Brownie Returns!

Like a lot of kids, I had a favorite stuffed animal when I was young: a small brown dog I called Brownie. Unlike most kids, I didn't get Brownie until I was a teen. At an age when most have grown out of attachment to stuffed animals, I grew into it.

While I don't recall why I wanted a stuffed animal going into junior high, there it is and I became very attached to my little buddy. Not only did I have him next to my pillow all through my remaining years at home, but he was my faithful companion as I:
o  Attended four years at Carelton College (1967-71).
o  Went to Washington for my two-year stint as a junior bureaucrat at the US Dept of Transportation (1971-73).
o  Traveled across country in a motor home for seven months while Annie, Dave Oser, Margaret Loud, and I explored America, a la Charles Kuralt (1973-74).
o  Pioneered Sandhill Farm (1974 onward).

All of that said, somewhere in the mid-80s I lost him. I know Brownie was still a regular occupant of my bed when Ceilee was born (1981) and Annie and I have a picture of them sleeping together in his toddler years. But I changed bedrooms a few times in the 1985-95 era (it's a semi-pro sport in income-sharing communities) and somewhere along the line Brownie got put in a box for "safe keeping" and never resurfaced. Ugh. 

Though I had lost touch with Brownie, the memories remained. When I was in high school, some careless friends were visiting my house one day and decided it would be clever to stuff Brownie into the corner pocket of the pool table in our rec room. When they pulled him out as a surprise, they tore his shoulder. The subsequent suturing was not up to hospital standards and he's been slowly leaking stuffing ever since.

He came factory equipped with a squeaker in one ear (a feature I never enjoyed; I prefer my stuffed animals to be soft all over and mute—unless I'm talking directly to them), and Annie performed a squeakerectomy sometime in the early '70s. Though the operation was a complete success, he retains a worn spot on his ear where the squeaker rubbed the fur off.

For a couple years in the late '90s (1996-98) I dated a yoga instructor who also had stuffed animals: Alex McGee (while I don't think Brown Bear and Gray Bear were a major factor in our getting together, it didn't hurt). When we broke up, the two aspects of our time together that endured the longest were my yoga practice (Alex got me going) and Brown Bear (who came to me in the "divorce").

While Brown Bear (BB) has become well integrated into my life (though he rarely does road trips, he's a steady fixture in my bed), I've made sure over the years that Brown Bear does not suffer the same fate of as the wandering Brownie. This has been made easier in that my wife, Ma'ikwe, came as a package deal with Rufus, a stuffed gray sea lion of approximately the same size and temperament as BB. They hang out together a lot, and we have a stuffed animal friendly bed. In fact, on many mornings we also have one of our Maine Coon cats join us, either Kyre or Galileo. It can be a real menagerie.

The Prodigal Brownie Appears
Last month I made the momentous decision to leave Sandhill (my community home of 40 years) and move in with Ma'ikwe at Moon Lodge, our house at Dancing Rabbit. That meant clearing out all my stuff from Sandhill. Ugh.

Last week, while unpacking one of the myriads boxes pressed into service to facilitate the move, lo and behold I discovered Brownie. Holy shit! Where had he been the last 30 years? I couldn't even imagine how he'd gotten into the box (which was loaded with an array of miscellany from my room) without my knowing it—that crafty old dog.

It happened that this joyous reunion occurred while I was alone (Ma'ikwe, who had never even met Brownie, was in Chicago delivering Jibran to college) so all I did was place Brownie (lovingly) atop the headboard of our marriage bed, where he could get a little fresh air (finally) and survey the whole scene without getting tangled up with Rufus or BB (much less Kyre or Leo). 

Ma'ikwe and I only overlapped a couple days before it was time for me to head East for FIC meetings and the Twin Oaks Communities Conference, and it slipped my mind to tell her about my discovery. In fact, up until a few days ago I hadn't shared this news with anyone. However, once I arrived at Annie's it all came out. You should have seen Annie's jaw drop when I told her that Brownie had resurfaced—it was a resurrection of biblical proportions and she was gobsmacked.

