do something day

Today is fur free friday, buy nothing day, a day to remember how our insane consumerism is ruining our lives and our world. This time, consider taking it a step further, and, as my friends at Homegrown Evolution suggest, DO SOMETHING.

It's not a bad idea to give something you've made or grown to a neighbor, or learn or new skill.

How about learning to sew or how to how a productive meeting or how to shield yourself against the police or how to help feral cats with TNR or how to harvest rainwater?

"middle-aged lady" activism

Bangkoks's International Airport is still closed, three days later, after activists blocked terminals and roads leading to and from the airport. Reports are saying "these don't look like typical revolutionaries" and that those protesting are generally middle aged ladies and senior citizens. Better not ignore the wishes of "regular" people!

making peace with the deep freeze

I'm not a fan of frozen foods. My family didn't cook too much (remember those chow mein cans that were connected with a plastic tie, dry stuff in one can, wet stuff in the other?). Once 1980 hit and our kitchen welcomed the microwave, our non-cooking and perpetually dieting family lived on Lean Cuisines and Weight Watchers meals. We occasionally busted out with frozen rectangular cubes of slippery brussel sprouts or spinach. This is why it hasn't been easy for me to embrace frozen foods.

As the temperature drops to freezing outside and the fresh local food disappears, I'm left with a challenge.

I've been making a good solid go at pickling, and have, for the first time, set up a root cellar (though not so glam as this earth sheltered lovely). After many fights with myself, I also blanched and froze a lot of veggies from the farm. I'm happy to report that my first test, frozen greens added to a stir fry, tasted wonderful, and even kept a decent texture. As my relationship with the cold both inside and out improves, those rectangular veggie cubes that tasted like freezer can be a fading memory.

sometimes living in the country punches you in the gut

The neighbors who knit me sweaters and invite me to their children's birthdays and make me vegan cinnamon rolls on christmas also kill a deer once a year, and hang it in a tree in their yard.

I watch them drag the body across the lawn, struggle to hang it, hose out the insides in the deep slice. I stare from every window in the house, trying not to look but unable to look away, checking every few minutes if it's still there for the entire three or four days it hangs there.

The first year I knocked on my neighbors' door and talked with them about it. That year, and most years, the deer has hung from the tree in a noose, and I talked with them not only about hunting, but about the trauma a body in a tree in a noose causes. They listened, and went on eviscerating the deer.

Now, powerless to stop it, I hang a "no hunting" sign on the house every year, cover the windows with sheets, but pull those sheets aside and stare, check, watch, make sure it's real. I see dead animals strapped to cars every year, and I get furious, terribly sad, I rant. I talk to myself about hunted animals having at least lived free (unlike the billions of animals in factory farms).

But the body hanging in the tree every year remains one of the hardest parts of having moved to the country.

winter planting planning

Though it's 18 degrees outside, winter has barely started, and already my mailbox is filled with seed catalogs. They do know how to prey on us...planting is on my mind. Today I'm re-appreciating the work of Agnes Denes, who, back in the eighties, took urban gardening to another level by planting (and harvesting) a wheat field on a landfill in Manhattan. I'd seen images of that work before, but didn't know she'd gotten in early on tree planting mania, by reforesting areas in Australia and Finland. This is installation art of the best kind.

drilling for gays

I went to one of the protests last week about the CA gay marriage ban. I wasn't happy there. Again and again I don't have all the words to explain why. I can bristle at the "God Loves Gay Marriage" banner, I can point out to everyone that 95% of attendees are white men, I can joke about how everyone there seems to be on their cell phone, and still I'm never eloquent about saying why the demo didn't work for me, why this will never be my issue.

Like in other cities, NY had a huge crowd. I hadn't seen a crowd so big so white so male at a demonstration for ten years, since Matthew Shepard was murdered, to be exact. This was the first thing in ten years that made Chelsea come out to a demo.

Gay marriage has never been my thing. As Ms. Mel of readspeakresist says, "I feel like fighting for marriage is the gay equivalent of Drill Baby Drill. It's antiquated. It's a short-term solution and it's only useful to some of us." It causes other damage, that isn't spoken about. It's surface, no structural changes required, a continuation of the "we're just like you" charade. Like mattilda says "no on eight isn't really no on hate."

