agorism, gardening, homesteading – Page 21

Reclaiming Time (part 3)

On becoming my own Authority

I have been fortunate enough to be able to fashion a life that affords me more freedom than the vast majority of the world’s population. While there was a fair degree of luck in this good fortune, there was also a fair degree of sacrifice, and I believe, a dash of ancestral wisdom.

Could it be because my Sir name is Shepard that I now find myself so comforted sitting among the pups and sheep? I’m not saying one has a destiny that could be decoded so simply as through a name, though I do think the clues to our destiny, individually and collectively, are all around us in every moment.

What it takes to see the clues is the very thing The System works to deny us: Unstructured time. The System calls this loafing.

Time to absorb, to reflect, to introspect, to daydream. Time to watch the sheep and the pups.

This is different from what The System does provide in order to replace unstructured time, which is Entertainment. Which, by its nature, is extremely well-structured.

I find the path the thoughts take in unstructured time is intrinsically connected to creativity, which is a joy in its own right and not necessarily a precursor to productivity.

Where my thoughts go, I imagine, are at once beyond time and space and amalgamation of time and space, co-creating the pathways to the Self.

In the Western world today there is loads of criticism directed at the narcissism of the youth. I believe this is primarily a grammatical and perception issue. Just because the younger generation prefers Selfies and the Internet more than old Westerns and glib conversation does not necessarily make them more narcissistic than previous generations.

I think they are searching for paths to Self that are becoming increasingly more difficult to sense as the social structure becomes increasingly hostile to individuality.

Or, maybe the social structures have always been hostile to individuation, and the youth, generation by generation, continue to claw away at that putrefying foundation.

Maybe, on the inside, with every social Selfie they scream, “I will be seen! My presence here will be recorded in time! I will matter!” They just can’t figure out how and why they will matter, because we lost that thread several generations ago.

Could it be they sense that time for them is running out? Could it be an act of desperation to record every moment and connect it somehow with the world at large? Could it be that we, of the older generations, in our criticism of their narcissism is a reflection of our own narcissism? Is it our own non-acceptance of a role that told us when we were children that which I heard so often in my own upbringing: “Children are to be seen and not heard.” Are we subtly sensoring them due to our own unprocessed fear? Are we repeating to them with our criticism, ‘don’t be the tall nail or you’ll get hammered down’? Or my personal favorite: “Don’t be so entitled.”

Who are the black sheep of today’s youth I wonder sometimes as I’m watching the sheep. Maybe that’s where our criticism should be directed. Where have they gone? Have we been so successful as a ‘civilization’ that we have managed to breed out the black sheep?

On becoming my own Authority I’ve realized I have an amazing gift of finding my own teachers when I’m left with my own instincts and unstructured time. This is often thanks to technology, but not always. There is so much knowledge being shared on Youtube that our television hangs nearly useless in the living room most days. I’d bet The System calls most of these at least arrogant, if not narcissistic. How dare they skirt the established hierarchy and create their own channels. How dare they question their social roles, or entice, indeed, provoke me to question mine. The System calls them just another nutter with a podcast. A so-called lone wolf or black sheep.

Here is one such ‘teacher of the week’ for me. I hope his narcissism peaks for many videos to come, because he’s got great gifts to share, just as we all do.

Michael Black was introduced to me by two other powerful teachers at Unslaved.com: Michael Tsarion and David Whitehead

https://unslaved.com/episode-47-give-us-solutions-feat-michael-black/

Below in the video The Endgame for the United States, Mr. Black talks about the inevitable MEGACITY of the near future and its myriad challenges according to the Pentagon.

He delves more into that pesky Progress and what it’s doing to the individual and the world. He advises one thing here I am inclined to advise against, which is, leave here if you can.

Defeatism, I suggest, Mr. Black. Don’t undermine us, we just may have the ancestral wisdom and courage to stand and fight. If only we could get the youth to see there’s something here still worth fighting for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV45sOakhsI

Reclaiming Time (part 1)

I turn 49 next week. Nearly half a century here and I have recorded a good bit of my journey. My intention is to stick around a good bit more, most days I feel I’ve surely got another 50 to go.

