Dear Grown-ups, Press, and Social Media.....

I sat on the Monday after the Texas shootings with 60 mostly-millennial college students.  My experience with these particular students had revealed them to be engaged, interested, and frankly quite brilliant.  Because I found them inspiring, I opened time for them to process and brainstorm the alarming events from the day before.  I said the university should be a space where we not only synthesize the events of the past and equip minds for the future, but we must be able to stop and incubate the present moment without stunning clarity or precise action steps.  We paused to do the work together while it was still messy.  Honestly, I needed to hear from them.

They commenced with 45 minutes of anger, pain, ideas, reflections, but mostly frustration and hopelessness.  They whispered suggestions of gun control or increased security while quickly despairing that those wouldn't really matter.  Kindness and empathy for each other - especially for those who frustrate us - jiggled some tremors of hopefulness.

If given a room of 500 IU students engaged with the issue of recent mass shootings and ready to give their time to change, what - I asked - would they do when asked to lead them?  These standout millennials - known to be activists, minimalists, and critics of the status quo - dropped their heads and said they didn't know.  They said the media is so strong, our attention so controlled by it, and government seems so big, they felt powerless against them.  Their discouragement resounded in the thick silence.

Quick interpretations that they're lazy or too distracted by their phones or entitled or sheltered didn't satisfy me as valid explanations for their inaction.  I thought on their access to information and perspective.  I chewed on positive psychology's influence on our outlook, well-being, and engagement.  I thought on work I've seen with narrative therapy, and the influence of a powerful story on my own children.  I realized the problem wasn't with these students - our future leaders.  It's with the story they're hearing.  The problem can't be limited to eliminating shooters.  We have to change the story we're telling.....because they are listening.

So grown-ups, press, and social media, let our positive stories ring out.  Tell the stories of tragedy, pain, broken places, but please - only 49%.  Let 51% of our stories celebrate the kindness of a neighbor, the awareness of a friend, the return of lost things, the healing of broken places, the slow, quiet, and undramatic epic stories of our true progress forward in simple humanity.  Tell the small stories we live every day.  This is not to suggest canned goods as a Polyannish solution for eradicating mass shootings.  But if we have trained our brains to hope, then when we stand before 500 people and are asked to lead them we will at least believe that something can be done.  Let us model another narrative for these promising millennials.  They are starving for vision; let's feed them.

With stubborn hope,

Sara

A Celebration

Kicking, hitting, crying, thrashing. 
A celebration of joyful energy spent kicking balls, hitting high-fives, crying out pop songs, and thrashing in the pool. 
Arguing, growling, hurling insults. 
A celebration of intimacy, trust, honesty with siblings, love for Mom. 
Noisy, shouting, singing, shrieking. 
A celebration of unbridled childhood emotions no longer contained. 
Legos, paper scraps, silly putty, dog hair. 
A celebration of creativity. 
Dishes, laundry, pick-up, cook, dishes, laundry, pick-up, cook, dishes, laundry, . . . 
A celebration of the home's rhythms and rituals. 
Messy, imperfect, together, growing. 
A celebration of family.

MILK: how would you like yours cooked?

Well, the dwindling of summer stalled my posts.  But as we quickly fall into fall, may I present you with our newest challenge.....milk.  Straight from the cows.  It is completely delicious!  But let me give you a bit of the back story.

Selling and consuming raw milk is hotly contested on both sides.  And honestly I agree with both sides.  www.realmilk.com explains the value of raw milk, outlining one side of the debate.  The FDA's website explains some of the concerns; you can read more at http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/consumers/ucm079516.htm.  In addition to the controversy over raw milk's safety, it also illegal to sell raw milk in many states.  Is it legal in your state?  Find out at http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/raw_milk_map.htm.

In Indiana it is illegal to directly sell raw milk.  You can, however, own a share of a cow herd.  As partial owner of the herd, you receive an allotment of milk.  You take on the risk and responsibility of consuming the milk.

Our continued efforts to eat as locally as possible pushed us toward getting our dairy locally.  So we signed up for the herd share.  We are part owners of five lovely jersey cows.  And their milk is just delicious!

The monthly owners' fee is more than we normally spent on milk.  But we also receive more milk than we would buy.  So we've been making up the difference by making some of our own diary products. Butter is the easiest, gone are the days of sitting over the churn!  Skim off the cream, drop it into the food processor, turn it on, and six minutes later - rich creamy butter!

The dangers of raw milk present concerns for me, especially since we have small children.  So i pasteurize the milk once we get it home, 161degrees for 15 seconds.  This is a much cooler temperature than conventional pasteurization, but still hot enough to kill the stuff we don't want.  Yet cool enough to maintain the good stuff.

