Brewing the Pagan Permaculture

In the last 24 hrs. 3 people asked me for money. And I said no! I am tired of trying to save people.

The “friend” who decided, after 16 months, to come back into my life has been staying in a motel this last week because her basement condo was flooded when a contractor broke a nearby water main. The condo is still a wet, stinking mess, so she needed $60 for another night at the Motel 8. This is the woman whose son, The Giant Slug puts $200 worth of lap dances on her debit card. He is sharing the Motel 8 room. He pushing 40 and hasn’t worked in a couple of years. She thinks it’s awful that his daddy refused to give them money (she pays the Giant Slug’s child support–and she divorced his daddy 30 years ago). Their income is twice mine. I offered them groceries, but I have no money for motel rooms. I said no!

And this morning a nice young man sauntered by my bus stop. His mother always gave him coffee to soothe his throat when his asthma kicked up, so he was off in search of coffee–oh, and could I spare a dollar. I said no, but I offered him a cough drop.

And this evening my Little Homeless Guy showed up.

I was very surprised to discover that I only mentioned him once last winter on this blog, but I told the sorry story on Witches Brew; “My Brother’s Keeper” and “My Brother’s Keeper II”.

When Little HG took the room with the paranoid schizophrenic, the landlord warned him, that the guy never kept a roommate for any length of time. And the $50 a week quickly went to $100 a week. And he was expected to clean up after the schizo. I told Little HG in March that I couldn’t help him anymore with rent. I could help him out with groceries, but we had used up my meager savings. I offered to do job searches for him on the computer, teach him to ride the bus, and get him to one of the Peoria agencies that would help him find a job and keep a roof over his head. But the weather was getting nicer and he wanted me to help him find a tent.

Well, he’s been living in a tent for a month now, and the weather is just starting to get rough. ?He’s suffering and he want a motel room to get out of the cold. –Sorry, but I can’t do that. And I am not going to invite him to stay with me. An ant is what it is, and grasshopper is what it is, and I am a grasshopper who wants to become an ant. There’s no question that I am agitated and worried about him, and I would feel like hell if something happened to him–but he adamantly will not go to a shelter, and he brushed off all the help I could offer.

I can’t do any more. I’m sorry.

January Goals

Domestic Infrastructure – these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc…

The night of December 23 I found all the Christmas cards that I bought last January at half price. So this year I have purchased a reddish-orange, winterberry colored basket to keep them for next year. I’ll keep the rest of my greeting cards neatly filed there as well.

Am still putting off winterizing my plants and windows. It’s going to get cold over the weekend. Incentive. I will get the small plants arranged on the porch so their roots don’t freeze.

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc…

As pitiful as it sounds: I am going to gather up all my pennies and run them thru Coinstar. I don’t know how many I have lying around.

I am going to sell my signed Bev Doolittle print. It’s been more or less in storage for a long time. I never liked it as much as I should have. I don’t know yet if I will take out a classified ad in 50 Plus magazine, Craigslist, or just haul it out to the Attic, but I think it would make a very nice Valentine gift for somebody’s sweetheart.

Resource Consumption: in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

Plastic: use less of it. Even “food safe” plastic breaks down into harmful BPA when heated or exposed to sunlight–and I regularly pour boiling water into my plastic storage bowls or nuke them in the microwave at work. No more. I will eat my food out of glass or ceramic.

I’ve also been buying too much marked down pastries from Krogers in those plastic clam shell containers. No more pastries in plastic clam shells.

Cottage Industry and Subsistence: The things we do that prevent us from needing to buy things, and the things we produce that go out into the world and provide for others. Not everyone will do both, but it is worth encouraging.

I will continue with my mending. I have a sewing box! It’s full of pins and thread and scissors. I know I have loose buttons around the house. I need to round them up. I think I do need to buy a pair of pinking shears.

I have been piling up a stack of books to read this winter when it’s too cold and wet to go to the library, and I want something new to read.

