Friday, April 17, 2009

The guy who sells me my milk and eggs was agitated when I popped in Tuesday April 14. He had just talked with the person who does his taxes and was incredulous that he owed money. "This is the least I have ever made and I have to PAY?!?!" He said he had claimed 3 exemptions so that he could make his house payment. He raged for awhile about the death of the middle class. Don should be the middle class, gosh darn it. He wears his overhauls and goes to work every day and does his job. Yet he makes so little that claiming 3 exemptions on his taxes makes the difference between paying and not. He didn't have the money to pay it.
But on the news the same day I heard how as soon as Merrill Lynch received $10 billion from the Treasury Department’s Capital Purchase Program (CPP) they issued $3.6 billion ($3,600,000,000) in stockbroker bonuses from their bankrupt company.
It's easy to understand why there is skepticism at the roots.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

dying


Ann and Herb each turn 50 this week. Ann is my "oldest friend"--meaning not that she is old in years but she is the only peer I can think of who has known me my whole life. We both appreciate this.
Herb wanted to tie-dye, and dye we did.
Another peer died earlier this year from cancer. We had lost touch with each other over the years, but I was able to attend her celebration of life held shortly before she passed away. Her widower stopped by this week spontaneously and we visited for a long time, about plants, how he was doing, his kids. At Linda's pre-death celebration, she showed a video of a trip to Las Vegas. A fountain there erupts to music every hour, and while they were there in the fall, they filmed this fountain surging to "Time to Say Goodbye" by Andrea Bocceli. It was so beautiful I had a whole different sense of what could be good about Las Vegas.
Any one of us could die at any moment, or lose someone we love. It's always the right time to tell someone we care. Every minute of life is precious. Live with appreciation for another day.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Craig's-list: shopping at its best

Someone at work asked me the other day, “Do you ever do that craig’s-list thing?”

Well of course. I have procured 2 washing machines (the first one I gave away after using for a few years and upgrading to a front-loader), an evaporative cooler, and a deep freezer. I have bought one car and sold two, (the car I bought was one of the cars I sold.) I sold a computer printer and gave away a monitor. I have picked up free furniture for homeless people resettling, bicycles for the local bike cooperative, topsoil, rocks, and leaves for compost. I sold Great Aunt Mary’s ladylike wicker chairs and bought a wheelbarrow. I purchased original garden art and given away children’s toys. I have searched for housing and dates for friends. I sought and found potential rides to the Midwest.

Somewhere someone is abusing craig’s-list. Somewhere there are psycho killers who stalk people via this medium. But my experience is that it brings the small-town right to the convenience of the internet. It’s like “Louie’s Swap Shop” on Saturday mornings on KOKO radio in Warrensburg Missouri. It’s like going to a yard sale without using so much gas to get there. The people you meet this way are just like people you meet in any public venue.

Have I "done" craig’s-list? What did we do without it?

Growing Colorado


Last night we ate fresh spinach and arugula salad from our yard. The chili we served contained last year's tomatoes and green peppers. Naturally the pumpkin pie we had for desert had our own produce in it too. Every time we feed ourselves directly from the garden in this manner one can only feel gratitude for gifts from the earth.

A few weeks ago "Growing Colorado"came again to evaluate our front yard space for their own garden. This organization will do Community Supported Agriculture in donors' soil. We had corn planted in our front yard last year, but had spoken of planting less garden this summer. The project will do garden education with children, and provide donor homes with a box of produce every week. The rest they will market, as they did last summer from a different single location. The kids who were here were from Somalia. The girls wore hijab, Muslim head coverings for women. In their country of origin women are the farmers. One of their mothers says, men reign in other settings, but in the growing of food, the women are in charge. GC will use our yard space for summer crops, namely tomatoes and squash, and will look forward to beginning in May.