Homesteading Middles/Letter to My Children: Invasives and Heavy Machinery Learnings

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Homesteading Middles/Letter to My Children: Invasives and Heavy Machinery Learnings

Dearest Beloveds,

As you know - everywhere there is an edge from open space to tall trees (forest or fallen trees) on our stewarded space - we have invasive plants.

They are mostly a panoply of Multiflora Rose, Autumn Olive (promoted by the USDA in the 1960s as a windbreak or wildlife habitat - now on the USDA invasives list), Japanese Honeysuckle, Porcelainberry vines (or Wild Grape, the jury is out), and a few Black Locusts in the fields themselves. This is obviously not the complete list of invasive plants on our land (I see you Garlic mustard and mugwort) - but these are the hardy woody perennials.

With the exception of the Wild Grape and Black Locust - all of those verdant happy plants originally were introduced from Asia in the 1800s as erosion control, ornamental hedges, and mitigators for disturbed land (mining etc). One can almost get the sense the entire East Coast was stripped bare of plants with overzealous mining and tree clearing (it was) and these plants came in to save the day.

A part of me admires the Trickster joke from Gaia on that one - Okay, you want to cut down all the trees for money and now there is an erosion issue that needs mitigation? Fine, go ahead - uproot these ones from their home across the globe and see what happens. I can wait 200 years for the joke to land.

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Letter to my Children: How to Introduce Yourself

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Letter to my Children: How to Introduce Yourself

My beloved children,

As you know, I grew up in Washington DC. Our nation’s capital, an epicenter of Global North power, and the accompanied jostling endemic to such power. There was a ubiquitous question in the cocktail party circuit. A refrain peeling out from many perfunctory conversations over square cheese bites.

“So, what do you do?”

You are really asking where I can be categorized in the ladder of capitalism. I see you.

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Letter to My Children: Come To The TABLE!

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Letter to My Children: Come To The TABLE!

Dearest Beloveds,

Spring springs, oncology visits abate, and your mother dives a new community. I have become a member of Coming To The TABLE (CTTT).* I have barely begun to scratch the surface of this amazing organization and am already fluttering with excitement and potentialities, not least of which is volunteering all of us to assist with the Freedom Walk 2026.

250 years after 1776, activists will walk the 750 mile trek of the Underground Railroad, “following 19th century routes to freedom.” They are starting in 19 days. Beginning in Maryland, they are tracing the routes traveled by Harriet Tubman and so many other frightened, courageous, inspiring souls - through New Jersey, New York, and into Canada.

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Here Comes the Sun

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Here Comes the Sun

Over the years, solar panels have been installed on every square inch of roof. There is nothing better than plugging in one of the cars and knowing that all of the energy generated goes straight to the ballet commute.

Then it snows.

Covering the panels.

The weather settles into below freezing for many days. Many days.

Snug under their blanket of snow, the panels teased and mocked me.

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The Dream of Safety

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The Dream of Safety

In 1984, James Baldwin wrote an essay for Essence, “On Being White… And Other Lies”. I urge you to chew on the whole thing again and again and again - because James Baldwin, sigh, what a BRAIN!

Quite convincingly, Baldwin argues the construct of “whiteness” or “being white” was chosen deliberately by European immigrants in order to participate in and benefit from America’s racial hierarchy.* As such, those of us who identify as white are left bereft of any moral authority.

America became white - the people who, as they claim, "settled" the country became white - because of the necessity of denying the Black presence, and justifying the Black subjugation…

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The Overwhelming Necessity of a Cultural Exhale

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The Overwhelming Necessity of a Cultural Exhale

I remember my grandmother telling me when she was young they thought it would be possible for the world to move from a 5 day work week to a 4 day work week.

Turns out, her memory was bang on. John Maynard Keynes wrote the article Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren in 1930. This is a fascinating article to read for many reasons. Not least of which is his clear eyed assessment of the source of Britain’s wealth and his vision to return to the most “certain principles” of traditional virtue: when “avarice is a vice, and the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour [sic], and the love of money is detestable.”