When I skyped my wife yesterday I remembered to tell her about the discovery and Ma'ikwe promptly went into the bedroom and brought the little darlin' out for show and tell. Annie was overjoyed to see the rascal. We still need to give some healing attention to his old shoulder injury, but there will be plenty of opportunity for that this winter. No more time in the penalty box for Brownie!

• • •

As I think about it, it's turned out to be a great fortnight for connections:
—Visiting with dear friend Ella Peregrine in Louisville en route to VA. She's been struggling with Myalgic Enchephalitis the last seven years and it's precious to be with her, even for half a day.—Taking Jenny Upton out to dinner, celebrating all her selfless years of service to FIC.
—Having a power breakfast last Friday with Peter Lazar, who's reviving a cohousing project in the Charlottesville area (on property near Crozet).
—Working the Community Bookstore table at the TO Conference with Elke Lerman, an ex-partner (1986-89) and good friend who is also the mother of my daughter, Jo.
—Catching up with Scott Williams, who used to be part of FIC's Membership Committee back around 2001. He came to the Twin Oaks because he needed to be in the area to help settle his aging mother in a nursing home. He's living happily in Tucson now, and I hadn't seen him in a dozen years.
—Seeing Jake Kawatzki, a long-time member Twin Oaker, who had visited Sandhill any number of times over the decades. He attended the conference and I hadn't seen him since he'd moved to Savannah seven years ago.
—Visiting with Annie for three days before returning home. We share a son (Ceilee) and she's one of my closest friends—going all the way back to Brownie!
—Talking with Ceilee yesterday. He's life has been in turmoil the last 20 months and I had not spoken with him for more than three months. Yikes! It was great to hear his voice and reestablish the primacy of our caring for each other. 

All of that and now I have Brownie, too, the first stuffed love of my life. Life is good.

Flying Blind

My laptop is in "Depot" (the name Apple gives its high-tech service centers scattered around the country) getting a complete overhaul. When I brought it in to the St Louis Genius Bar to have the keyboard replaced last week—because the "e" key was getting balky—the technicians discovered when they opened the hood a "brown, sticky substance" had been corroding the motherboard. Bad, bad, bad.

Not only does that mean a longer delay (sending it out to Depot instead of effecting an in-house repair) but the damage is not covered under warranty—because it looked to them like someone slopped hot chocolate on the keyboard, even though I have no memory whatsoever of having spilled anything on my keyboard, and I'm the only person who uses my machine. Grr.

So here I am, composing this blog on my wife's laptop (until she departs for four days in Chicago to drop Jibran off at Shimer College, and takes her laptop with her) realizing that I'm going to have to operate for the reminder of the week without benefit of digital support (other than what I can manage with my actual fingers). That means:

o  No email (I can hardly wait to see the avalanche that will be waiting for me when I finally get reunited with my refurbished laptop—ugh).

o  No access to my calendar.

o  No access to my address book.

I figure this is Nature's way of telling me to concentrate on the non-electronic aspects of life:

—Organizing and otherwise putting away the myriad boxes of stuff that I just imported from my old bedroom at Sandhill. These are seriously restricting passageways in Moon Lodge and Ma'ikwe will be highly pleased if I can unclog the house. Further, It's an excellent opportunity in that Jibran's departure (as a regular resident in the house) means there is a serendipitous opening for storage in the loft that has heretofore been Jibran's sole domain.

—Helping Sandhill form up and pour a lid for their cistern.

—Continuing to dig out the damaged water line from the house to the cistern at Moon Lodge.

—Keeping abreast of food processing, which tends to get out of control this time of year.

All of which is to say that I'm not exactly out of work, or in danger of expiring from ennui. I just have an unexpected temporary simplification of my how-will-I-spend-my-day menu. My biggest challenge is accepting what I can't control and embracing my reality (rather than lamenting it—and obsessing over the jerk who spilled hot chocolate on my laptop).

