are you ready?

         Even though I love winter for many reasons, and even though we didn't have a real one this year, I am spring fevering.  It's the bright colors I am so yearning for.  Winter, with or without snow, is an absence of color in its white/gray/brown expression.  It's dull because nature is asleep.  Now I can't wait to bring color into my life.  I was tempted by the mini daffodils at the supermarket, and with exceptionally warm March temperatures I couldn't resist pulling out some bright clothes.  I feel like stretching and waking up after a yoga savasana.  My senses are yearning for stimulus - in the form of chirping birds, spring peepers and lots of color.

            What do you like most about spring?

simply amazing

            It's an amazing time we live in. Things are developing so fast, changing at lightning speed, and so much information has become available in the past few decades with the advent of the internet that it's just mind boggling.  I love the internet. 

            My Encyclopedia Britannica set from 1966 is collecting dust and taking up bookshelf space (although filled bookshelves look nice, and people think you're smart when you have lots of books).  My parents are holding on to, and still use, three sets of encyclopedias (one from the early 20th century, one from the mid-20th century, and one from the end of the last century).  An encyclopedia is what you needed way back when - but no longer.          

            Knowledge is power, as they say, and the internet has exponentially increased the availability of information in an incredibly short amount of time.  Everything and everyone gets reviewed and evaluated.  You can read reviews and you can write reviews.  The power lies in the two-way street.  Bad products, bad restaurants, bad schools, bad doctors, bad professors and teachers can no longer hide, and good ones are rewarded quickly.

            Doctors are no longer the sole keepers of medical information.  Instead they have become your co-treaters in the healing process as the internet has empowered us with information on symptoms, treatment methods, options and alternatives.  Amazing!

            Universities post free online lectures and courses, and free education is available in many different forms and formats.  Encyclopedias have become obsolete as the latest information on anything is available and updated in real time at the touch of your smart phone, anytime, anywhere.  Amazing!

            Living in the countryside I used to have limited access to many food items and other products.  No longer.  You can buy practically anything over the internet and have it shipped practically anywhere - and it comes fast.  Amazing!

            With increasing visual content on the internet how-to information is now available in the form of videos - how to make an eggplant parm, how to lay tile or install carpet, how to make a birdhouse or apply make-up, how to block annoying callers on your particular phone model, anything and everything.  Amazing!

            For once let's be amazed and grateful and awed.

say yes!

            "The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new," Dan Millman's fictional counselor Socrates said in Millman's Way of the Peaceful Warrior.  This is profound and cannot be said often enough - I must have written several blog posts along those lines, all saying the same thing in different words.

            The universe doesn't hear the word "no," it leaves it out, it simply ignores it; so do animals, people, and especially young children.  Guess what they do when you say "Don't jump around on the couch."  Guess what your cat does when you keep saying, with a look towards that couch, "Don't scratch that couch!"  Guess what you do when the boss says "Don't do it this way."  You'd rather not listen because it doesn't feel good being criticized.  Besides, the boss didn't define how he actually wanted it done.  But guess what you do when the boss says "That report was written just the way I wanted it, thank you for a job well done."  You listen, you acknowledge, and you do more of the same because you love being praised and praise feels good.

            So - when it comes to anything, be it children's behavior, employee behavior, your own health, life, define clearly what you want, not want you don't want, and move in that direction.  Move forward instead of looking backwards.  That way you get more of what you want because the universe gets it.

making time work for you

            Intent is everything because it puts forth a desired outcome.  Instead of letting life take its course - que sera sera - predefining what you want helps to transport you towards your goal.  In time management this kind of intent can be very helpful.  A while ago I wrote a blog post on the elasticity of time.  This elasticity comes to play in time management.   Setting a goal of what you want to accomplish within a certain timeframe sets the framework, after that let the universe help you.  You need to be very clear, though, in stating what exactly you want to accomplish, and define the timeframe clearly.  Putting it in writing, such as on your to-do-list, is better than just thinking it in your mind.  An example might be "I must get to the airport by 1PM," or "I will finish answering all my emails from yesterday by 10AM."  Give it a try, I know it works.

wild eating

         Onion grass grows wild everywhere in my area, wild thyme covers large patches of a friend's lawn, and I found purslane in between our stone patio slabs.  Not that any of this would provide enough for a meal, but the idea of foraging is no longer associated with having to make ends meet but is rather fashionable.  During the summer months foraging learning walks are offered in many places, and lamb's quarters and nettle tea don't sound as far out as they might have twenty-five years ago.

