son my sun

brilliant - luminous - radiant thing
the bright crest of your brow
begins and ends the arc of my day
you spin round in the sky of my life
and i know light
and i know warmth
and i know what it is to reach upward
away from the earth's weight
toward you - golden - shining
and i know joy as
you spin round me
spin around my heart
brilliant - luminous - radiant thing

my southern food epiphany

i just returned from traveling. bj and asher are still in california.

when we were in the south, we ate food from the south. it was tasty. and very greasy. and hard to resist. partly because it was tasty. partly because i didn't want to miss out on what everyone else was eating. partly because i've gotten into some pretty unhealthy habits in terms of what i choose to eat.

as the days passed, i found my energy level getting lower and lower. i wasn't really aware of it until a few days into the trend. and even then, i didn't really have a sense of what was going on for me. until right towards the end of my time in mississippi, we went out with some old friends of the harden jones family to a southern family restaurant with classic mississippi cuisine- fried catfish, fried chicken, fried pickles, fried hushpuppies, fried potatoes, fried onions. and cole slaw and greens. i was pretty hungry and i ate of it all...

then it dawned on me... the food i'd been eating was contributing to my energy and general feeling in my body. i basically was clogging up my system with lots of tasty but non-nourishing foods.

then, the first day of the stone workshop i went to after i left mississippi, i got sick. headachy and a little fevery. i went to bed right after the day's work ended at around 5. as i laid in bed, sensing all that was going on in my body and noticing the thoughts that went along, i made some agreements with myself about how i wanted to make some changes in how i treat my body. specifically regarding the food i take into myself to nourish it. below is a rough overview:

things that nourish my body and contribute to my health and energy that i want to eat regularly:

• whole grains


• organic fruits and vegetables


• fermented foods


• local, organic, compassionately raised meats (on occasion)


• local, organically raised eggs


• nuts and dried fruits


• sprouted and other live foods


• organic milk, cheese, butter and yogurt


• foods sweetened with honey (on occasion)


• live, clean water


• basically whole, local foods

things that don't nourish my body that i'd like to eat only on special occasions:

• sweet foods with processed sugar


• coffee and teas with caffeine


• salt and salted foods


• processed or fractured foods (foods that have been broken down and recombined)


• chlorinated and fluorinated water, and water stored in plastic


• basically processed foods that come from far away

things i'd like to learn more about and maybe relate to differently:

• foods made with wheat and gluten


• dairy from cows versus goats or sheep

i've been eating more aligned with these choices from the past four or five days and i've noticed a different in how i feel already. not only physically, but emotionally too. i feel better about myself when i know that i'm making choices that demonstrate care for myself and my health.

i also feel clear that i'm not trying to be dogmatic about my attitudes toward food. i don't plan on being absolute about only eating "these things" and never eating "those things." but having some clear guidelines that i articulate for myself has been useful in the past and seems to be helping already this time around too.

dead prez really says it better than i can:



be healthy

the whirlwind in which we see those places bj previously called home and we visit the greatgrandmothers

asher and i are on a trip to california
which is an extension of a trip to jackson, mississippi
my hometown. well sort of.
it's where i grew up
but it's not mine anymore
and that was an extension of a trip to northeast mississippi
where i was born and where i spent many summers
to help move and settle in my 94 year old mississippian to the core grandmother
who just moved back to ms from an extended 4 year stay in ca
and as a prequel to that trip aaron and asher and i went to visit bradley and nada and logan
in the glorious sequatchie valley near chattanooga tn
a very significant place to me in the explorations and adventures of my lifetime thus far
now asher and i are in the bay area
staying with my parents
and karin is here too
today we're going up to grass valley for a visit with asher's other greatgrandmother
this is all very significant and overwhelming in ways that i haven't identified yet
...
i'm getting lots of practice staying at peace or bringing myself back to peace when things are complex and complicated
!

dispatch from m i crookedletter crookedletter i crookedletter crookedletter i humpback humpback i

(recycled from an email dispatch back to the culpeper crew)

we caught our flight out of dulles just fine and were really practicing being present and letting our lights shine in a confusing, disempowering, disconnected place. it felt amazing. it was like we surrounded ourselves in a bubble of heart chakra juju goodness.

asher seemed to make a great time of it all and we were blessed to be sitting on the airplane across from another little boy his age. he was content most of the flight to wander back and forth between our laps and to sit and watch the neighbor baby. can't imagine air travel with a baby being any smoother or more enjoyable.

