditioned bus, rather than sit on the bench in the sun waiting. Good idea, so we took the tour and then sat on the bench awaiting our bus. That was around 5 pm and the next bus was 8 pm. We arrived home around 6 pm. It cost us 40¢ each for each leg. So our total cost for both of us, round trip was $1.60. A lot less than $3.12 for a gallon of gas.

I feel giggly hopeful when I hear that people considering giving up their reliance on vehicles. I love the story of what happened in cuba when the USSR dissolved and abandoned them and our government decided to get revenge for years of humiliation caused to the US image by castro by increasing our embargos. overnight, cuba had almost no imports. that meant gasoline, pesticides, fertilizers….. and they did not starve. castro implemented victory gardens (on patios, city lots etc), and the people started to really recycle and reuse everything. i delighted at pictures of corner markets with local foods, people piled in and on the roof of buses, bikes, walking….

being surrounded by a neighborhood of doom and gloomers it has been depressing to constantly hear about gas prices, peak oil, global warming, pollution, gmo’s, war…. it was not until i read about cuba that i began to create a beautiful future image.

Letter to debbie

i often think of your mom. she really helped me out during some difficult times as a teen. she listened to me as if I were someone that mattered and she responded to my sharing with compassion and wisdom. i felt so stuck. your mom told me “karin, to thyne own self be true” and i thought about the situation from an entirely different perspective.

some years ago my sister kathy got a call from a second cousin once removed (or similar). she hadn’t seen or spoken with in many years. the cousin was asking kath to be in her wedding. kath was absolutely shocked. she didn’t understand why this stranger of a second cousin would be asking her. well, it turns out that at some point when the cousin was young, kath listened and responded to her in a way that made a difference. kath finally understood but was soon even more shocked when she found out the bridesmaids had to wear pink frilly hoop skirts and carry parasols!

the summer is going well. scott and i had a dozie of a few months in terms of power struggles. this is the time when that stuff happens. i feel so grateful for the consciousness I put into my commitment to him and to our marriage. it was the glue that enabled us to weather the storm and we got to a place of deeper intimacy because of it.

i remember back when i thought a healthy relationship was one where there was no struggle or conflict. i certainly don’t judge my relationship by those standards anymore. when i was in college i took a marketing class. the professor said much that i immediaely forgot, but he said one thing that make more and more sense to me. he said that brand loyalty is not the result of a product or service meeting the customer’s satisfaction. they expect that. what creates brand loyalty is when a product or service does not meet the customer’s satisfaction AND they have a positive experience with how that is resolved with the company. i started to think of conflict with people that way. no confilct = no deep connection, confilct = potential for intimacy.

luckily scott and i have “tools” i never had in past relationships to help us be vulnerable when all we really want to do is go numb or get distracted/busy or get armored. we got to look at what was beneath the drama. the “theater” our struggle played out.

you have a daughter that is about to drive. oh my. lauren is right on her heels. how can we be so old? i look at kath’s kids and can’t believe that tim is getting close to 30! the good part of all this is i can’t wait until lauren has children. i really want to be a grandmother (not the associations that come with the title but the part where I can hold them and spoil them and not feel any responsibility for “training” them.)

you asked about our intern program. we think it is such an amazing opportunity. we feel so satisfied with the program. we get to have people from all over come here eager to experience the life that we are creating, eager to learn to gather their own food and ride a bike instead of hop in the car, to get away from the “noise” of the mainstream world, to experience an option that isn’t obvious. people see that they can live a good life and not have a “job” for money. not because they packed away lots of money but because they don’t spend much money anymore. i love parring down. but I often have to check myself because I seem to be hard wired to expand, complicate, create more, bigger….

scott’s father and step mother and two young nephews were visiting and the boys (11&12) were s bit shocked by our life here. no game boy, no shopping, no flush toilet, no pantry of packaged foods (well some). at first they were scared of the jungle but within a few days were begging us to let them machete some more vegetation, to harvest sugar cane. etc. the 12 year old was making plans to come here next summer and build himself a cabin and stay on.

however not everyone loves it. my dear friend in california came here with her daughter after a hysterectomy to recover, savor simplicity and lack of obligations. for a variety of reasons it didn’t work for them. perhaps the isolation, the lack of stimulation, coupled with the bugs, the rain and missing their community of friends and family were too much. i feel sad at our loss.

Lauren in taos

we have been focused on building our main living structure. i am now calling it a cave on stilts based on the most common responses by people we describe it to. it is a cement barrel vault with cement columns and cement ring beam and cement slab.

interns and guests have taken our time lately. we also had a downed phone line for a week that made me crazy searching for that tiny break in the ridiculously undersized wires. i threatened cell phone more than once.

lauren is having a blast in taos. everyone who visits with her sends me an email saying the same thing. “wow, she is a self confident happy woman” and “she sure can’t sit still when she talks about her home schooling or high school”

i miss her too much.

just saw a documentary about andy goldsworthy called rivers and tides. so amazing. he has such reverence for nature. if we all had a small percentage of this reverence, the state of world affairs wouldn’t be giving us all nightmares.

my nephew’s recent visit with his tales of the continent and the rest of the world reconfirmed my distaste for anything mainstream (not including my new ipod and digital camera).