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

I had a good Christmas with my sister’s family this year. I sent out Christmas cards, and I want to follow up by mail with some of the relatives I rarely see.

I also plan to carry on with the genealogy research I began this fall.

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

I will renew my Interfaith Alliance membership this month. I am now on the board there. I am also on the board for Global Village, volunteering in the shop, and handling our social media. Nevertheless, money is getting tight around here. I am going to update my resume this month.

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there’s really no point.

Time and Happiness…I didn’t get those Christmas cookies made. If I can get the kitchen cleaned up, I will give that another try.

I vow to spend less time on Facebook. I have already thinned out my newsfeeds, and I will continue to cut back on the ones I skim but don’t read.

I have already cut back on multi-tasking. If I want to watch something on TV or cook, I turn off the computer. I can watch TV and sew or organize, but I can’t watch TV and read. I put down the book.

I will check back mid January to see what I have accomplished and set some more goals for the rest of the month.

Hummmm, I have invited myself to my sister’s place for Christmas Day. She was planning a Christmas in two acts–morning brunch with me and then dinner and presents with all her kids in the evening–and I pushed for the whole day. I am feeling vaguely guilty about imposing myself, and I will have to go out and buy a few more presents, which I can’t really afford, but this will be the first real Christmas I’ve had in almost two decades. Just like the proverbial camel, she let me get my nose under the tent, and now I’m inside.

So, whether I am truly wanted or not, I will have a Christmas tree and an oven that works. I will trust that their furnace does not go out and the lights stay on. I expect I will be exhausted and crabby by the time the evening lets up, but I will endeavor to make myself helpful and agreeable.

Well, crap, we are more than half way thru December already, and I haven’t posted any goals. I have, however, been working the program. Sort of…

Domestic Infrastructure – these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc…

I’ve also worked a bit on insulating this place. I covered the porch window with heavy cardboard and started moving some of my plants onto the porch. The cardboard cuts down on the wind, and I am hoping the planters will soak up the afternoon sun and provide some passive solar warmth, making the kitchen a little warmer. I also covered one of the windows int the spare room with black plastic. Again, I am hoping the morning sun will warm that room a bit. I need to cover more windows in the spare room with bubble wrap.

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc…

I have been extremely frugal (cheap) with Christmas presents this year. Even for myself. I bought before Borders closed. I have also purchased Fair Trade gifts at Global Village, but I have not been anywhere else but Kroger and Big Lots, and then mainly for groceries. I buy day-old bread and marked down meat and vegetables. And I still keep Meatless Mondays, which has a tendency to extend from Sunday when I cook through leftovers on Tuesday.

Resource Consumption: in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

My electric kettle overheats; I have replaced it with a glass pot for the stove. The microwave oven has died, and I have no plans to replace it.

I have been diligent in borrowing books from the library rather than buying new or used ones.

Cottage Industry and Subsistence: The things we do that prevent us from needing to buy things, and the things we produce that go out into the world and provide for others. Not everyone will do both, but it is worth encouraging.

I have been mending clothes for a week: my winter gloves, three pairs of slacks, and a fleece shirt. And the bolster pillow I sleep with when my knees are really bothering me. I am bad at sewing, but it’s gotta be done.

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

Not much to crow about but I did send out holiday cards this year.

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

I have been working on the Global Village website.

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there’s really no point.

I am going to attempt some cookies.

And while I am on the subject of resolutions: “As 1941 drew to a close, the great Woody Guthrie sat and drew up an illustrated list of 33 resolutions for the following year, 1942.” Here’s his handwritten, illustrated list of “New Year’s Rulin’s.”

Here we go again! I said I had just resolution for 2011: To end the year in a warm apartment with a fully working kitchen. Ha! That is not going to happen. I won’t be out of here until spring unless I try spell-casting–and that is wildly unreliable! Based upon past results, I have no doubt that a properly charged spell would result in the building burning down, relieving me of the onerous need to downsize and pack.