Two days after this massive demo, about which I'd received a zillion emails, Teish Cannon, a trans person of color, was murdered in Syracuse with barely a whisper. I found out about her murder tonight, and only by accident. No demonstration, no email campaign, no mention anywhere but the local paper.

Gay marriage wouldn't have helped a deviant queer like Teish Cannon. And I'd rather work for her.

the great fake

Courtesy of The Yes Men, we see another instance of the faux being so much better than the real. (1 million copies said to have been distributed in NYC today!)

election night in brooklyn

As luck would have it, I found myself in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn on election night. Nervous as all get-out and knowing there'd be no sleep, I walked to the store for a beer. On a street where I've never gotten more than a nod, various groups of people chatted me up, all as worked up as I. I was asked at least 5 times in 2 blocks who I'd voted for. And, for the first time in my life, met teenage boys hanging out on their stoop absolutely obsessing over the returns, and afraid to watch. A group of men set up to play chess all sat instead fixed on the tv they were powering from the light post.

I knew I had to vote for Obama. I often vote Green or abstain, but knew that this time, even though it was certain New York would go blue, I couldn't take the risk. Not only did he need to win, it needed to be a landslide.

I knew how it ended before the station I was watching announced it. People screamed. They ran out of their houses, and screamed some more, shaking their arms in the air and jumping. Kids chanted, to no-one in particular. For hours, cars honked and the people inside shouted to anyone they saw.

I surprised myself by crying. It was huge, and I was grateful to have experienced it in this primarily Black neighborhood to really feel how huge.

I noticed agent inkysocks cried, too, when she encountered teenage boys (by definition, unengaged) who cared passionately about what goes down. Now, to make national politics continue to be relevant to this many young men, to this many people on a whole. To make all the days besides election day matter.

**Thanks to BlackPast.org for the photo. That vote was about the improvement of schools in Black neighborhoods in Seattle.

tool talk - ecofan

Somehow this desert rat ended up living in the frozen north. Well, not the most northern part of the world, nor the most frozen, but cold enough to make heating a big issue. Living in a big, old, drafty house that's heated by oil is not comforting: The house is still very cold, the oil is outrageously expensive, and the use of resources is impossible to make peace with.

A couple of years ago we got a wood burning stove. The decision was hard. Pellet stoves are more efficient, but there often seem to be shortages of available pellets, especially the winter after Katrina, making it obvious that pellet ingredients are not local. Corn burning stoves are interesting, but uncommon enough that it's hard to get fuel unless you have your own cornfield. Solar heat is the best answer, since there's no pollution involved and no shortage of sun. Unfortunately, solar prices are going up and the tax deductions down, making it still an unreachable goal for us low income types. (It's still in future plans!) We looked around our area at all the deadwood lying around, all the branches from storm damage, all the cut trees stacked up at roadwork sites, and decided to buy the cleanest, most efficient wood burning stove our scraped together dollars could buy.

Last winter we moved the heat around with a little electric fan salvaged from a computer, given to us by our bio-diesel brewing neighbor. (Love the frugal and tinkering neighbors!) This year, we tore down a wall to allow the heat to penetrate the whole house. And we got an eco fan.

The computer fan did the job, no doubt. But it required electricity, and was loud. This lovely little number sits on top of the stove and is propelled by the heat. Light the stove, and the fan starts running. And it's perfectly silent, letting you enjoy that cold-night-by-the-fire ambiance thing.

There's a whole explanation that comes with the fan about the physics of how it works, but I didn't bother with that. To me, it's just beautiful magic.

all souls

Halloween, all saints, and all souls all make us have a look at death. All the grim reapers and skeletons running around, the gravestones my friend with cancer reported decorating the walls of her chemo lab, all the graveyard visitation and wishes for the souls of the dead. I've always been a Day of the Dead and sugar skull fan, and recently learned about the Yi Peng festival in Thailand, where some reports say those releasing the lanterns let their troubles float away, and others say they release the souls of their dead. I'd hoped to go to one of the city's largest graveyards today to have a sendoff for my own dead with the accompaniment of a Haitian band, but was too caught up cheering the tail end of the marathoners.

Whatever your celebration of the dead may entail, here's a nod to your deceased loved ones, as well as you and yours still living.