World Cup 2014 Brings Soccer Memories

        So, are you enjoying the World Cup 2014? The Cup has really become a giant in the Sports Mania that occupies so much of our Global pleasures. During the last part of our homestead decade, when we were deeply involved with a reality check about our future, our young son decided he wanted to play soccer. We had zero knowledge of the game and no resources in our rural area for implementing the game. But undeterred, our son put out a call to the community that anyone interested in playing soccer should meet at one of the school fields. We thought a couple of kids would show up, he would find another game to thrill him and we could all sit back and wait for soccer to come to our American sensibilities. 

Tagline in newspaper read "Guy Ellis shows form in 5-day soccer camp.

        Then one day, before the designated date, the phone began to ring, parents asking us more about the meeting that our 9-year-old had arranged. Will there be teams?  Who are the coaches? Is there a handbook of rules available for parents? What?! We were suddenly frustrated with an additional agenda item to our daily dilemmas. We, the parents were useless. It seemed as if thousands of kids and parents showed up at this “pick-up” soccer game. While adults struggled with what-are-we-doing-here, the kids organized three or four teams, cardboard boxes at each end of the field as goals, and began to race the ball back and forth across the playground.

       The kids loved the freedom to play, but lacked future organization. The success was the recognition that international “football” was indeed in America’s future. A summer youth program received a grant to bring in two professional soccer players from Belize to teach our little cubs. As it turned out, one of the Belize coaches was called to another awakening community while at that time a friend from Sweden was visiting us who happened to be a professional player in Sweden. He volunteered to spend the week with these eager children to teach this very popular world game. What a time. What a great time.

       Off sides is a common piece of soccer language, which makes me think, sadly of the other popular global occupation – war – what’s it good for, nothing. Somewhere youngsters like our son were thinking of their own interesting thing to do – tell stories through film. Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor are top film makers that you may have never heard of. They produced a short film (5+minutes) titled Off Sides, that you can view  on You Tube, (www.youtube.com, type - short film, Off Sides). It will take your breath away.

Thanks for stopping. Cherish our human goodness.

Love, Helene

Linotype Dreamin, OMG

       Have you ever seen a Linotype machine?  It’s a big cast iron frame with letter and symbol keys on three  levels. A cup of melting steel on the top of the machine drops hot metal down to a magical place where letters keyed in by the operator form words, then sentences, that ultimately become ideas or comments on ideas. It seems now like a medieval device sitting in the dark furnace rooms under the control of Linotype masters.

        I started my writing life proofreading the pages for newspapers in Detroit that were formed by the great word-makers. It seems as if I am confessing how very aged I have become. But really the Linotype monsters lived like giant healthy dinosaurs until suddenly sometime in the last quarter of the last century (about the time of our Crunchy Granola life) a cosmic swirl created another way to type, copy and print at the same time: the computer for the masses.

       By 1977 the Linotype submitted to sleek little machines with names like Vic-20 and Mackintosh. Yes there was a lot in between, the Remington and Selectric and other typing machines, but these, though very useful tools, were merely transitional. The computer has truly changed everything as we surf the cyber seas to even more adventurous devices – tablets and mobile phones that themselves will merge into even more and different means for our communication. With respect to electronic devices, the times really are a-changin.

       This is all very hard to explain to the children who have never even thought about the production of typed words. And why would I even try? The children have other things on their minds, they are too busy changing the words to fit their own little tiny micro micros – omg  lol. We certainly have come a long way. It is interesting to still be young enough to observe the journey. I can’t wait to see what is next.

       Well, I’m going to make a peanut butter honey sandwich, would you like one?

       Thanks as always for stopping by. Please check out A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, $2.99 Amazon Kindle (wow talk about changes). If you like it, we’d appreciate a review and thank you for sharing it with friends.

Love,

Helene 

Making Bread with Leon Russell

       I love bread. Not the aerated super processed bread, but those odd shaped loaves that come to the specialty shops and have names like Pugilese, Italian Rustic, Pecan Walnut Whole Wheat, Jerusalem Bakery pita. I love to think about bread and its development in world cultures from our very beginnings. 

       I love the way bread smells when it is baking and the special comfort such thinking brings. I love making bread, but that pleasure is happening less as the years go by for me, especially when I can buy luscious stone oven baked goods prepared by master bakers.

       Sometimes I buy too much bread and need to be creative about remaining crusts or suffer the guilt of having to discard the pieces overtaken by another fuzzy culture.

Stale homemade bread makes fine French Toast – in a wide dish mix egg, milk, a little sugar, a little vanilla (my grandmother’s secret). Mix well, dip bread slices so both sides are coated, place the bread in a hot skillet, fry on both sides. Serve with butter and 100% Maple Syrup. This gift is one of the great pleasures of life.

       Or you could dry the remaining hunks of older bread for a couple of great uses  -

Bread crumbs for coating – cut the bread into cubes, air dry for a day or two on a dish, then process the cubes in a food grinder for a few seconds, bag the fine crumbs to coat meat or vegetables or top a homemade macaroni and cheese

Dressing (any time of year) - tear the bread slices to dry for a day or two, mix the dried bread with a boiled broth (vegetables or meat or purchased) celery, onion pieces, season with your favorite herbs – salt, pepper, oregano, basil, celery salt. Add an egg, mix well and bake in the oven until a nice crust forms. Dressing makes a tasty carbo with an easy sauce.

