where do you draw the line?

           A few years ago I bought a lovely linen summer dress at a second hand store for about $20.  I still like the dress but noticed that two seams were coming apart, which made it look a bit shabby.  I brought it to the local alterations seamstress, a lady from Europe who does superb work, because fixing it entailed a bit more than simply going down the seam with the machine.  She looked at it and said "Well, I don't want you to be surprised when you pick the dress up, but I have to undo both seems almost to the top, take the material in and then resew the seams, and it'll cost $60."  I thought that was a lot.

            Where do you draw the line?  Some things do, unfortunately, boil down to money.  I decided not to spend $60 to fix an old dress I bought for $20.  But it's a shame that fixing something should cost so much more than buying something new (since I buy a lot of my clothes at thrift stores I'm not used to $200 dresses).  When do you stop supporting your local business and watch out for your wallet?  I have the same issue with our local independent bookstore.  I support them however I can, but sometimes I just can't.  When a book costs just a few dollars more I'll buy it there, even if they don't have it and need to order it.  But what if I need to buy a bunch of books they don't have and would need to order, which would take at least a week, and their cost would be at least $30 more than if I ordered the books through a huge famous online store? 

            Where and how do you draw the line? It's a quandary.

we teach best what we most need to learn

            Author Mike Dooley wrote that.  Mmh, an interesting thought to explore. I am thinking that we learn best what we most need to learn.  But then it's is only a small step from learning something to teaching something. 

            In fact, I have always believed that people who study psychology or related fields actually want to find out more about themselves.   I was always interested in the big spiritual questions and in healing.  Turns out, after studying and pondering both subjects for many years, that the answers to both are closely related, and I'm addressing them in my upcoming book.  So there....  What are your thoughts?

holistic healing

                 About two months ago we were surprised to find a nickel size open wound on our cat's upper neck.  It looked raw and nasty.  We remembered that we had felt small scabs in that spot earlier.  The holistic vet said to put some coconut oil on the wound for a few days and see.  It didn't improve, so I took the cat to the regular vet.  He prescribed an antibiotic, a cat collar and antibiotic ointment.  The cat collar was a disaster for our poor cat; she hit herself everywhere, couldn't reach her bowl and eat properly and became dejected after two days.   The collar came off, and the holistic vet paid a house visit for laser treatments on the wound, reiki and acupuncture.  The wound was still the same, but our cat ate well again and became her usual self, although she diligently kept scratching the wound open and licked off the antibiotic ointment as best as she could.   

               I am no longer impressed by the Western healing model.  It is useful, and even lifesaving in many instances, but powerless in many others.  Often therefore, either a combination of Western and alternative methods, or an alternative approach altogether, work better. But finding the appropriate treatment method can be like navigating a dark hallway at night and tapping the wall to try to locate the light switch.

            I decided it was time to speak to the cat directly to get her take on the situation - unlike humans, animals are amazingly aware of their own condition.  We contacted our local animal whisperer, whose help we had previously enlisted (see earlier blog post).  It seems that the broad spectrum antibiotic did not eradicate the particular bacterium that lodged under the cat's skin after a simple scratch wound and affected her nerves.  This made the wound feel deeply itchy and hot.  The cat communicator recommended mixing three homeopathic remedies, one in particular for nerve damage, in water and dripping a drop several times daily on the wound.  The results were still not convincing because our poor cat still scratched when the cold water drop hit the wound, and after another two weeks I heeded our holistic vet's further recommendation to try Noni lotion, made from the Hawaiian Noni fruit, which is antibacterial, full of healing antioxidants, and inoffensive when licked and ingested.  Finally, success!   It has been a long and very winding road, but the wound is almost healed.  In the end we will never know what caused the turnaround, whether any one remedy did the job, a combination of several, and whether our persistent intent played a role.

poor bats

       Our bat house is an important conversation piece even though it is still uninhabited.  Bats are in as dire a straight these days as bees.  Many of them have died off due to white-nose syndrome (a fungus disease), while bees have succumbed tocolony collapse syndrome en masse.  Bats are important insect population regulators and can eat their weight in mosquitos and other insects on a daily basis (wow, I would need to eat 130 pounds of food each day).  We like to give afflictions fancy names.  But what is the real cause behind these massive die offs?