Maybe no one, or more precisely, a precious few, care to read my records or ramblings. This blog is maybe nothing more than the diaries I’ve written from ages 12-45, only to eventually discard. That is on paper, easy to eliminate, by fire, or compost, or any other number of ways. My online ramblings are permanent, or at least their permanence or lack there of, is out of my control, completely.

It is sometimes like a daily offense, just that fact alone, yet I know I could walk away from it at any moment. It is seeped in a weakness I share with many others. Monitor yourself vs stop monitoring yourself. Share yourself vs retreat inward. Public vs private space.

I feel I was pushed out of academia largely on issues concerning privacy—my own, and my students. Yet on the other hand, my life is quite the open book, much more than Handy Hubby appreciates, I know. In any case, it’s hard to complain when I’m glad it happened.

On ‘ratemyprofessors.com’ I’d had scathing performance reviews so much so I had to stop looking there after only two visits. That was many years ago and I’ve avoided my ‘public profile’ ever since, but I never lost my teaching jobs until I said, “No, I won’t do that.”

I will not violate my students’ privacy in this way. I will not become their task-master. Cheerleader is one thing, drill sergeant is quite another. I will not step on this slippery slope of the complete surveillance grid, no matter how you try to sell it or push it. I will not simply follow orders. I will not accept whatever comes down the pipeline without question.

Indoctrination is not education. Social conditioning should never be the aim of teaching. That was why I went toward academia in the first place, because I was apparently duped into believing that didn’t happen here. This was not McDonalds. This was not the Army.

Online now I see the world erupting. Academics and scientists dismissed readily as complete frauds. Hollywood is satanic, the United States is a corporation under maritime law, elite reptilians rule over us all, the moon is a mirage, and the Earth may very well be flat.

And I’m one of the precious few who say, without a hint of mocking, ‘BRING IT ON!”

The weather is being manipulated, I know that for sure. I saw through the staged political-media theater since the Iran-Contra hearings. I lived in Mena, Arkansas and spoke with folks, and that’s all I’m saying here about that. I heard directly, first person, enough to make me understand reality as I had not before.

The weather has been weaponized. Our government was usurped long ago. Now connect those two dots.

There is still a denial in the general public to face the dire facts though they are surrounding us for anyone with the courage to look and discover.

I do not claim to be an authority, I am not, will not and never want to be. Indoctrination was never my intention and never will be. That my intentions might be misunderstood provokes me to spend a bit of time and words unraveling . . .

I am a steward of this land, that’s what called me here. And for the next few posts I’d like to share what that means to me, for those precious few.

Naked Sunday and redneck holiday fun! 🙂 🙂

selfie — pensive and painted in pokeberry (summer 2017)

Motivational interview of the week, considering it’s a miserable 95 degrees again, after a few unseasonably gorgeous days feeling of fall:

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/geoengineering-creating-freeze-fry-extremes/

Life Skills Stolen: A Lesson in Hurricanes

About an hour’s drive south over 50 inches of rain has been recorded. Here, we had two inches, barely enough to moisten the parched topsoil, not enough to create even a small puddle for the ducks to romp through. The creek remains low, the pond empty.

Of course Houston is no stranger to floods, or Galveston, or anywhere or anyone who has lived along the Gulf South for any short length of time. While we lived there we were so fortunate as to experience two so-called “100 year hurricanes” in just three years — during Hurricane Katrina we were living in New Orleans, during Hurricane Ike we were living in Galveston.

I refused to live in the Gulf zone, anywhere, after that. The folks that remain must really love it there, or be more resilient than I am, or have lives and jobs and loved ones they can’t bare to do without. I respect their preferences and choices, but I chose that we should get the hell out.

Sometimes a woman has to put her foot down. Or at least, compromise, with pleas and tears. No my dear, we cannot move back to Spain, Hubby concluded, but we can move north of Hurricane Zone and south of Tornado Alley.

OK, it’s a deal! I wonder, maybe more women should be making that sort of deal for the good of their sanity and pocketbooks? I don’t want to give unsolicited advice, but if you choose to remain in the Gulf, it’s only logical and pragmatic and wise in every way that you are emotionally, financially, spiritually capable of living in dangerous regions.