While this is not exactly flying blind (I can still see and hear, after all) it's nonetheless an apt metaphor in that I'll be operating the next few days without navigational markers that are digitally based—which is just about all of them in the Information Age. While there is a refreshing, back-to-the-basics quality about this stretch of days, it is also evocative of the dead days of the Mayan calendar, when normal life (whatever that is) is suspended while the mathematically elegant (but slightly inaccurate) human-constructed calendar gets realigned with the earth's actual orbit around the sun.

These are days out of time, or least days out of digital time, and that's probably a good thing, affording me an opportunity to get my psychic gyroscope re-tuned to my physical reality. It also gives me more time to read, of which I never seem to get enough.

A Filing Cabinet in the MIddle of Our Kitchen

Our house is a wreck.

This past week I finally completed moving out of my old bedroom at Sandhill—a process I'd begun right after Thanksgiving and had been dragging my feet about completing. Partly I was waiting to see how well it worked out with Ma'ikwe and me living together. Nine months and one marriage recommitment ceremony later, the answer is that we're going to stay together. Unfortunately, the "yippee!" associated with that decision is inextricably commingled with the grief of letting go of my home for 40 years. This is exactly what people are talking about when they use the phrase "mixed emotions." 

Mind you, I'm not questioning my decision, I'm just heart sore. 

At a Sandhill meeting July 28 I announced that I'd made my decision (I was technically on a leave of absence for one year), and agreed to complete my relocation to Moon Lodge by the end of last week. It took me three trips, but I finished Saturday evening. Whew! There are undoubtedly some stray items lurking in other locations around the farm (it's scary how much one can "spread out" in four decades) and I haven't touched the attic yet, but I've completely liberated my bedroom and that was huge.

Removing everything from my room, layer by layer, was like conducting an archeological dig of my adult life. It was tender, and the memories flooded in much faster than I had time to dwell on. It was all I could do to keep my consciousness floating with the tide, and not stop my hands from putting the next item in a box. I had kinda been hoping that I could avoid this and die in place (leaving the detritus of my life to my survivors), but this has more integrity and, in the end, I'm glad to have done it. For one thing, it's sobering to have my nose rubbed in the reality of all that I've accumulated despite my conscious choice to lead a non-acquisitive lifestyle (where did all this shit come from?). It's a first-world morality play.

While significant chunks of my material life were siphoned off to either Sally Army or the landfill, Sandhill's loss has largely been Moon Lodge's gain—and I don't necessarily mean in a good way. Ma'ikwe's and my house is now bloated with my stuff. (I had no idea I owned that many pairs of shoes!) Hence the awkward (temporary) location of the legal-sized filing cabinet that Ma'ikwe just snagged off Craig's List. 

As if it weren't challenge enough to absorb with grace the disgorgement of Laird's possessions from Sandhill, we're staging things for Jibran's imminent departure for college next week, are entering the height of canning season (we have to put all those jars of sunshine and goodness somewhere), and still have to figure out a permanent home for Ma'ikwe's four-drawer inspiration of boxy metal (which, ironically, was purchased in the hopes of decluttering the living room furniture—that Ma'ikwe is in the habit of using for file storage). 

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that we're closing off a 4'x4' firewood pass-through in our west wall this week. Nothing like a little strawbale retrofit to ensure that we don't run low on dust motes.
 

On the subject of imposing order, we hardly know where to start.

While a high percentage of things have day-to-day utility, there are some curious oddments—such as:

—My collection of board games (still growing). These are in active use—I typically play something once a week.

—Our semi-serious investment in kitchen gadgetry. The frequency of their use varies widely, but some are absolutely precious.

—My cosmopolitan liquor (and liqueur) inventory. For some reason, I buy bottles of alcohol like I buy books: faster than I consume them.

—My stamp collection (inherited at age 10 from my mother's Uncle Art, whom I never met), but which has now been dormant for the past 15 years.

