Category: FreeForm

  • Road Trips

    I had three days out of time last week. The kids continued. The family went on. School was attended, all without me. I was Away. (Then, unfortunately, I was Sick, thus delaying the update.) I’m partial to road trips. I prefer them to vacations, I think. There is an essential freedom in going for a…

  • Despite the Big Yellow Bus

    Welcome to the September Carnival of Natural Parenting: We’re all home schoolers This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared how their children learn at home as a natural part of their day. Please read to…

  • A More Compelling Story

    Here’s what the world really needs: a more compelling story. I proudly self-identify as a raving eco-feminist, and have been boosting those signals for over 20 years. I get excited by ideas like kyriarchy and flap my hands and corner my husband and hop up and down a lot while “explaining” my new finding. I spend a…

  • Letting Go

    I just read Lama Surya Das’ book “Letting go of the Person You Used to Be”. Letting go is an important concept in meditation, acknowledging thoughts as they arise, and then… letting them go. But there is much more to that simple phrase than first comes up. It turns out to be very difficult to…

  • A lifetime of reading

    Recently, I happened to score a job taking inventory while working at a very small library. It turned out that “my” library contained approximately the number of books I have read in my lifetime. [FN] So, here it is, a lifetime of reading, gathered together in one place: Now, this in no way reflects my…

  • Somebody’s Poisoned the Water Hole

    Do you remember BPA? The chemical that was in the baby bottles from which my children drank from the time they were a few weeks/months old? It was in the bottles that attached to my breast pump (and almost certainly the pump itself). I was recently reading “Slow Death by Rubber Duck“, and I came…

  • This Post is Solar Powered

    I am writing to you, finally, from the studio out back of my house. This studio is not connected to anything; it is, in fact, a shed, into which I have placed a desk, a bed, a rocking chair and a large pile of incomplete writing and textile projects. It is not a dingy shed,…

  • My Own Omnivore’s Dilemma: no acceptable solution

    Welcome to the July Carnival of Natural Parenting: Let’s Talk About Food This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have written about their struggles and successes with healthy eating. Please read to the end to find a…

  • This week in the garden

    Yesterday we had a mixed greens salad with our very own strawberries. I’d post photos, but it got eaten too quickly. We only had two plants last year, so this is the first time that they’ve produced enough fruit all at the same time for us to serve it, rather than just furtively scarf individual…

  • My day’s work

    I’ve been having some problems with my bee keeping. Last summer, I had a very significant swarm: which occurred just after a rain storm. In my hours-long quest to catch the swarm, or at very least figure out what was going on with the rest of the hive, I wound up staring down the barrel…

  • Poem: Why

    Why? Because I never want to have to admit That iPlayed while the Earth burned.

  • My Luddite Ways

    Let’s start with my first computer-action of the morning. I was uploading 35 MB of photos for another post… and I found myself thinking about my first summer job. I was hired for a summer to work at a nuclear plant, but, y’know, as a high school student, I didn’t really have any immediately relevant…