27 December, 2008
Shellberry is starting to pick back up. It’s been ages since I worked on it, and we’ve gotten a lot more products to offer. New plants, new amulets, new dried herbs… and jam! I’ve been learning to can and make jellies, which is fun. I even tried the American Beauty Berry Jelly Recipe from a few months back…but it never set. So for breakfast today we had biscuits and American Beauty Berry Syrup, which was so delicious I was excited that it stayed the way it did. I’m making maramalade with all the christmas citrus today and tomorrow.
I bought a new printer today, now I have to get to work labeling all of my seeds and herbs plus creating fliers for the classes. I’m loving how the pace of life slowed down a bit, I no longer have to leave my kids at the grandparents on weekends or nod while stairing zombie-like into my screen while sol goes on “mom, look, look mom, look”. I don’t miss out on the cute things, I get to be a mom again, the house gets to get cleaned.
22 December, 2008
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D: I’ll be back, Iz and I are going to go find fire wood.
S: Ok, according to legend, you have to go fall the biggest tree you can find and use horses and men to tow it back.
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Happy Yule! The sun is setting on the longest night and we finally made it. The wassail is a brewing, the chestnuts are getting ready and…the patio set is finally painted!
That’s not a Yule tradition, you say. I know. But I finally have some free time to do things…like paint furniture, take care of my garden and clean the house. It feels wonderful! We’ve been so blessed this year, even through the dark season…just to make it to tonight is such a relief. It all goes up from here!
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Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green;
Here we come a-wand’ring
So fair to be seen.
REFRAIN
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too;
And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year
And God send you a Happy New Year.
Our wassail cup is made
Of the rosemary tree,
And so is your beer
Of the best barley.
REFRAIN
We are not daily beggars
That beg from door to door;
But we are neighbours’ children,
Whom you have seen before.
REFRAIN
Call up the butler of this house,
Put on his golden ring.
Let him bring us up a glass of beer,
And better we shall sing
REFRAIN
We have got a little purse
Of stretching leather skin;
We want a little of your money
To line it well within:
REFRAIN
God bless the master of this house
Likewise the mistress too!
And all the little children
that ’round the table go
REFRAIN
Good master and good mistress,
While you’re sitting by the fire,
Pray think of us poor children
Who are wandering in the mire.
REFRAIN
21 December, 2008
19 December, 2008
13 December, 2008
It’s odd, for Christmas this year, to think that the only thing I wish for is perspective. But when it boils right down to it, there isn’t anything else I would wish for. Life is good, no matter how difficult the changes. The fact is my family is around me, and even though the kids are sick and I’m barely hanging in, they are here, and the flu goes away. There are a lot of kids who are sick and aren’t getting better.
My family is here, unlike a lot of families whose parents are overseas or worse. I was looking at the Heros site on Sears and the number one asked for wish by military families are…not wiis or ipods…but kid’s shoes. Kids Shoes for Christmas.
9 December, 2008
Will Vero be next? pft. WTF ever. :(
8 December, 2008
“Half Empty? Half Full? Not my problem now” masked prophet giggles as he rides into sunset.
I over heard David’s Grandfather discussing an article today as I was vaccuming the car. (The above quote was NOT from him.) He stood there waving a photocopied piece, as he is known to have with him. The two younger men around him knodded politely as he spoke. I couldn’t hear what he said at the time over the roar, but you could easily tell they were humoring him until he was finished.
I always enjoy hearing what Mr. Morel has to say. David at times gets annoyed at his extreme conservative views. I, at times, do not agree with him but who am I, a 26 year old punk kid to tell a 90 year old he is wrong? He isn’t wrong. He is very much so right usually. But then again, I am often right too. So how are two people both right at the same time? The paths we took to come up with our opinions are different but equally valid. (The whole “I survived the depression and a couple wars” thing might have a one up on me)
After I finished with the car I picked the paper up off the ground where it was half haphazardly deposited and forgotten. It was “Prophet of Doom Sees Glass Half Empty”, a commentary by Arnaud de Borchgrave. I tracked it down here on the internets for you readers who are interested.
It starts:
“‘If Nostradamus were alive today,’ said the New York Post, ‘he’d have a hard timekeeping up with Gerald Clente’”
He goes on to validate the opinion, citing the accurate forecasts of major economical events as to why the man deserves to take on the Big N in a Celebrity Death Match a la Delphi. He’s cooler than the Fed Chairman Ben Bernake who told us “the worst is behind us” at a time when “public lies of optimism” was the new “send your sons to the army” which was the new “Brooks Brothers Sweater Vest” which was the new “black” of 07′.