If it weren’t for The Cat, I might be tempted to give it a go. However, while I might find a bed in a homeless shelter, she would most likely end up at the pound, so we will go about moving in a more mundane manner. Reading back on this year’s exercise in futility, I realized that I had originally started out with a comprehensive plan for change. Then the truly cold weather hit, and I abandoned my thought-out resolutions for a simple “Get me out of here!!!”

A year ago today I wrote:

[A]s the Multiverse would have it, The Archdruid Report has lead me to The Chatelaine’s Keys and author Sharon Astyk’s “The Anyway Project.”

What it entails is this – [Pat Meadows, Energy Bulletin.net] argues that 95% of what is needed to resolve the coming crises in energy depletion, or climate change, or most other global crises are the same sort of efforts. When in doubt about how to change, we should change our lives to reflect what we should be doing “Anyway.”

Sharon breaks her project into categories:

Domestic Infrastructure – these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc…

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc…

Resource Consumption: in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

Cottage Industry and Subsistence: The things we do that prevent us from needing to buy things, and the things we produce that go out into the world and provide for others. Not everyone will do both, but it is worth encouraging.

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there’s really no point.

Every month we set one or two goals for each category.

So it’s back to Plan A in 2012. If I walk my talk, I will trust the path will take me Home.

My Friend called again last evening. She had quarreled with the Giant Slug: he had said obscene things to her, she was upset and she had to get away from the house. Could she come over?

What could I say? For a long time, I swore that as soon as she turned 60, I was charging the Slug with elder abuse. That was before she dumped me at the riverfront. He’s leaning hard on 40, he hasn’t worked in years. She gives him her debt card and he spends her SSI on liquor and lap dances. She pays his child support.

I gave her tea and a couple of rolls of toilet paper to tide her over until her next check arrives, but I confess I don’t know what to do. Should I keep my word and have him removed from the house? She always says, “But I’m a mother and he’s my only chick!”

I don’t know.

July 4, 2010, a “friend” abandoned me at the Riverplex an hour before the fireworks. We haven’t spoken in sixteen months. Until tonight… No particular reason why she called, but she talked for an hour–all the same crazy shit that drove me bats 16 months ago. We’ve gone without talking before. The last time lasted for three years, and then, wanting to clean up the loose ends in my life before I killed myself, I weakened and sent her a birthday card or some equally stupid thing. I did not attempt to repair the breach this time. I did not want her back in my life.

Oh, I figured I might hear from her if something catastrophic happened to her son The Giant Slug or to her granddaughter, but Hell was going to freeze over before I initiated a conversation.

But tonight was basically the same old dysfunctional story of her life. –And I have all the crazy I can handle in my own life. I fought against engagement. I bit my tongue when I started to point out how fucking dysfunctional she is. I am not going there! I am not involved. There is nothing I can say or do to temper her dysfunction–to say nothing of tempering The Giant Slug. So an hour of listening to her careen from one fuck-up to the next…

She’s not unlike my late father’s cousin–who contacted me out of the blue in September. My cousin was spoiled and fairly dysfunctional–though not, I think, crazy. She’s in her mid-seventies; she has recently had heart surgery, and she is afraid she is going to die and her children and grandchildren will not know who they are (she is) and will grow up rootless. I worked on the family tree back in the Roots era and mailed what information I had to her mother. And now Billie Jean is going to drive me nuts wanting more.

However, I not only empathize, I admit she made me curious. I did all my original research years before the Internet. I’m fairly amazed by the information I have been able to find online. I am learning some interesting things about the Gilded Age in Peoria, and I may have discovered some glitzy “Dallas” worthy family drama. At the very least I am entertaining myself with a challenging mental puzzle.

I have changed in the last year and a half. I’m deeply involved in my volunteer work. I am on the board at Global Village, handling social media and working in the shop. It looks like I am going to be on the board next year for the Central Illinois Chapter of the Interfaith Alliance–and I will continue on the program committee. I am thinking about volunteering one day a week at Springdale Cemetery.