I had long had a respect for self-reliance, having lived in Eastern Europe, where to be Šikovnyý (handy, skillful) was taken to an art form. They didn’t take their Skoda to the mechanic, if they couldn’t fix it, a neighbor could. They cooked from scratch, they mended clothes, they had gardens and grew vegetables in them usually, not grass. There was scarcely any packaging, the waste–I remember that as most impressionable of all–there was hardly any waste.

Of course that changed fast as soon as the Soviets left and the new Big Brother took over. This was progress. Goods filling the shelves, boxes and cans filling the garbage. It was as fascinating to watch as it was hard to watch.

It’s amazing how fast life skills can be lost. Or maybe I should say stolen, because that’s what I really think. The skills that kept cultures thriving and self-reliant and community-driven are being stolen from right under our noses, and our parents’ and grand-parents’ and now even great grand-parents’ noses. For the U.S. at least, this goes way back.

Commodify everything, even the very air we breath and water we need to survive. You are not a good capitalist unless you are willing to drown cities at will in order to profit nicely and have the added benefit of restructuring at will.

See, what ends up happening in these recurrent disasters is those folks who are not self and/or community reliant, are not independent and are most often not the least bit Šikovnyý get in dire circumstances every few years and the government and their communities and extended family and distant friends and loads of complete strangers feel absolutely compelled to help them out. Usually through agencies and funds that are syphoning and squandering these do-gooders’ money. There is not only here what Dr. Phil would surely call “enabling” unhealthy lifestyles, but also in some cases, even a dose of pathological altruism.

I saw after Hurricane Katrina that actually what was happening in New Orleans was a land-grab. I suspect the same and similar is happening with every weather event, and, to go even further, these events, weather and otherwise, are being manufactured.

If you find this preposterous, incredulous, impossible, you need only spend a few hours at these sites to uncover exactly how this is done and has been done for many decades.

Jim Lee’s Weather Modification History

Dane Wigington’s Geoengineering Watch

I know it sounds odd, but those two hurricanes were perfect impetuses for positive change in our lives. Hubby never wanted to live in New Orleans. I never wanted to live in Galveston. We both fancied the idea of having chickens.

And chickens, being the gateway livestock, led to ducks and turkeys, pigs and sheep, goats and . . .

I no longer send money or volunteer, as I had long done, to anyone affected by a disaster through any organization, especially the government. The weather modification programs, and therefore the weather chaos, is a problem they are creating, which they want the public to bare the brunt of on the front end through taxes and the back through disaster relief. It’s a con.

Yes, folks suffer. I get that and I am feeling for them and sending them prayers. Mostly my prayers are saying, “If you can’t handle living in an area that is repeatedly a disaster zone, do like me, and put your foot down, and get the hell out of the Gulf for good.”

It’s just not worth it. It’s not going to get better.

Homestead Love-Hate

I hate August on the homestead. There, I’ve admitted it. I can’t stand pretending. Sitting at the kitchen table looking at the last of about 250 pounds of pears, I could almost cry.

I’d like to sell it all right now and move to Fiji. I imagine moving permanently into a rented beach hut complete with pool boy serving me colorful fruity cocktails all day. Not processing pears. Not plucking dozens of ducks. Not gaping helplessly at the crops becoming engulfed, scorched, withering to their deaths.

Handy Hubby could even join me there if he wanted to, it’s not his fault after all. The bugs, the heat, my aching hands, the better part of an entire nation on vacation, as if that weren’t bad enough.

Because then on top of it all is the garden. Every year, the garden horror show, unrecognizable from a month ago, my annually recurring failure at keeping nature mildly tamed.

In anticipation of my August mood, this year I planted loads of flowers at the garden entrance. Flowers and puppies are just about all that’s keeping depression at bay. Some are miserable in the dead of winter; I am miserable in the dead of summer.

Mowing stopped mid-way for stabbing arthritic pain in my wrists and fingers. I don’t care anymore. I can’t care anymore. There are plenty of cow peas and a few ripe melons in that mess, if you dare. After weeks at work, this is what Hubby must come home to, and rescue me from, furthering my shameful failure.