All of that aside, his main argument was that technological improvements and the accumulation of capital have “solved the economic problem… [mankind’s] traditional purpose.”* Within 100 years, Keynes surmised there could be a 15 hour work week or 3 hours shifts to do the necessary work, to “use the new-found bounty of nature differently from the way in which the rich use it to-day.” Keynes found the current rich avant garde leisure class “very depressing” in their “achievements… in any quarter of the world.”

Ah, sigh.

100 years gone and still depressing.

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Letter to My Children: The Overflowing Privilege Bucket, Land Ownership, and Uncommodification

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Letter to My Children: The Overflowing Privilege Bucket, Land Ownership, and Uncommodification

Dearest Beloveds,

Courtesy of cleaning chores Bean does weekly at school she now notices areas where cleaning can happen in our house (hooray the invisible/implicit becoming visible/explicit!). In addition to organizing her own room, the family has received her good energy wiping out crumb filled drawers, polishing copper pots, and sweeping pet hair off stairs.

One recent winter dark Saturday evening, your father and I sat and read on the couch by the fire.

Full of energy post dessert brownies, Bean decided she wanted to polish silver.

Dragon piped up, “I want to polish too!”

“There is plenty for both of you, just put on an apron to protect your clothing.”

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Letter to My Children: Whitey On the Moon

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Letter to My Children: Whitey On the Moon

Dearest Beloveds,

I almost guarantee this poem is not one you might encounter in your academic career. If not, I salute your teacher. If so, well, you chose to come down and join this family with me as your Momma, so you’re welcome - you get to read it twice. (I can feel the future adolescent eye rolls.)

Courtesy of The Emerald’s June 23 2020 podcast entitled Space Hex: The Curse of Restlessness in Worldviews of Perpetual Escape, I have been exposed to Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon" released in 1970. Here is the full text (and you can hear Scott-Heron performing it below*:

A rat done bit my sister Nell.
With whitey on the moon
Her face and arms began to swell
And whitey's on the moon
I can't pay no doctor bills
But whitey's on the moon
Ten years from now I'll be paying still
While whitey's on the moon

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A Primal Scream for LIFE

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A Primal Scream for LIFE

Over the years I have noticed (in hindsight) several self-talk vortexes telling me I am in a depressive chasm. These refrains echo from the Cranky Monster part of me.

Corinna, you have read all of the books. There is no more to read. Creativity is dead. Everything is a variation on Twilight.

OR

Corinna, you have no friends, no one cares about you.

OR

Corinna, how much money has the medical industrial complex poured into keeping you on this planet - in this body at this time? You better be doing something earth shattering to justify that allotment of resources and energy - saved the world yet?

Eventually, I get my head out of my ass.

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Homesteading Middles: Winter Prep Drenched in Autumn Color

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Homesteading Middles: Winter Prep Drenched in Autumn Color

“And so now each fall I begin my class in a garden, where they have the best teachers I know, three beautiful sisters. For a whole September afternoon they sit with the Three Sisters… One of my students in an artist, and the more she looks the more excited she becomes. “Look at the composition,” she says. “It’s just like our art teacher described…”

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Our Myopia of Gaia's Invisible Labor

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Our Myopia of Gaia's Invisible Labor

Strewn on the concrete floor of the mudroom are summertime hats. A variety of baseball hats, wide brimmed floppy sun hats, Polly Hill Arboretum monogrammed bucket hats, disintegrating straw sun hats, my husband’s sturdy sun hat purchased at a cricket match, the visor from my childhood with my name emblazoned on it, the yellow rainproof fishing hat from my parents, and several neck gaitors from our visit to the tropics. 

I wiped the drawer with a damp rag. Then I turned to the closet and dumped out all of the wintertime hats onto the floor.

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