            Danish chef René Redzepi became world known for the fabulous and wondrous New Nordic meals he makes from locally foraged foods at Noma, his Copenhague restaurant.  Last year he opened a  pop-up restaurant in Japan, currently he is in Australia doing the same, as the NY Times reports.  In both places he worked together with local foragers and created dishes with ingredients even the locals didn't know about.  Redzepi pushes the edge of making meals of ingredients we would walk right by even if we saw them by the ocean, in the woods or a meadow.

nettle

            But purslane, a slightly sour succulent and wild growing crunchy "weed," has become so popular that I find it now in big bunches at my farmer's market in the summer.  Nettles were the scourge of my European childhood (I fell into a hill full of nettles as a 6-year old and suffered for days), here I don't see them much, but the tender young leaves make a delicious salad (without stinging) or a tea can be brewed from the dried leaves.  Mushroom foraging requires more experience and expertise than finding edible greens because many edible mushrooms have a similar looking but poisonous alter ego - so novices beware.  During wartimes my grandfather foraged for mushrooms and one of the trips resulted not only in a meal but also stomach cramps for the entire family.  But all wild onion weeds are edible (you recognize them by their smell), and lambsquarters, dandelion and purslane are easy to recognize.  So if you don't spray your lawn take a walk when spring arrives and see what sprouts.  I think I'll look for a foraging walk to get to know all the foods I have been walking right by.

lambsquarters

super crop

         You can eat it in seed, flour or oil form, you can make clothes and rope out of it as well as biodiesel fuel, paper and building materials.   Meet hemp, the old/new super crop.   Pretty much the only thing you can't do with hemp is get high on it because it's not the same as marijuana, although they both belong to the cannabis family.   It's a super plant and super food that withstands drought, thrives in poor soil, and grows fast.

            Hemp oil is extremely rich in essential fatty acids, and according to David Wolfe of Superfood fame "the only known food with ideal ratios of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids."  The oil is also used in body care products.  Hempseed is a complete protein, the leaves are edible and you can make tea out of them.  The seeds can be made into butter, bread, beer and milk, similar to a nut milk.  Hemp's fiber is one of the strongest fibers on earth, hence its use for rope.  But it can also be made into clothing.  Hemp clothing is better than cotton in every way - warmer, more absorbent, stronger and more resilient, accepts dye better, extremely durable and it becomes softer and more comfortable the longer you wear it.   Hemp can grow pretty much anywhere in the world and yields 2.5 times the fiber the same area planted with cotton would yield. A biodegradable plastic can be made from the stalk as well as building materials like insulation, fiberboard, and hempcrete, all non-toxic and non-off-gasing.

             Hopefully, the silly hemp ban in the US that dates back to the 1930s and was engineered around political and monetary interests will be lifted soon as people become more aware of this super crop.  

going sustainably

             We tend to bury our burial wishes because we don't really want to think about death and dying.  My husband and I decided quite a while ago to be cremated and our ashes thrown into the wind - from whence we came.  Perhaps it's a bit more sustainable than embalming the body in all kinds of chemicals for an open cask viewing, which I personally find kind of creepy, spending all kinds of money on a casket that takes 25 years to rot, and both, body and casket leeching all kinds of yucky chemicals into the soil (and our ground water!).  But even the burning is a toxic and energy intensive process.

            Did you know that embalmers have to wear full body "armor" while embalming because of the toxic fumes associated with the preservation chemicals?  There are more sustainable burial practices than cremation, from the weird (we saw the Jain funeral towers in Bombay from afar many years ago, where the bodies are laid out in the open on the top of the towers and the vultures take care of them) to the simple (wrapping the body in a shroud and burying it without casket and chemicals).