Or share excess bread with the creatures outside (good for this beastly winter we’ve had – pun intended).

        One of my best memories of making bread is preparing the warm water, yeast, sugar, oil, flour and as I began the gentle body kneading motions of roll, push, tuck and roll again, Leon Russell came on the music box with the lovely A Song for You.

       Thanks for coming by, I love to see you here. Thanks to those who have commented so happily about my book, A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life. Maybe you could jot a review to Amazon or share your feelings with a friend about the book.

      Wait, what’s that? I see something out the kitchen window – Sand Hill Cranes! Spring is coming! I see it on the colors of their grand wings.

Love,helene 

Poetry to Sustain Us

"Hold On" winter on Lake Michigan by Joel Ellis www.joelellisart.com 

Oh this long, loooong , winter! Even the seed catalogs feel like a fantasy. The wonder is if Spring will actually come. In the middle of a mournful groan over yet another blowing pile of snow in temperatures nudging 0, we received an e-mail from dear friends Ron and Sue, dairy farmers in this cold northland. I’d like to share their gift with you –

Feeling crusted

Check books busted

Don't like the trends

A way to get through

Thoughts of old friends                                           

  

Winter's too long 

Not so strong

don't belong

Need a good song

Before it all ends

Thoughts of old friends

Deal with the mess

Cope with the stress

Need to confess

Life would be less

       Without

Thoughts of old friends

Altogether now: Think Spring!!!!

Thanks you two, our thoughts of old friends do sustain us every day.

Thanks to everyone for stopping by, please take a look at tales of snow (and summer) in our memoir, A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, Amazon.com Kindle e-books, cheap $2.99.

Love,

Helene 

Snow, Ice, Wind A Triple Whammy Winter

        Ah the winter storms. This year we are hit with a triple whammy – ice over Christmas break that left thousands without the soothing light of the season (not to mention unable to flush toilets or make a pot of coffee). We got a short seemingly 10-minute break, enough time to hear the panic on the news and head to the stores to stock up before the snow came, 20” in our strip of mid-Michigan.  Then the surge from up north, quaintly called a Polar Vortex with arm loads of sub-zero temperatures carried on 30-mile-an-hour winds. Yes, this is quite a winter.

       We have had our share of testy winters especially back in the Crunchy Granola days. I remember one of the first in our naivety, much like today’s blizzard, except then as newbies to the country life we did not know about preparing for such events. We did not “put up” buckets of water, or make sure we had batteries for the flashlights, or even baby aspirin for a sick child. In a desperate moment staring at our long sloping driveway, Joel strapped on his cross country skis and headed for the two mile trek to town. What he found that time was the Sheriff breaking into the small grocery store for other families who were also caught unprepared.  

        That was also the winter our good farm neighbors gave us milk from the cows and eggs from their chickens. We got the message.

        In future winter storms, we took advantage of the skills that helped us to survive. Still, an especially difficult winter like this one gave us memories that we’d rather not have. A vision of our children still haunts me. They stood with worried faces at the big glass window staring out at us as Joel and I trudged through deep snow with our ecstatic dog to cut more wood.

        I remember canyons of snow roads and weeks of school closings. The worst however, came later in those years, those were the ice storms, Nature’s fantasy dreams that danced with the wind to terrorize little country folk with massive tree branches crashing on the roof and porches. One ice storm so badly bashed at our little house that we had to get whatever saws were in the house to cut our way out. And of course there was no power. We had not mastered the homesteaders “off-the-grid” goal, submitting ourselves to the mercy of community electric services.

        The 2013/2014 unusual series of winter storms has served as a reminder of our dependence on each other, though I must admit seriously asking Joel if we are witnessing a new ice age.

Thanks for stopping by. I look forward to lots of visits with you in 2014. For a humorous and sometimes thoughtful read, checkout A Homestead Decade, HowCrunchy Granola Changed My Life, Amazon Kindle, cheap $2.99.

Wishing you a bountiful new year,

Love, Helene

Trashed, Junkyard Planet, 90% of Everything -We have a lot to Think About

       C’mon on in – have  a cup of coffee. Thank you for your comments about the last Crunchy Granola blog on recycling. A lot of people commented to me in person about this really big issue (by the way, folks are welcome to join the conversation here at the blog-site).

        It seems there is a lot of garbage talk these days.The new documentary, Trashed by Candida Brady, hosted by actor, Jeremy Irons had a recent showing on the film festival circuit at the East Lansing Film Festival (ELFF). Trashed visually drives home the mess we are making with apparently little attempt to clean up after ourselves. One fact of this awful reality is that all of Toronto Canada trash is delivered across the Blue Water or Ambassador Bridge to our beautiful Michigan! Isn’t there enough room in Canada?