Here are some yummy recipes you can try at home, with milk straight from the cows or the grocery store:

- 30 minute mozzarella (i leave the curds for longer than this recipe suggests)
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/recipes-summer-30-minute-mozzarella.htm- farmer cheese
- http://allrecipes.com/recipe/home-made-farmers-cheese/

Truly Living

I love all things folk, rustic, handmade.  I breathe the natural world and seek its approval.  I long to live the pre-industrial life, where my hands are the machines that simultaneously build my soul as well as the world around me.  Where my work creates, matters, calms, and sustains me.  It is spiritual.  It is whole.  It connects me to my family, my community, my earth, my god.  The liminal lines between the sacred and mundane glow on the hearth of my home.  Simply, lovely, wholly.

The Laundry

In Greek mythology, the gods cursed Sisyphus.  His fate was to spend eternity pushing a heavy rock up a hill, only to have it roll to the bottom again as son as it peaked the top.  A lifetime of labor never finished.  Each end only a new beginning.

As I’ve pondered this story, my inner being struggles against the devastating frustration it produces in me.  What would I think about if I were Sisyphus?  What would I brood on?  Obsess over?  What would I learn?

What was Sisyphus’s relationship with the rock?  What about the ground he continued to tread?  Did he learn and apply if he was never to have other circumstances to which he might apply his hard-learned lessons?  What transgression earns such a punishment?

I’ve noticed that our so-called “blue-collar” jobs in the U.S. are akin to Sisyphus’s toil.  Clean a toilet to have it immediately soiled.  Assemble a factory product to have another brought to you on the conveyor belt.  Flip a burger.  And another.  And another.  These jobs are generally compensated less than jobs with changing projects, goals, and objectives.  Yet they are both indispensable to our society and also bear Sisyphus's curse.

Monotony.  Was this Sisyphus’s punishment?  Is monotony a negative state, something punitive?  Something that yields low fiscal rewards, low privilege in our society.  Boredom.

I have three laundry hampers in my house.  The children stuff their dirties in the upstairs when they extract them from the floor in their weekly room-cleaning.  James and mine overflows with towels, sheets, and large clothes.  But the end game for each of the two is when their contents pour into the confluence of the laundry room hamper; for it is this mighty river that finally flows into the ocean of the actual washing machine.  I empty the last of its contents into the machine, smile contentedly, push start, then return to the kitchen.  During my absence, Collin spilled his juice.  “Get a rag, love,” I sigh.  He wipes at the spill, then trots the rag into the laundry room, and drops it in the hamper.  The rock rolled back down the hill.

One evening I rushed to get the laundry switched in a small window before putting the kids to bed.  If I could just push the rock a little farther up the hill my day would somehow feel a bit more productive.  Jammie-clad, Caroline and Collin scampered in, “I wanna help, I wanna help!”  Shit.  Caught.  They’ve been “helping” all day and I just want to push the rock up quickly by myself, alone with my thoughts, without answering questions, or explaining how to do it in minute detail.  “Mommy, I can’t reach the bottom of the hamper.  Can you hold me upside down?”  “Look!  The water’s like a waterfall!  Can I put my hand in it?”  “Can I please please please pour the soap in?”  “Mommy, where does the orange triangle point on the dial point?  I forget.”  A smile trickles into my malaise as I sit down to watch them work.  They love to push the rock and never once think about its beginning or end.

What would Sisyphus have done if someone joined him in the monotony?  Might he have felt possessive about his rock, his task?  Might he have naughtily believed none should join him because they couldn’t do it as well, as fast, as thoroughly?  What if he allowed the help, company, tutelage?

Buddhism asserts that everything is always changing.  If I sit in a chair and do absolutely nothing, change still happens.  Eventually the chair will break down, my body will break down, the environment around me will alter.  According to this, Sisyphus’s trip up the hill would have never been exactly the same, no matter how repetitive it seemed.  Each time the hill would wear a bit underneath the rock.  Each time his body would grow stronger.  The scenery around him would slowly change.

