On This Miraculous Planet, On Real Food, On Union with all that is
Dearest Beloveds,
A recent evening after saying goodnight to the two of you, I staggered to my own bed. We had swam earlier that day, the sheets were clean, and The New Yorker beckoned. It was 7:36 pm and your father was on call. I was looking forward to passing out obscenely early and not waking up groggy at 5:20 for my morning sadhana.
Then the peregrinations started.
Read MoreIn late March 2019, we planted a grove of locust sticks for our coppicing woodlot. The sticks were as tall as my knee. Three years later some are 15 feet tall, 8 inches around, and we are in full coppice mode. This is what we have learned so far.
Read MoreIn February 2020 my partner took a beekeeping course. In March 2020 we built the bee boxes (painting them in the garage as snow drifted down, I remember thinking that summer would never come). In June 2022 we had our first swarm - evidence of a bursting bustling hive.
Read MoreDearest Beloveds,
As you both know, I grew up in a city. I walked to school crossing concrete sidewalks. The orange glow of the streetlights on my bedroom ceiling at night lulled me to sleep along with the clattering engine of the 96 bus. Every Saturday morning Baba, Tia, and I would walk to the Eastern Market to buy eggs, drop off Baba’s dry cleaning, and, once I was old enough to notice, to gawk over the artisan vendors.
Commerce was all around me.
Read MoreDearest Beloveds,
The effects of covid range from the tragic to the ridiculous. Tragic - thousands dead. Ridiculous - Dragon you do not know the words or the hand movements to children’s songs.
I had assumed you would know them and was rather shocked and sad at your first Kindergarten circle time.
Read MoreI have noticed myself more and more putting my own thoughts, ideas, sensations, desires, onto the animals that feed us with their bodies - to anthropomorphize the animals. To assign human traits to animals has historically been deemed unscientific - but I would contend that not assigning emotions, agency, or recognizable sensations to animals is a way to separate humans from animals, to make us better, and in turn to provide excuses for the mistreatment of such. Just ask Jane Goodall.
Read MoreOfficially it is our third year homeschooling and for some reason the whole endeavor this year feels more solid and secure.
It feels like we are plants - the first year settling in after planting, the next year building strong roots, and the third year SURGING forth with abundance - a verdant explosion. It feels like we are surging forth from a very grounded place.
Read MoreRecently we visited the number one state park in Virginia: First Landing State Park. So named in honor of the “English colonists” who first landed in 1607. The beach was warm, the cabins were delightful, the bicycling under the fir trees was peaceful and magical, and my brain exploded with the history.
Read MoreOne of my favorite nuggets from when I did the Permaculture Design Course was learning about hill mounds, or hugelkultur. Hugelkultur is a glorious construction of organic matter with soil atop. Organic matter like logs, branches, straw, upside-down turf, leaves, cardboard, shredded newspaper - if it can decay on it goes. Once the decaying matter of the hugel has enough nitrogen to start decomposing the hugelkultur works as a sink for moisture, nutrients, and carbon.
We built our raised beds over the large stumps from when we cleared the land for the house. I envision the vegetables fed by grandfather trees - and in turn, feeding our bellies.
Read MoreRecently Dragon and I were having dinner together. The robins perched on the woodpile. Chipmunks ran along the top of the raised beds. The wind flickered the leaves.
Dragon turned to me, “Momma, will you ever abandon me?”
Holy shit, Corinna, you and your sense of humor. That joke is most definitely blowing up in your face.
Read MoreDearest Beloveds,
I was reading a book about Susan B. Anthony to the Bean for school. The book outlined her work against slavery, for women’s rights, and for the temperance movement.
I took a breath to read the next paragraph when Bean interrupted, “Momma, what is a black person?”
Read MoreIn early December of 2020, I made an ask of my tribe for two people to create a triad of white-bodied individuals to do antiracist work based on the description Resmaa Menakem wrote about in his article entitled, “When White Bodies Say, “Tell Me What to Do”. The Voice of Love, my gut, my heart, had been tugging me in that direction ever since I read his piece in May of 2021. His article provoked on so many levels and its main gist is this.
Get out of your white privilege bubble, seek confrontation to expose your bodily experience of racial trauma, examine your life, and “commit to growing up.” Do this with a lifelong triad (here is an excerpt from his article).
Read More
My life vision is to love, be curious, identify my Cranky Monster, and be brave enough to speak from and for The Good.
Click here for more about me.
Powered by Squarespace.
