Green Tribe of Belonging

Our Earthcare Working Group started up again several months ago, after taking a 10 year hiatus. We now meet every month at Prairie Hill Cohousing, and each session is focused on a theme related to caring for our earth. We watched the movie Common Ground a couple months ago, and this month we're excited that we can go to a farm where many of the innovative things we saw in the movie are taking place. Here is the announcement I just sent out to our earthcare mailing list, and I thought there are people who read this blog but are not on that list and are local enough to attend this event if they'd like. I know we are all super busy, but this should be a wonderful and educational visit to an inspiring farm. This announcement mentions including an attachment to my cousin's chapter in Connie Mutel's book Tending Iowa's Land . But I can't seem to figure out how to attach it to this blog post. If you're interested in this, send me an email and I'll forward it to...

 Until recently in human history, plants were our main source of medicine. And the early pharmacists of this age studied the scientific make-up of healing plants to make our modern drugs. I imagine if we transported a healer from ancient times to the 21st century for a bit of a peek, they'd be astonished at the tiny round pills that people take now to improve their health. We'd need to explain to them that there is a reason for this. In contrast to ancient communities and landscapes, modern humans do not have healing herbs growing outside their homes or any knowledge of what is good to use for different conditions. To make the healing effects of plants available to everyone, we've had to make artificially-made drugs that copy the plant healers. Of course these pills can't give all the helpful effects of the original plant. But they can target specific results and also make them much more concentrated. We've become so used to using pills for all medical treatment tha...

 I hear more and more reports about the inadequacy of our health services, especially since covid. Doctors and nurses are too busy, and sometimes you have to wait many months for treatment of some conditions, or even evaluations. Now the government is threatening to eliminate tax-supported medical services to people who have been depending upon them for a long time. And who knows what will happen next. Eradication of Medicare? My own personal experiences with the health system are somewhat unique and frustrating, and I've heard this is a trend. Young male doctors have no time or patience for old women (!). Three times in the last year, this has happened to me, all with different young male doctors. "There is nothing wrong with you, Miss Fawcett! Go home and get used to it. This is just how you feel when you're old." That was said by a doc before they found that I had a bad UTI. Hmmm.  Like all of us living in these increasingly chaotic times, I wonder what's comin...

 I didn't grow up in a singing family. My mother was told when she was in school that she should not sing, for she couldn't carry a tune! So sad. But my father was often whistling or humming. He was the musical parent, and he had an accordion in the attic. Sometimes his little children (including me) would beg him to bring it down, and we'd sit around him while he played dance tunes. Even though we didn't sing at home, I loved my music class at school. Our music books were full of wonderful songs, and I was always asking to sing some of my favorites. Our school also had a marching band, and we could choose an instrument and get lessons. I chose the saxophone. I was looking forward to marching with my sax when I got a little older, but in the meantime my little brother was born. He was one of those babies who cried a lot and his naps were a treasure. The last thing my mom needed was a daughter practicing a loud saxophone! So I returned the sax, and settled for taking pia...

  The Gift of a Dream Mother chicken, clucking, pecking with 8 little peeping chicks pecking around her, hovering in her care. What a world of adventure for these fluffy little yellow babies, with food, companionship and safety as they shelter under the mother’s wings  But one little chick is outside the circle excluded from the nest pecking on her own. I feel for that little chick, and remember what it is like to not be included, shut out of the circle of love. This lonely chick, in its solitary place, looks up to see something miraculous. Appearing from the sky is a huge ethereal mother chicken with wings spread broad and wide swooping gently down to enfold not only the solitary chick but the mother hen and all her chicks. When I wake up, I know I’ve been shown something very important,  a cosmic truth: we are never ever alone, we are always under the care of a great mother, whatever form it takes for each of us.

 Something exciting happened for me these last couple of weeks. Ever since I moved to our cohousing community, I've wished I could have solar panels on my roof. After all, our community has always been dedicated to caring for the earth, choosing sustainability over convenience, planting native grasses on our land, doing what we can to nurture the natural world. And yet my small roof was not large enough to have solar panels. Many of my neighbors have them. And our common house does too. And especially lately, when our local earthcare working group was planning our next meeting to focus on solar, I felt almost embarrassed that while everyone else had or was planning to have solar panels, my roof remained vacant.  But things have changed for the better! Just a couple days ago, I signed a contract to have 10 solar panels put on my rooftop, and that should take care of all my energy needs! The reason I suddenly am able to do this is partly because these panels are a bit more effic...