Okra successfully outmaneuvering the pernicious grasses, but I don’t like okra.

The pigs still have their wee escape, and I have mine.

Puppy love.

Puppy pics are way more fun than chemtrail pics.

I could be taking photos of the regular assault in our skies with the disgusting aerosols of climate engineering, as I was for a number of months. Another failure it seems, because I can’t bare it, it doesn’t seem to be helping anything at all, except for normalizing abhorrent “science”.

I simply have no more capacity or patience for folks who don’t, can’t or won’t see, or who don’t care, or who like, the whole-scale rape, murder and pillage of our planet. When will it stop? When will the madness heal? When will a mass of mankind have had enough of bowing to their masters as they crack the whip on the laws of nature?

I’m on vacation alright, just like the bulk of a nation, it’s just a vacation on my window seat, directly under the a/c unit, where I’m grateful to continue my climate engineering research thanks to these more tireless and consistent deeply concerned citizens.

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/

https://stopsprayingus.com/

http://zerogeoengineering.com/

Cheese-making: Science and Sensuality

Cheeses currently in our aging fridge, which is nothing more than a cheap beverage model sadly impersonating a cave in Switzerland: Swiss (of course), Tomme (another Alpine cheese), Munster, Camembert (wrapped in fig leaves), Pepper Jack, Farmhouse Cheddar (cloth-wrapped), Gouda, Dill Havarti, Mozzarella (the old-fashioned way), Ricotta. Plus, in the kitchen fridge: yogurt, kefir, Mexican queso, and chocolate ice cream–all homemade with the freshest Grade A, raw milk from small farm, grass-fed cows available for purchase in East Texas.

These are the kind of cheeses one has a tough time finding where to legally buy, or sell, not only in America, but in quite a few other Western countries as well. In most of the countries who consider themselves ‘free’ as far as I’m aware, acquiring licensing for everything dairy under the Federal sun will still not grant you the right to sell such cheeses. Big Brother is so very worried about our health, after all.
http://theplate.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/30/some-like-it-raw-the-state-of-unpasteurized-cheese-in-the-u-s/

Some of these are cheeses the way our ancestors made them–even using fig sap as rennet and kefir as starter culture. Others of them have been made possible only with the help of modern science–freeze-dried cultures in order to create the holes and flavor of Swiss, for example, or the orange-rinded stinky varieties like Munster or Limburger, or the blue veins of the pungent Roquefort, the reliable white mold of a Camembert–which make it possible to imitate, with a reasonable degree of success, the most famous of region-specific cheeses we’ve come to know and love over the generations.

The first time I tasted cheese that did not come wrapped in plastic I was a teenager in France. It was also the first time I tasted milk straight from the cow. I was stunned to realize these products, considered the same from my own home to my host family’s home, had almost nothing in common. To the eye they appeared congruent, but to the other senses they were not even distant cousins.

But it’s one thing to harness an appreciation for the depth and subtitles of a finely- crafted cheese, it’s quite another to think you can make one. In Texas. In an ‘aging fridge’ from Wal-mart. With $7/gallon milk you drive 3 hours to acquire and sometimes using cultures manufactured in a lab.

Is it just for the love of cheese? It’s true, while doubtless they can’t compete with their cave-aged predecessors, still available in their natural state to only a precious few, I’ve made some of the best cheeses I’ve tasted available in this neck of the Piney Woods.

Handy Hubby appreciates my rather expensive and quite time-consuming hobby, but that’s just a bonus. I think these old skills and crafts are crucial to maintain and pass along to future generations, that’s for sure. But none of these good reasons would be enough, even all together, if it weren’t for the pleasure of the process.

The sensuality of cheese-making cannot be over-stated and to describe it would take poetry far superior than is my capacity to create. This is a hobby that touches, demands, cultivates every one of our senses and a fair amount of intellect as well. A whole-minded approach is crucial for success, because process alone will only get you so far.

You may scoff and think a cheese is a cheese, it’s a matter of taste alone, and they mostly taste the same. If so, you poor, poor dear.

