Green Tribe of Belonging

 I'm posting this announcement to folks who subscribe to my blog and are in the local area. Our Earthcare Working Group is having our monthly meeting this Saturday at 2:00 at Prairie Hill. We've got a film to show that I heard about when I was attending the fall gathering of Quaker Earthcare Witness in New York (though I was just on my laptop, attending on zoom). It looks like a great film, and anyone interested is welcome to come and join us. We'll be meeting in the common house living room, and there will be snacks after the movie before we get a chance to talk about our reactions. Here's a description: The documentary,   Regenerating Life,  scientifically and spiritually examines humanity’s relationship to our planet, and premises that CO2 increase and fossil fuel overconsumption is merely symptomatic of the greater problem of our disconnection and systemic disharmony with the sacred mother earth. Screening of this film is wholeheartedly recommended by the Earthcare ...

  Was This a Good Idea? As I survey the mess that my two kitties have made, I wonder for the umteenth time: Was this a good idea? At the animal shelter, these 3-month-old sisters, adorable, small and fluffy, called to me: take us home! Why not? My 19-year-old Shadow had left her life years ago. Maybe it’s time to get some pets. This could be a real joy. So I brought them home, rearranged my furniture loaded up with food, litter, scratching boards and turned my place into a cat haven. This should be fun and easy! But, well, not always! Nothing is safe. These little creatures get into everything! Their curiosity takes them to the smallest corner. I open my bedroom door in the morning (they are still too active to be sleepmates), and survey the damage: lamp toppled onto the floor, water bowl turned over, curtains pulled off their rods,  strong smell coming from the litter boxes, and two kitties meowing for breakfast. I go about repairing the damage, wondering again whether this w...

 I turned 80 in June. By some amazing coincidence, all four of us who live in a string of townhouses in our Prairie Hill cohousing community also turned 80 this year! Of the 50+ residents here, we are the only ones who were born in 1945. So we invited our whole community to celebrate our birthday year at a beautiful pond and cabin out in the country. It felt good, getting to that milestone together. However, I've discovered that it is not always fun being an "old woman". I never thought of myself as elderly until this last birthday. But culturally, I've stepped into a whole new category. My first negative old woman experience was with a young doctor. I had some confusing symptoms and called the 'nurse on-call' who instructed me to go to the emergency room immediately. She must have thought I was having a stroke. She even insisted that I go by ambulance, so I took my first ambulance ride, a bit of an adventure in itself. While in the ambulance, they did all kin...

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...