—My camping equipment (all together, I've spent about a year of my life in a canoe and I have a sizable assortment of clothes and paraphernalia that are strictly reserved for that use. I even have a homemade map drawer that contains a lifetime investment in Canadian topos at 1:250,000 (four miles to the inch) which is what I guide with when serving as the bourgeois on a canoe trip. Just as a large part of my heart remains at Sandhill, a smaller, though still significant portion of my heart resides in the boundless wilderness of the Canadian Shield (pre-Cambrian granite, the oldest rock on Earth) that stretches across much of central Canada. Though my last trip was in 2006, I may yet have another one in me, and retaining my camping gear keeps that flame alive.

Luckily, Moon Lodge is a big house (900 sq ft) and my wife and I are resourceful—in the sense of: a) having a lot of resources; b) possessing the ingenuity to figure out how to store the damn stuff; and c) having the resolve to let go of what we no longer need or use.

I expect Moon Lodge to be my last home. While that may not be the case (Ma'ikwe is an Enneagram Seven, after all), I'd rather not go through the chaos of moving again, and thinking long-term produces better solutions for the here and now.

At the very least I expect to have the ding dong filing cabinet moved in the next few days, so we can once again enjoy a straight path through the kitchen to the side door. Sheesh.

Bedroom Archeology

At Thanksgiving I began a grand experiment: living in the same household as my wife. 

Though we've been married for six-and-a-half years, this is the first time we've attempted this version of communal living. While I know most people will respond, "Duh," this is a radical step for us, requiring that at least one of us (in this case, me) give up a home that means a great deal. With Sandhill's blessing, I'm taking a leave of absence to try this out. If it doesn't work, Ma'ikwe can revive her plans (from July) to divorce me and I can return to Sandhill.

No sooner did we recover from the tryptophan overload of Turkey Day than we plowed into the archeological site that has been my bedroom at Sandhill for the last 20 years. Fortunately Ma'ikwe had set aside the week to mainly support me in the transition and the reorganization of Moon Lodge (her house at Dancing Rabbit where we now live), and she played a strong role in keeping me on task, and helped me sort things into four piles: a) move; b) give away; c) store; and d) trash.

While I'm only half done (there are at least two full days ahead), we've mostly cleaned out the closet, and have moved both the bed and desk. In the process I've already found two long-lost things that I knew were in the room but couldn't figure out where I'd placed them, and had lost hope of ever seeing again. It was like an early Christmas!

The first thing was a pair of small diameter rifflers with which I intended to sharpen the blade of our Univex grinder for shredding horseradish (which is incredibly hard on equipment, not just your nose). I figured the blades are expensive and it couldn't hurt to try sharpening what we had instead of springing for a new blade—but that theory only works if you don't lose the rifflers! I'd ordered them five years ago and couldn't recall where I'd put them to save my soul. It turned out they were in a bowl on my desk (underneath scads of insulated coffee sleeves) still safely inside their factory packaging. Whew!

The second miracle was coming across a box of butchering equipment (carefully sealed with packing tape and clearly labeled in my handwriting) alongside my desk (in an area I rarely venture to look at). It included a blade and grater plates for our meat grinder, a homemade locust pushing block (with a diameter barely smaller than the inside of the feed throat on the grinder), sausage casings, and a stuffing funnel. I'd been looking three years for that lot, and it was fortuitous to come across it right after cutting up three deer, most of which was destined to become burger.

While most of what I discovered was old and familiar, there were plenty of clothes I've never worn and have no idea how they got into my closet. Ma'ikwe was good about pushing me to let go of most of it. Often I'd touch something and it would trigger a story about its origin. Pretty quickly, Ma'ikwe figured out that she didn't need to pay attention to what I was saying; she could just nod occasionally as I went through the grieving process.

Sleeping in the Bed You Made
It was powerful sleeping for the last time with Ma'ikwe in the bed I'd made 38 years ago, from locally cut white oak. It was the bed in which both of my kids were conceived and holds a lot of positive juju for me. We disassembled it the next morning and put it back together at Moon Lodge—only to discover that Ma'ikwe's mattress was bigger than mine and didn't fit between the posts at the end of the bed. Oops! So, after a few deep breaths, I sawed off the posts and we were able to sleep there that night: my bed and Ma'ikwe's mattress, symbolic of the union of our lives.