“Those . . . from whom nature has withheld the legacy of taste, have long faces, and long eyes and noses, whatever their height there is something elongated in their proportions. Their hair is dark and unglossy, and they are never plump, it was they who invented trousers.”

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin The Physiology of Taste quoted in A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman

You may laugh and say . . . “sound?” If cheese-making requires a subtle practice of every sense than that includes sound . . . how silly.

Someday I will make the case for sound in good cheese-making, because I think there’s a case to be made. In addition to my own experimentation, I suspect I need search no further than the many monasteries made famous for their cheeses for more supporting evidence.

Cheese is still more pleasure than exudes the senses in the thrill of retrieving and treasuring a fading art, and in marrying the inevitable couple of progress and tradition.

“We are all served more and more by factory machines, maybe inevitably, and by schedules, even our own, and in time, as has often been pointed out, we come to serve them. Some of us are becoming chafed by it all. We seek to reaffirm ourselves, to do and make for ourselves, to find new ways to do so–many of them admittedly old ways, but new and revitalizing ones to us and our friends. We want to find out how the basic components of our lives are made and come to us to use. We seek to become part once more of the processes, and possessors once more of the details of our own existence.”

The Cheeses and Wines of England and France, with Notes on Irish Whiskey
by John Ehle

A few favorite references and a favorite resource:

2016quesocheesedip-1024x932 — The Promiseland Farm

If you want to start somewhere, this is a super easy cheese even a picky American kid would surely like, think Velveeta, only healthy. http://thepromiselandfarm.com/queso-cheese-spread-dip/

No More Fakebook

“Fakebook,” Handy Hubby calls it. Of course he’s right, I’ve long known he’s right. I left Fakebook years ago, then went back, against my better judgment. It has become to me one more insufferable Catch-22 of the modern age.

I’ve met a few good folks there and it was the source in finding our new livestock guard dog pups, who are so precious it’s a real challenge not to spoil them!

It is a good tool for keeping in touch, no doubt. I’ve also appreciated how it’s like the modern equivalent of scrapbooking in some fundamental ways. They keep better track of our photos than I do. They record it all. And therein lies the Catch 22.

Fakebook has tipped in scales to more negative than positive, not just for me, I see folks leaving it and considering leaving it and I can’t blame them, in fact, I’ve again just rejoined the leavers, and this time, I’m never going back.

Oh my, I just felt a twang of panic in my gut. Never? Did I really mean that? That’s so very . . . permanent.

I know it’s wrong! I know they are spying, manipulating, engineering, censoring, and if that weren’t bad enough, the ads are over the top. I just can’t stand it. In fact, I find I’m turning to books, real books printed on real paper, just to be able to find a recipe without eight ads and pop-ups attached.

And I know very well it’s not just about the advertising, that’s just the surface level annoyance and distraction. It is about Big Data, which I’ve written about several times already, but for those still uninformed, some background material.

https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-319-psychographics-101/

And Truthstream Media:

If I am to align my life with my principles, as I’ve sworn to do, I cannot support this level of technocracy. Next will be the Smart phones, out of our lives! We do just fine without satellite TV already. We will vehemently reject all 5G roll-out “Smart” crap that we possibly can.

We will get better at it, these things take considerable time and effort. We are gradually becoming more refined in making due with the old ways, and isn’t it ironic. I jumped on-board with educational technology as a grad student, made it my thing, taught online courses since the first years that was possible.

And now I look and shiver as at a golem. Oh my stars, what have we created?

I must take a deep bow to those who saw it decades before I did, the ones I once considered practically prehistoric. The ‘old folk’ who were so afraid of technology, so concerned about privacy. The paranoid ones who suspected, no, even had valid proof, that the government could not be trusted with this information power house.

We are in the process collectively of accepting enslavement to the grid. If you still believe the powers-that-be are benevolent, that once was me. I can’t say all that it was that blinded me then, I was seeing it and reading it, but it wasn’t yet REAL.