the baby and his mom were traveling from ireland to visit the mother's sister who now lives in nashville, and is the only member of the family who lives in the states. on one of the mom's several flights through immigration her stroller got lost, and she was something like 15 hours into traveling, making her way through airports with two bags and one tired baby all in her arms. we offered her our purple sling to help her get around and she took it from us gratefully, but then once we landed we helped her carry her bags and then her family was there to help her and she gave it back.

we spent a couple of days hanging out with bradley, nada and logan on their land. it's such a beautiful spot they live in. the sequatchie valley is an amazing place. seeing the lives they are creating for themselves there really puts into perspective a few things. first, as if this hasn't been driven home enough already, raising children with just two caregivers is really really hard. ESPECIALLY, when you're trying to start an off-the-grid homestead on your own at time same time. second, goats are wonderful animals. and they can do a lot of work for you on a piece of land. but they take a lot of work and care themselves, if they are going to be healthy, happy and thriving. fencing is an investment of time, materials, energy, and money. third, dealing with the "waste" that is produced on a homestead is vitally important.

we made the drive from tennessee to mississippi yesterday. it was really beautiful, especially the natchez trace parkway. one of the most beautiful roads i've (aaron) ever seen.

on the way i (bj) talked to my mom about some of the things i've been spinning for myself and we've been spinning for ourselves about living in love and creating healing and being present. this trip is a challenge and an inspiration to me to put all of these energies out into the world in a complex time and space in my life.

we got in to tupelo last night and met mimi, bj's grandmother, and a bunch of family and friends at the place where she'll be staying. it was really heartwarming, and also kind of sad. all sorts of mixed up emotions. the way that we relate to the elderly and to death is really out of sync with the rhythms and the cycles of life. that all comes into focus for me when i go to "old people's" homes. we're spending the next couple of days in tupelo, and we'll be hanging out with mimi some more, so it will be interesting to see what continued learning comes of this.

may!

the arrival of spring, and warm weather, has hastened a flurry of activity and busi-ness in our lives. not a lot of computer time to really go into all of the amazing things that have been unfolding, but i wanted to at least run through some of the biggies:

downtown culpeper

bj and i have been chillin in culpeper, virginia, excited to be getting to know the area, meeting new folks, finding out about local projects, farms, and other groovy things.

happy hay baby

in early march, we went to a strawbale wall workshop in maryland and learned how to build with bales. it was a lot of fun and we met some really interesting people.

the hoods and the marets

on the way back from the workshop, we took a little tour of my hometown, dayton, maryland, and visited some dear friends of mine, the hoods. it was really nice to share with everyone the place that i grew up. and it was great to see the place where i grew up. it turned out that the family that is now living in the house i grew up in, invited us in to look around, so we really got an intimate view into my history.

red cabin demolition

we started the process of renovating the "red cabin" on the high field (aka the 90 acres, aka the land). we pretty much gutted the interior, removing all the walls to make space for a redesign of the floor plan. we're now in the process of putting it all back together, nice and tidy. it's turned out to be a bigger project than i think we had anticipated. but the end result, a clean, insulated, well-organized communal kitchen and living space, seems exciting enough to keep us plugging along.

first down

as a part of moving onto the land and fixing up the cabin, we cleared an area of trees from around the cabin. lots of oak trees, some pine, poplar, hickory, beech and birch.

this is what it looks like now

me beth and becky

i flew out to california to gather up the rest of our things from sonoma to bring back to virginia. mostly the woodshop tools, materials and wood. i coordinated the trip to coincide with becky visiting the bay area, and we both stayed at beth's house and it was really nice.

it was very nice to be back in the bay area. it was also a little sad. i still have a pretty strong love for california.

the truck all packed up

becky and i in utah

then becky and i drove back across country together. it was nice to have a lot of time alone to talk and share and spend time.

back in culpeper

it was really nice to get back to virginia and be with the crew again.

friendly

our first timber

we hired on a local sawyer to help us cut all the trees we felled into lumber for our building projects. we cut large timbers to build a small timber frame structure later this year. we also cut a lot of boards for flooring, paneling, siding and for making furniture.

timbers

fix up crew

plugging along on the red cabin...

hello world

other than that, we've been tromping around, getting to know the area, the land, each other, enjoying the springing forth of spring.

today, bj, asher and i are off to tennessee to visit bradly, nada and logan. then on to mississippi for more visiting to and help bj's grandmother, mimi, in her move/return home. then i'll go to new york for a stone foundation workshop. and bj and asher will head back to california with bj's mama for a little visiting. bj and asher will hook up with karin, who is on an adventure of her own right now hitchhiking out to california. then they'll travel back home together sometime around the end of the month.

whew!