            Why do we humans become so sick in later life with cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and heart disease?  Many signs point to diet, toxins and a stressful unnatural lifestyle.  Studies into white-nose and colony collapse syndrome have also indicated that toxins aka pesticides aka neonicotinoids may weaken these small creatures' tiny immune systems.  Our toxic agricultural practices are upsetting the apple cart aka ecosystem balance.  Not only is it likely that our pollinators and insect population regulators are dying for those reasons, but their die offs are causing further ecosystem imbalances down the line because we'll have trouble pollinating our produce and the insect population will grow out of whack (watch out for Zika and West Nile).

            Luckily many bats live in the cliff next to us.  Bats flutter around at dusk on warm summer nights, when most birds have settled in for the night.  Have you seen any bats lately?

why we need elders

            Children and grandchildren often lived either with or in proximity of their parents and grandparents, and in traditional societies still do, giving the younger generations access to older people they can trust, and who can guide them because they've been there done that.  Nowadays we don't always have access to that elder wisdom because parents and grandparents often live far away or perhaps we have excluded them from our lives because we were so busy. 

            But we all need mentors, guides, counselors, people who help us navigate our complex world that is going through huge changes.  The world is changing faster than ever.  Often the grandparent generation, even if around, is not keeping up with technology and social changes and is thus unable to help because they may feel lost themselves.  Heck, parents are often lost and their teens flounder and resort to drugs, alcohol, and the virtual screen world because they lack emotional support and wise guidance.  Between climate change, environmental calamities, changing economic paradigms and social structures, the refugee crisis from the Middle East and Africa, and violence and terrorism seemingly popping up anywhere and everywhere we have a lot to chew on.

            We need very special elders to guide us through these intense times so we don't get lost in despair, anguish, or aloofness.   They are around, I know some of them.  Intergenerational communication is more important than ever.

net zero

       We are finally net zero after having added more solar panels on our other two roofs this spring.  Our original panels met 45% of our electric needs; together with the new panels we should produce enough power to meet all our electric needs - for heating and air-conditioning, hot water, lighting, household appliances, as well as home office computers and office machines.  No fossil fuels, clean and silent energy.

            Taking the federal and state tax credits into account the payback on purchasing solar panels is somewhere around 7-9 years for us.  Given that the panels are good for 20-25 years we expect between 11 and 16 years of free utilities.  Not bad considering that energy costs are steadily inching up and fossil fuels are on their way out.  At today's rates that translates very roughly into a $52,000 to $75,200 savings over the life of the panels.  Not bad.  How would you like to put that kind of savings towards paying your mortgage off early or your kids' college fund?

foraging 101

dandelions

lambs quarters

         For the past few weeks I have had an abundant supply of wild greens in my backyard.  Lambs quarters and dandelions are growing with abandon. Both can be eaten raw as salad greens, used in a smoothie, or quickly sautéed or steamed with some garlic and a squeeze of lemon juice.  Dandelion leaves become bitter as the leaves grow bigger and older, so harvest the smaller ones if you don't like bitter greens.  The yellow flowers are edible and look very pretty in a salad, or you can put them in your smoothie.  Lambs quarters is a mild tasting green and can be substituted in any recipe that calls for spinach or chard. 

            In a few weeks we are looking forward to a bumper crop of blackcaps.  What's growing in your backyard?

budding blackcaps

shhhhh

              We lived right by the road for over twenty years and didn't realize how much all that background noise affected us - until we moved.  Now we live in a very quiet place and it is heavenly peaceful all the time. 

            The machine age is only about one hundred and fifty years old.  Before that the world was quiet.  Imagine for a moment a world without engines - no cars, no airplanes, no kitchen machines and appliances, no noisy farm equipment.  With the development of electric cars we may actually be heading back in that direction, as my husband noted the other day.    Have you sat in an electric car?  You can't even hear that the engine is running.  Generating electricity from solar panels is completely silent as well.  I remember the roar of the furnace in our old house when the thermostat switched it on, the geothermal system in our new place is almost noiseless.

            Quietness is grounding.  Alone-time is important to reboot your mind.  Are we headed back to a quieter world?  Will it help us to become more grounded and less frazzled?  When our children were small we reminded them every once in a while that they needed to stop chattering for a bit and said "It is quiet time now."  Find some quiet time every once in a while, it brings peacefulness.