I’m reminded of famous words that made a decent impression on me so long ago I can’t recall, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

We, Kensho, have been learning about self-reliance. It’s more work and more responsibility than I’d known before, certainly much more physical labor. Many sacrifices have been made by us both. We stopped traveling. Our social and political priorities have shifted. Our values and worldview and tolerance levels have become much more refined. Our skill-sets have increased ten-fold. One of these days I’ll make a list.

But this post is about Fakebook. What it offers is not worth what it takes away. In its absence I’ve started reading fiction again. I’ve also decided to take up sewing, which surprises me about my own self as much as when I took up cheesemaking, my now favorite hobby by far and one I’m getting pretty good at.

Fakebook is a time-sucking, energy-wasting, spell-casting, manipulating, ad-pushing pain in the ass. I’m done.

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are so many better things to do!

Part 21: Strawberry Fields Forever

The perception sorcery we find ourselves in

Awash in illusion, deception, sin

Which flowers you grow laws rule

Let me take you down

Cause I’m going to

Strawberry fields

Nothing is real

And nothing to get hung about

Living is easy, with eyes closed. Misunderstanding all you see.

Always, no sometimes, think it’s me.
But you know when it’s a dream.

THE OA

I think I know it means a “Yes” but it’s all wrong.
That is I think I disagree.

Married to illusion. What sort of glam-golem are we-they creating?

You get to see the pretty pictures. But not the shit, literal shoveling shit, that went in to creating them. A Walt Disney dream. For every success, a dozen failures you don’t see. I don’t talk about.

This is what I really think, after many months of research into Geoengineering.

We are all now ruled by the cartoonish mentality of the technocracy. They are trying to force upon us a reality based on illusion.

I want to thank the following folk for their work, which has helped me tremendously to navigate this fool’s path. This particular journey may be over, but it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to move on too far.

yamakawa

What a long strange trip it is.

Part 19: Camouflaged

That’s not God! That’s men!

Youtube channels about the crazy weather are popping up like weeds in the garden. Quite a significant percentage of them are full-on fear porn blaming God for the bad weather and looking to Bible verse for answers. And of course, solutions. Those solutions, along with those of the New Age movement involve:

Adjusting. Adapting. Aligning. Accommodating. Acquiescing. Assimilating.

Not getting educated, nope. Not informing oneself outside the advised spiritual texts. Not observing and collecting data. Not questioning authority. Not blaming a corrupted system. Not pushing back against the insanity happening in the name of god or science.

Solar radiation management (SRM). Some say it’s bogus misinformation, a psyop. Others say, no, it’s absolutely true, they want to block out our SUN! They are already doing it! ‘It will slow climate change,’ say the ‘scientists’.

Bad move, whether true or false, unless the true aim is to get folks really riled up. We tend to like our sun. Some of us even worship it.

Among the religious and spiritual types, if one is really serious and needs some actual action on behalf of his integrity, he can brandish a placard. Or, become a prepper. In my experience thus far, only the latter has the potential to be self-empowering.

Otherwise, he can, as I have tried to do here, turn to science. In our collapsing system there are two kinds of science: real science and biased science. 99.9% of the science the average person is exposed to is biased science. In now several months of searching through the science of geoengineering and other relatable fields, I have confirmed for myself with 66.6% accuracy that even the real science is still biased.

And yet, a light at the end of the tunnel! Trudging through the sewers of deception I realize I’ve honed some serious skills of discernment. A most sensitive frequency now tells me who is making the call, God or Man. I have come a long way; I longed to stop long ago. But I’ve held tough and the tricksters’ tricks have become more transparent to me, where before they were mostly blinding.

Accelerate, is what that tells me now. Radiate. Expand efforts exponentially. Absorb the current intensity in the field and diffuse it toward my ends. It is the final steps of one journey that create the impetus for the next.

treasureguard — Our stellar huntress strikes again! She guarded her captured possum for several hours, but then lost interest. In classic possum camouflage, it lay there playing dead for half of the day, and then sure enough, disappeared.

inchworm1 — What is it?! A dead bee? A spec of soil? Nope. I could swear I saw it move! I showed Hubby, he scoffed and shrugged at first. I insisted, look, it moved again! We got out our magnifying glass, then our video, and sure enough, it’s an extremely well-camouflaged inchworm. WOW, now that’s some impressive nature.