So maybe monotony is a choice.  Monotony is closing my mind to the miniature details obscurely hidden in the redundancies of life.  Would laundry change if I saw each load as distinct, different, laden with unexplored possibility?  Brother Lawrence found mystical riches of divine knowledge in the drudgery duties of the kitchen, garden, and soapy bucket.  Maybe it is here that busy hands allow freedom for the mind to grasp God’s deepest truths.

bulk buying and backyard: conclusions

we closed our bulk buying and backyard challenge a bit ago, and thus also ended the revolting and gnashing of teeth from my household.  we farmers missed our cheese!  but we survived, lost a few pounds, and felt much healthier as a result of our mostly plant-based diet.  here’s a sample of one of our days of eating:

breakfast: granola, milk (rehydrated), dried cranberries & raisins

snack:  popcorn with nutritional yeast, cashews

lunch:  brown rice (with illicit soy sauce), raisins, dates, green peppers, peanuts

snack:  rice pudding, more nuts and dried fruit

dinner:  frittata with peppers, tomato, onions, & swiss chard, salad with cranberries, almonds, sunflower seeds, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil, bread machine bread

dessert:  chocolate covered pretzels

i did cheat in a few places, such as the soy sauce.  i used a bottled asian sauce in stir-fry and pre-packaged yeast for bread.  and the toddler still drank organic whole milk from a carton.

a few thoughts on the advantages of eating in such a way:

-          health – we undoubtedly increased our nutrition level.  we ate predominately whole foods, and mostly plant-based.  this decreased our cholesterol intake and bad fats.  protein stayed high through nuts and peanut butter.  our sugar intake decreased because who has time to make cookies every day?  and oh my sweet ice cream….it was good to have her back.

-          quality of food – fresh?  whole?  homemade and home-grown?  what’s not to love!  everything did taste quite good.

-          time – i noticed a distinct decrease in my disposable time during the week.  i spent much more time on meals, due in large part to the picking, gathering, washing, spinning, chopping of vegetables.

-          money – this was a swing gain.  your savings from bulk purchasing depends on what kind of food you buy normally.  we saved oodles on produce.  i usually buy conventional grains and ingredients at aldi, a discount grocery store; i bought organic and, often local ingredients from bulk.  i probably spent about the same amount, but got a much higher quality product.  but i spent significantly more on processed/prepared foods, like snack crackers, gummy bears, etc.  all in all, I spent about 40% more on groceries for the week.

-          packaging – no comparison.  we hardly threw away anything for the week.  waste was negligible, and energy used to deliver it to the store decreased.  this was by far the greatest advantage.

so i’ve been thinking about how to incorporate some of these principles as standards in our grocery habits.  here are a few:

-          continue to purchase locally-grown goods from bulk bins.  for us, these include popcorn, flour, cornmeal, honey, and a few others.

-          try to make my own prepared foods, like granola, snacks, and bread.  

-          subsist from our garden in the summer.  preserve foods by freezing and canning for the rest of the year.

-          be conscious of eating foods produced near me, if possible.  even if not locally, i’m trying to be aware of distance.  for example, we chose to stop buying mangoes because of the distance they have to travel to indiana.  (this should probably apply to bananas, too, but i’m just not there yet!)

-          view all containers as potential for bulk food storage.  anyone know a pattern to make bulk flour bags?

let me hear from you…  what do you buy in bulk?  any simple things you make at home? 

our next challenge to tackle – milk fresh from the cow.  stay tuned for more…..

backyard and bulk

we've returned from a delightful vacation and i'm eager to tackle our next challenge.  backyard produce and bulk bin buys.  come monday july 8th, we'll spend five days eating only what has grown in our own garden (plus eggs from our lovely hens) and offerings from the bulk buying section of our neighborhood grocery co-op - bloomingfoods.

today our garden offers us some early tomatoes, green peppers, salad greens, swiss chard, and an occasional blueberry or two that escapes our toddler's quick grasp off the bush. bloomingfoods provides an abundance of bulk options.  you know, those bins of food with the scoops/tongs, little twisty ties, and golf pencils?  shopping these bins offers a number of advantages.  first, your cost is much less because the store can buy them in bulk.  this savings is passed along to you.  also, the decreased packaging means less volume, and thus, less fossil fuels for shipping.  additionally, the decreased packaging leads to less waste (even recycling) created.  check out this L.A. Times article for more discussion on bulk bin shopping.  here are some of the delicious items available:
- flour
- sugar
- dried fruit
- oats
- pasta
- vinegars
- oils
- peanut butter
- pasta
- tea/coffee
even animal crackers and m&ms!  i can buy powdered cow milk as well as soy milk for some of our dairy desires.  right now old spaghetti sauce and pickle jars litter my counter top, filled with ingredients awaiting our recipes next week.

but i'm already jonesing for the cheese we'll be missing.  and ice cream.

do you have any favorite recipes made from few ingredients you could pass our way?

many of you have offered quite reasonable barriers keeping you from participating in this challenge.  i applaud your desire!  here are a few iterations that might be more do-able, if you're interested:

- purchase your week's produce from a local farmers' market
- buy 5 items from bulk bins that you usually buy prepackaged (examples: pasta, flour, dried fruit, candy)
- make something from scratch that you normally buy (examples: bread, granola, salad dressing)
- make 1 meal without any processed foods

be sure to tell me how it goes!
and enjoy.