It was the early summer of 1999. I had been living in the Stevens Square neighborhood of Minneapolis for a year, following graduation from Grinnell College. I was working part-time for Twin Cities Free-Net and spending the rest of my time absorbing the many opportunities the Twin Cities had to offer. I was volunteering with the neighborhood organization (SSCO), among other places.
It was the first week of March, 2008. I had taken the train from Fairfield to Boston for my first DrupalCon. The weather was cold and rainy all week. I was staying in a big, institutional hostel that felt very much like a YMCA. They even provided flip-flops for the showers ... I'm guessing there had been a problem with athlete's foot! It wasn't homey, but it was affordable.
When I lived in Fairfield, Iowa from 2006-2008, I had two options of veterinarians to bring my cat Simon to, and I chose the holistic one, only partly because he was closer to where I lived. Simon had had a lot of trouble with bladder crystals living in the Twin Cities, and I knew it was from the processed food, and I wanted some help choosing something less processed.
(I originally wrote this article as a submission to PermacultureNews.org, but decided it would be better as a blog.)
I don't know about you, but I was really shaken by Peter Harper's insightful critique of permaculture last summer, “Permaculture: The Big Rock Candy Mountain.” It has caused me to rethink the way I approach my urban farm, at least for the coming year. Let me explain.
Yesterday, due to a miscommunication, my parents came to visit a week before we expected them. They were only passing through for a few hours, so it wasn't a big deal, but it reminded us of a time a few years ago that makes a much better story...
I got an email a few days ago informing me that I'm in the top 5% of users of a service called Pocket -- I've used their free service to read more words on more Web pages than 95% of their users. This is a totally unpaid and unasked-for endorsement, but chances are you haven't even heard of this service, so let me introduce you to why I use it so much:
On the first day of the conference, we rode the ferry together over to the convention center and had an overpriced breakfast in the conference hotel; then I rode back to our hotel on the Savannah side of the river. Jessie attended an all-day workshop on image-based narrative inquiry, while I gave my successor at Prairie Star District UUA an orientation to her new tools and responsibilities. I also drove out to a grocery co-op on the far side of Forsyth Park to pick up some food for future breakfasts and moved the car to a cheaper lot for the week.
When Jessie returned to the hotel, we went for a swim and had dinner at Vinnie Van Go-Go's before attending the conference's opening reception.
At the beginning of July, Jessie and I drove to Savannah for the American Art Therapy Association (AATA) annual conference. I was excited to return to Savannah and see part of the South I had gone around on my bike trip (namely, the mountains); Jessie had not been to the South before, with the exception of Memphis.
It's been over a month now since I joined 800 other people in Biking Across Kansas. This was my first "supported ride," meaning that I was not carrying my own gear but only responsible for bicycling to each day's destination. It's taken me this long to blog about the experience because, well, I didn't have a great time, and I quit halfway through, and I needed some time to put a positive spin on the experience.