Camouflaged warfare becoming blindingly apparent. How will the public react now? Best video of the week, not to be missed.

From the chemtrail Summit in Oregon, many more folks tired of the BS and amped up to make changes.

Part 16: My dark little secret

Some iconic lines in films imprint on the psyche collectively and I know you could think of one right now that instantly crosses several generations and continental divides.

“You can’t handle the truth!” Name that film, name that actor. Could you even name his co-star in that blockbuster?

Somehow, somewhere, as a collective, we’ve given ourselves over to worship and celebrity and fantasy and distraction in the most destructive ways. I am not resolved from that influence and never will be. I watched TV constantly for years in high school, only to give it up for years later in exchange for an exhaustive social life, only to give that up more years later for work I found most of all, exhausting.

I had/have this secret fantasy I’m going to share right now (again). After hurricane Katrina, right after, when I heard on the news the city was more or less safe, and me many hours away in a quaint bed and breakfast drinking wine with lunch, the hurricane widely reported as much less dangerous than anticipated, but that residents would need to stay away for a few days at least for safety precautions, I was glad. Nearly giddy, and not from the wine.

I had just started a new position at Tulane university and already I didn’t really want to go back. It took a day or so more before all hell broke out and select areas of the city flooded terribly and all residents had to stay out indefinitely. In our case, we were allowed to go back after two months. For some, it was never. We lived in a trendy and relatively upscale area right on Audubon Park. It was a beautiful spot, both before and after the hurricane. Some were far from so lucky and they’d been there many generations, not just two weeks, like us.

I do hold shame for this secret fantasy, because I still feel it. When I dwell, necessarily, in the dark places of my life and the world, I know there is much sickness, far too much. Far too much destruction, voluntary and deliberate and needless. Still, I have dwelt in destruction.

And there is too much wind, dammit, all around me lately seeming to get worse every year. It’s bloody annoying! We had no winter and now no spring. The plants and animals struggle with it far less than I, but still, I know, they do.

Wind is really stressful! This makes me smile, because there was a time I lived in Chicago and worked downtown and yes, the wind was legendary, but it was mostly something I peered at from the window and got annoyed at how it affected my hairdo.

But the wind is far more powerful and penetrating than I had, and I think most, ever realize. Is that not what blew down the house of each of the three little pigs?

They are blowing, those wolves, our weather right now is as manipulated as the currency market. And in my secret fantasy I sometimes can’t help but wonder—would we all be better off in the long run if they would just blow it all down? Roses blooming at the same time as the dogwood?! It just ain’t right.

This week’s breadcrumb, I’ve got so many I’d love to share this week, but this one is so essential it needs to stand alone.

Unslaved podcast, exploring the self in the work of Ayn Rand and others.

As the world reboots, this is where the rubber will meet the road.

https://youtu.be/vgL1AA-eX4I

https://unslaved.com/the-path-to-selfhood-ayn-rand/

huntress — After I got over the shock of hearing the squeals of a drift of wild hogs crashing through the forest, and the fear that I’d lost our dearest Tori, I was amazed to see her come through the trees clearly proud of herself.

duchesse — Still a fav, La Duchesse de Brabant, unfortunately with a bad case of ‘black spot’ but which I’ve been treating with whey, banana peels and chicken poop.

Part 15: Rascals of Science

Lots of color to encourage bees and butterflies and me to enter.

I am selectively NOT weeding the Queen Anne’s lace (wild carrot) and cilantro from the garlic patch.

I’m intentionally doing that! Beans with onions and select weeds, quel horreur!

Broccoli and lettuces and tomatoes in the same bed? What madness is this?!

pigsnchickens — According to modern science pigs should not eat table scraps and farm species should not intermingle due to cross-contaminating disease potential. Someone should really be informing the critters of these hazards.

There is a science underworld that borders with pseudoscience where mavericks and rascals believe the world, indeed the entire universe, is holistic, not mechanistic. I’m fascinated by these courageous thinkers who have ventured into unconventional territory. I recognize the strength of character and conviction such a journey requires. Whether or not they are correct is, to me ,secondary, though I believe they are on the right path.