       Then along comes the Fresh Air radio interview on NationalPublic Radio with Adam Minter author of JunkyardPlanet in which Minter shows the seemingly ridiculous globalization of the multi-billion dollar business of trash. In Junkyard Planet we ship things like cardboard, steel, and Holiday lights to China and they ship it back to us in the form of new cardboard boxes and rolls of steel for steel things. Holiday lights go across the sea to China in what used to be empty containers to be stripped in factories (or small villages) for copper and fuel.

Sign of the times, recycle Holiday Lights, where does it go?

       Why don’t we just ship such things to industrial sites here in the U.S, you say. Apparently, because it is much cheaper to send the waste in container ships across the seas to be recycled. Strange world. Speaking of container ships carrying all this crap – Rose George has researched by living on a container ship and reported to us the world of container shipping in 90%of Everything. Ninety percent of our consumable desires are shipped to us in containers from someplace else, much of it recycled and reprocessed from our trash a few months before.

       Take a sip of your coffee. Catch your breath, but please, let’s keep talking. We cannot hide from this very important issue. I know. We are already overwhelmed by so many things – wars, weapons, natural devastation, health here, health there, successful vs failing schools, down to – do we have enough money to pay for a new roof, finding child care, intimate family concerns of life and death. 

       But listen, we have to keep trying. We have to make the cycle of consumable-to-trash an issue in our neighborhoods, our legislatures, our marketing decisions, our own personal paper-or-plastic-no-thank-you. It’s hard especially when innocent high school students are stuffing one product each in a plastic bag as they have been told and we are in the awkward moment of stopping them at the grocery checkout. We can join organizations that work toward environmental sanity, live thoughtfully about our use of products and their containers, we can teach our children to live less trashy.

       We have to try to do one thing a day, each of us individually, that will deter the tragedy of too much trash. Reminds me of Idiocracy. Though I didn’t like the movie at first, images of the Mike Judge movie Idiocracy continue to haunt my thinking about society's complacency and our future life with garbage.

        Our first Thanksgiving on the homestead is a luscious memory today. Described in  A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life (Amazon Kindle, $2.99), we prepared a meal of most of our own home and locally produced food, cooked on River Grandma's superior wood cook stove. I am so grateful for this memory of a very soft footprint from a special time in our lives. 

     

Thanks for stopping by.  

love, Helene

Come On Down to the Re Cycle Center

       About 25 years ago (gosh has it been that long), I worked with some conscientious people particularly Marsha and Jane. Marsha was director then of Community Action Agency in our small town and Jane was a bright community educator. At that time recycling meant haul your big appliance discards to the steel recyclers near the city dump for a little cash back, or get a few bucks for that end-of-the-line car.

       At the same time, during the 1980s, the chemical industry began presenting the consumer with a flood of plastic containers. We seemed to be suddenly inundated with plastics. The image of Dustin Hoffman’s wide-eyed Graduate taking advice from a business elder was correct – “one word,” the elder said in that classic film, “Plastics.”

      Marsha found a small grant to get household recycling at our local refuse center. Recycling required public education and close work with the municipal garbage collection. The concept of curbside recycling was still years away. Jane took on the task of encouraging folks to separate their recyclables and bring them to the Recycle Center. We even had a little radio ad,

“Come on down to the re cycle center,

 the re cycle center is the place to go. . .”  

       So, how are we doing with recycling since those days? Well, curbside recycling in most communities is helping; reuse of products have increased; even the production of products, particularly the plastics industry is apparently working toward less toxic, easier break down (vegetable based) of the final piece of plastic. We live near the campus of Michigan State University which is the size of a moderate city (48,000 students). Here dozens of situations are addressed by recycling and alternative energy use including the popular MSU Surplus Store where you can buy just about anything from a college campus.

       The MSU recycle center takes almost any non-food item except Styrofoam and electrics. Solar panels on the overhead lights secure the area, even the parking lot is designed to collect rainwater. Because this is a research university, valuable data is also part of the plan.

       How are we doing? I’m still worried, especially since the number of consumers has doubled since our little effort back then. It seems folks continue to buy lots of small plastic consumable products particularly for children and when empty, throw them in the garbage; several states still refuse to offer returnable bottle collection, multiple housing complex garbage collections are overloaded with cardboard boxes (easy to recycle) stuffed with Styrofoam (not so easy). One 3000 passenger cruise ship produces 8 tons of waste in one week

      How are we doing? Oh my, consider the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific gyre (Wikipedia). A “patch” of undeterminable items from nets and cruise ship garbage to a gazillion plastic bags – the whole thing is big, bobbing there in the waves, possibly, (are you sitting down?), the size of the continental United States. Good grief.

       What can we possibly do to stem the tide (pun intended) of our consumption and by-products? I guess work hard at being a conscientious consumer: bring your own washable bags for groceries (380 billion plastic bags a year are dumped by Americans), think about what will happen to the products we buy and eventually dispose of, teach our children by modeling a planet love conscience (it is the only home we have), encourage community recycling/reuse measures, and maybe join an earth caring organization.

       Our little back to the land decade described in A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, taught us much about a low impact – canning, heating, conservation, making our own, but today, such a life style would be very difficult especially if we care about our collective lives on the planet.

Thanks for stopping by 

Love,

Helene