            Better yet may be this method.  One of my faithful blog readers (thank you, Alice) reminded me of this 2011 TED talk by MIT trained artist Jae Rhim Lee.  Lee has created a mycological burial suit embedded with mushroom capsules that assist in the quick decomposition of the body and digestion of toxins, as well as mushroom spores allowing mushrooms to grow and use the body as feeding ground while composting it all completely and sustainably.  Cheap and non-toxic!  Watch the talk on her website Coeio.

            I think I'll change my mind about cremation now that I know about the mushroom burial suit.

aesthetic shift

           Our cultural values and beliefs define what we find beautiful.    Mattel  recently had to redesign Barbie to keep pace with a shifting feminine body image, away from the anorexic long legged 60s model to a somewhat more realistically curvy one,  although Rubens' buxom female bodies would still be considered overweight. Someone in our small town had a problem with the looks of a solar panel array in the midst of a field off a local country road.  But with changing times and changing values what is perceived as beautiful or ugly changes as well.

            I have always liked the juxtaposition of old and new, such as an old building that has been renovated and to which contemporary elements have been added, like the glass pyramid in the Parisian Louvre courtyard.  The Europeans are very good at melding old and new elements so the old elements don't seem stuck in the past.  On the contrary, in juxtaposition the new elements looks more new and the old elements looks more old.  They both inform each other in a very attractive way.

            I love the traditional looks of our charming little Norman Rockwellish town.  Yet, I find the mini solar panels, newly added to the downtown street lanterns, really cool because they fuse old charm with new technology, a layering of values expressed in the streetscape.  Respect for the old with the recognition that things must change and evolve.  What do you think?

do you kythe?

            This intriguing word kything means telepathic communication.  My daughter and I previously took a workshop in animal communication because we were interested in "speaking" with our cats.  We weren't too enthusiastic because it seemed to require a lot of practice.  Recently a kything workshop came up locally.   Kything is usually used to communicate with non-verbal people (i.e. in a coma, severely autistic, or otherwise unable to speak) or deceased loved ones; but I inquired whether it could be useful in communicating with animals and was told it was. 

            Lo and behold, it's not too difficult, although practice makes perfect of course.  We practiced dropping from the head into the heart, just like you would for meditation, and getting out of the way of our mind's chatter.  Then we established a line of communication by simple thought - name the animal or person and hold them in your mind.  Next we learned to offer a positive loving thought about our partner to establish heartfelt communication without agenda.  This needs to be a constructive thought about what your partner might need emotionally, such as "You are loving kindness," or "You are radiantly healthy." Keep repeating it mantra style in your mind.  With animals just like with people it is crucial to formulate your "mantra" in the affirmative. "You are whole" instead of "You are no longer sick," or "Your heart is open" or "I miss you" as opposed to "Don't shut me out of you heart."  One of our cats came from the shelter several years ago and still gobbles treats up so fast that he regurgitates them out of fear that there might not be enough.  So my daughter put out " There is enough." You may get a message back right away, or not.  Keep trying.  Both my daughter and I established channels with our cats and with each other quite quickly, and you know it's not your imagination when you feel your partner's energy.

            Try it sometime.  Our cat kept his tuna fish treat down yesterday.

love is in the air

                    Coming from Europe, where Valentine's Day is not taken too seriously, I used to find it, well a bit corny.  To illustrate the importance of Valentine's Day in this country in comparison:  In last Sunday's social Q&A in the NY Times Styles section a woman expressed feelings of insecurity and dejectedness because her boyfriend had scheduled some sports competition for Valentine's Day, would have to go to bed early on Saturday night and presumably fall into bed exhausted on Sunday.  What was she to do, all alone on Valentine's Day?

                   Maybe the answer lies somewhere in between buying your loved one a diamond every Valentine's Day and scheduling a sports event when you know this day is important for her, a happy medium between forced commercialism and meaningful relationship affirmation.  Relationships take effort, and expressing and reiterating our appreciation and love for our partner is important, whether the calendar says Valentine's Day or not.  Personally, I think that overpriced and overcrowded restaurants are not the place to go on Valentine's Day.  But celebrations are always great fun, and another excuse for doing something special is wonderful, in whatever way, shape or form you chose to do so.  For the past few years we have organized a red themed family dinner at home, with each family member in charge of preparing one red course.

             What are your plans?