What I admire is that they strayed from the consensus, they escaped the group-think and the brainwashing of scientism, all while holding fast to a theory of a collective unconscious. At what point, I keep wondering, did they choose to deviate from the accepted experts in their fields and trust their own knowing? I’m so curious, because I seem to have arrived at that crossroad myself.

I’ve read many books by seasoned gardeners and farmers with great interest; I was a Master Gardner for a couple of years until politics got in the way; I’ve taken many classes, watched loads of videos and have now about six solid years of practical successes and failures under my belt. I can say with relative assurance that close to half of what I learned was wrong, or useless for me, or this particular region. In hindsight some of it was just a waste of time. Of course, there was much essential learning happening too, but I’m making my own rules in the garden now, based on little other than intuition.

I might be completely wrong, I’m sure I’ll be called totally crazy, but we will see how it goes. Considering the weather whiplash of this year, we are off to a pretty good start so far.

What’s calling me has many names that seem vaguely similar: companion planting, permaculture, biodynamic agriculture—it’s basically like organic farming on (natural) steroids. 🙂

snappeas — Snap peas with a backdrop of Texas squaw-weed, thriving even in the weather whiplash.

There is a growing amount of literature on the subject and I will continue to peruse through it, for ideas and inspiration of what to experiment with myself. I get the very strong sense that what this field needs is more explorers, more rascals and mavericks, more little devils tinkering with the science-status-quo. I begin with one overarching position—the answer is not to be bought. The answer exists in the nature right around us. I need only slow down, focus, and really listen.

I had a lesson just today on how I am certainly lacking in that level of detail and attention. I was marveling for a moment on a butterfly that landed in the grass as I was walking back from feeding the pigs. How marvelous, I thought, and I squatted down slowly and got closer.

aniseswallowtail — An Anise swallowtail. I did not know it at the time, but looked very closely so I could remember just what it looked like to later find its name in an internet search.

http://www.gardenswithwings.com/identify-butterflies.html

I thought how lucky and clever I was in that moment– Lucky that I had such time and appreciation of beauty to take extended notice and so clever that I thought to consciously memorize its details so I could later look it up.

I was so intent on it, I nearly missed the smaller, paler, but on closer examination equally exquisite butterfly laying still in the grass not even a foot away from his showy cousin. A very tiny creature, brownish and so more camouflaged on the just greening grass, but with perfect miniscule polka-dots in varied shades of blue along the base of its wings–but I could not find his likeness on any search.

Most certainly they were enjoying a tour of our garden. Did they also think it too wild and untamed? Weeds and crops growing side-by-side, on purpose?! Were they as incredulous as most modern avid gardeners would be of my methods in madness?

I’m sensing the butterflies saw it more like this.

But the weeds! They are choking and starving your crops! Are they? All of them? How do you know this, I now question. You see, the jumping jacks are delicious and gorgeous in a salad and they want to grow next to the onions. And the lady slippers and carrots growing side-by-side not only looked lovely, but produced the best crop yet.

The most unexpected, and it would seem magical, transformation I’ve experienced since beginning our rural life is my sense of smell has gotten very keen. So much so it’s become a disadvantage when trying to engage in the outside world. What I consider a heightened sense, a new level of sensitivity that serves me very well in my immediate environment, is called by modern scientists as a symptom of a brain disorder. It’s in the ballpark with phantosmia– I ‘hallucinate’ smells and over-register the strength of them, it seems. I bet they’ve manufactured the ideal medication to rid me of my new superpower. 🙂

This week’s bread crumbs:

Yogic Science ‘one consciousness’ = high consciousness? Not sure about that, but found this one interesting enough to include it. He made me wonder, when did the goal of spirituality become happiness? Somehow, I missed that memo.

Dada Gunamuktananda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo0X2ZdElQ4

Rupert Sheldrake—morphic resonance, 6^th sense–says, on modern science: “Give us one free miracle and we’ll explain the rest.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jiJM4ybiho

You may call them simpletons, I call them inspiring.

“The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is at the root of all true science. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, is my idea of God.” Einstein

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