It goes on and on and then about a quarter of the way to the end randomly jumps to the Israeli/Palestine conflict…our favorite topic! The point, however, lays in his November 2007 description of the “Panic of 2008″ where he warned of massive devaluation of the dollar and a collapse of Wall Street giants…which was a novel, unique inspired view that the other gagillion humans couldn’t see coming…. because…um…we aren’t Gerald Clente who is Sparta.
What we saw in 2001 was brushed off as “conspiracy theory”, alright, I’ll give you that and even with events like WorldCom and Enron being seen as solitary instances, it’s hard to watch the events around us and not hear the warnings of our wary president telling us to go shopping. Watching the building boom in an area where the houses went up but the people stopped coming, where people traded in automobiles for upside-down loans each year and charged flat screen TVs on cards with 25% interest because “WE HAD TO HAVE IT NOW!” it wasn’t difficult to foresee the impending issues.
This was not a sustainable society, this was a giant mistake. Instead of businesses welcoming the upturn of business as a fluke, their sense of entitlement kicked in and they developed their fiscal year as though these trends would last. You don’t have to be prophetic to see the mess this sets you up for, you just have to pull your head out of your ass, turn off TMZ and start paying attention. Smart managers are the ones who looked at the numbers like American’s Spending $2 Billion a Day More Than They Make and planned their numbers likewise.
His plan for 2012: “There will be a revolution in this country” citing a bloodless coup, the rise of a third party, tax rebellion, job marches, squatter rebellion, and:
a culture that puts a higher premium on food on the table than gifts under the Christmas tree.
pft. Like that would ever happen.
Scribbled on the photocopy on the ground was a star next to “rise of a third party” with a note “*communist?” at the bottom from whoever sent the article to him. The coup, the third party…obviously, the key to being prophetic is in being cryptic and to raise panic.
We are in the midst of the coup, it is rising with each word we type, each program we create, each ad we block. The old garde of media, celebrity and marketer is falling. Information is everywhere, communication is too rapid to contain and even though marketing finds solace in numbers and thinks it understands our actions, our behaviors, our motivations…their numbers are easily screwed. We can ignore their messages.
We are the third party, bourgeois, proletariat and something else, a class not defined yet. Fueled by knowledge and mass communication, identities defined by binary and not material. Education is collaborative, historically based and taught to us through the youth, something akin to folk knowledge in social/family groups.
The coup is on capitalism. It may be called anarchy, socialism, green movements, carrot mobs or something else, but the defining term has not been found and those who take the liberty to define it are not part of it. They are the hypocrites and easily exploited as such.
So what exactly is so hard to see this coming in the future that the man gets a pat on the back and a smug b&w portrait in every big name media outlet out there. This is not the future, it’s not even the now. These are dealings that have been happening for years, wheels set in motion. Mainstream may be that douchebagg-ish to accept it for ratings, but there is a third party that calls your bluff.
There will be a change. It will be hard, but it will be worth it in the end. Follow me and grow a tomato, you’ll never know when you might need it.
On after thought: My question is, if we rebel on our taxes, how exactly are we suppose to pay China back the hundreds of billions of dollars they lent us in bailout funds? Will they foreclose on the US? Or will they have more respect for the citizens of a country and culture completely different than their own than the citizens of our own country have for their own neighbors. The ones who will destroy lives in the name of profit.
5 December, 2008
Let me take you back about a week. We’ve been throwing around the idea of expanding Shellberry to a brick and mortar operation, originally thinking of a five acre artist commune to the west of town. This proved to be a bit of a financial burden considering the whole “land” thing, that and “to the west of town” isn’t really great on the “location, location, location” department.
So a week ago, in the midst of one of my tear laden nervous breakdowns I gave up. My mind stopped working, I couldn’t think to come up with the next step (and if you know me, my mind doesn’t stop working on the next step, so this was kind of a big deal):
S: Look god, I give up, what the hell do you want from me? Where am I suppose to go?
Here, where there is usually silence, there was just a question:
G: (True to Socratic fash) What do you have so far?
So I thought about it, what was my happies, what wasn’t. What were my dreams and what was stopping me.
G: So money is the thing, you don’t have 250k to start this thing, and the idea of moving out west of town where you can’t get to anything without a car is bad, so use your freaking creativity and come up with a solution and quit interrupting me in the middle of my pilates, damn it. (God doesn’t know that yoga is the new pilates and hula hoop is the new yoga. He just knows it makes his butt look great, so why stop?)
So I followed my heart, which led me to a nifty little store front in downtown vero. It also led me to a catatonic episode where David stepped into the lead, tracked down the owner and made a phone call. The call that changed everything.
I bolted out the door when he made the phone call, I didn’t want to be around for the major “No”. He chased me outside…twenty minutes later:
D: She is interested…excited. She wants to partner with us and help get this thing off the ground.
This changed everything. Now my mind is moving again…
Fortune Cookie: A pleasant surprise is in store for you.
Stay tuned, I’ll keep you all updated.