I am cooking regularly for myself from scratch. I have very little to contribute this fall to the Stuff-a-Bus campaign, because I don’t buy much processed food anymore. I think I am watching less TV, I’m reading more non-fiction and less of my regular SF/F fare. I have been working on my writing, applying for an older writers grant last spring and shooting a book proposal to a publisher doing an open call. And I have submitted a short SF story set in the Post-Industrial world to a contest at the Archdruid Report.

I have changed, but as far as I can tell my “friend” has not. And that’s too bad. I don’t want to renew the relationship.

On the Polytheists thread over at the Green Wizards forum, a new member confessed yesterday that she had just done her very first ritual on Samhain. She had felt nervous and awkward calling on the Celtic Goddess Ceridwen, who stirs the cauldron of Knowledge and Rebirth. I assured her that we all feel nervous and awkward. Calling on an ancient Celtic Goddess is not exactly a rational act. You have to jettison your rational mind to open up to Mystery and Grace. The best rituals I had ever experienced had left us laughing like loons–and frequently having water fights with the holy water!

And it hit me that I had not shared a ritual like that in a very long time… Public rituals tend to be family friendly and very sincere. They may be ecstatic, colorful, Anglo-Celtic, but oh so very safe, orderly, and sincere! You can be bawdy and chaotic in small groups, but not in daylight, not outdoors, not in public where somebody might see, where somebody might be embarrassed.

Which is ironic because I can be prudish…especially about body functions and jokes that sound degrading to women. For years I had a dim, dim view of rodeo clowns, of all things. Jokes about milking steers…clowns running through the audience with huge brassieres, looking for the women that lost them… Not funny! Till one day, I realized these were weird vestiges of Pagan rites. That sometimes you had to mock the Gods and Goddesses to their faces.

The cosmic shock and orgasmic release of the belly laugh is missing from my life. Alas, I don’t know how to get it back.

Time flies when you are having fun, I guess.    Samhain is a time for communing with the Ancestors, and I have been digging mine up all month:  yes, it looks like I am hooked on genealogy again.   In another millennium I did work on my family tree, but it’s easy to get discouraged with you are working with Clarks and Evanses.  There’s just so damned many of them.  I can trace the Evanses back to Wales.  Who in their right mind would like to find coal-mining Evanses in Wales?  I gave all of my research and all the family photos to my sister a year ago or more.

But I have a cousin who is getting on in years and wants to pass on the family heritage, such as it is, to her kids and grandkids.  She contacted me about six weeks ago, wanting me to fill in gaps in the family tree–which I had mailed to her mother twenty years ago!  I think she thinks she’s going to die before she figures out where we came from…so I took up the search once again.

Luckily so much information is now online.  I can search census records and old Peoria histories from my home computer in the middle of the night.   (Which she could do too, of course.)  Still, I seem to be hooked again.  I went to the library this afternoon to look at old city directories on microfilm.  Sheesh!  I think I actually made a breakthrough on a collateral line of the family.  I have been trying to sort out my William McLeans.  There were quite a few in Illinois.  I seemed to have an alderman by that name in Chillicothe and in Peoria.

I fixed a nice dinner this evening, but I didn’t set up an altar or do a Samhain ritual.  I did try to peer through the Veil of Time to honor my ancestors.  That’s all I do tonight.

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost six weeks since I’ve updated this blog. Oh, I’ve been adding to my 2011 book list, and I have made several posts to Witches Brew, but I have been mostly AOL here.

Winter is inexorably creeping closer, and I don’t think I will be out of this apartment till spring. I am currently packing up several boxes of books to send off to the UU book sale this weekend–if I can get someone to deliver them to the church. I took several bags of SF/F to my book club, and my shelves are starting to look bare. I need to be ruthless in getting rid of books. That’s one of the big problems with moving: hauling books. Finding the money to move is also an obstacle but one problem at a time.

So! I have updated the blog. Now I have to pack a few more books before bed.