Almost as important as the bed was moving my desk into Ma'ikwe's living room, so that I'd have a workplace that was reliably mine (heretofore it had been my laptop atop my lap in a chair near the wood stove). Ma'ikwe likes to bivouac on her couch, with her papers spread round her. I prefer a desk (or table) and now we're side by side, with easy sight lines of each other. Something of a his-and-hers living room.

While we've already hauled about six boxes of books over, there are at least that many still to go. Plus, we've hardly made a dent in my piles of paperwork, including a four-drawer filing cabinet. I'm seriously toying with shipping a bunch of the FIC material off to an archive facility (at the Center for Communal Studies at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville IN), rather than continue to haul it with me wherever I go. It's time to divest!

We managed without too much strain to shoehorn my clothes into the dresser and closet space that Ma'ikwe freed up for me, we folded my modest cooking supplies into Moon Lodge's spacious kitchen, and we were even able to find a home for my best-in-county eclectic liquor collection (through the judicious use of the loft space above the bathroom). But I have no idea where all those books are going to go, even after we build three more rows of shelves along the south wall of the guest room.

The Ties that Bind
Last week, as part of the new world order, we had a conversation about the division of Moon Lodge domestic chores that included the two of us, plus Jibran, Ma'ikwe's 16-year-old son. Jibran is seriously thinking of trying to enter college next fall to study philosophy, which could mean that the next 8-9 months are his last as a regular fixture in our domestic scene. Before he departs, I have a personal agenda to get Jibran's skill set beefed up to the point where he can: a) consistently start a fire in the wood stove; b) cook a basic meal without burning the food or telling us how incompetent he is; and c) tie basic knots (I figure if you master the square knot, clove hitch, bowline, and tautline hitch, you can handle 99% of the situations where knowing the right knot can save your ass). All of these things will, I believe, make a bigger difference in his life than being about to explain nuances in epistemology. He'll just have to trust me on that.

Water!

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

—from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Coleridge (1798)

It was a rainy winter morning in northeast Missouri today. With outdoor temperatures in the 40s, it was lovely sitting snug inside, next to the wood stove at Moon Lodge—Ma'ikwe's house at Dancing Rabbit—drinking coffee, and visiting with Ma'ikwe's brother, Mark, who's visiting from Fennville MI for three days. 

 

I was reminded of Coleridge this morning because outside there was water running everywhere, and inside there was none. Though Ma'ikwe has been living at Moon Lodge since Halloween 2009, all the water in the house has been hauled in buckets and jugs (in a stretch, you could say we regularly run to get it, but it's really more like walking).

 

Today, however, all that changed. Ma'ikwe, Mark, and I conspired to devote the last three days to eliminating the final barriers standing in the way of being able to manifest running water when you turn the faucet at the kitchen sink. The picture tells it all.

Ma'ikwe and I think of it as an early Xmas present to ourselves. While there's still tile work to complete the work surface and back splash around the kitchen sink (which means we'll have to disconnect the water and pull the sink), that's not very difficult. With any luck, we'll have that wrapped up before it's time to plant broccoli seedlings (in February).

There remains plenty of work in the bathroom, too, where there will be both a sink and and a shower, but enthusiasm for completing the bathroom (more tile work) is tempered by the fact that running hot water is still two-plus years down the road, requiring the construction of an additional building. While cold showers may be fine if you're a teenage boy, or in the navy, it takes a very warm day to choose that experience over a shower where you can mix hot with the cold.

 

Here's why the hot water tortoise is going to be so far behind the haring cold. Ma'ikwe shares with neighbors Bear & Alyssa a plot of land (called a "warren" in DR argot, extending the rabbit theme) that they lease from the community. Both have homes on the warren and both are designed to be principally heated with hydronics—radiant floor heating. As it's cheaper (and more communitarian) to share utilities, they've conceived of building a separate Power House on the warren that will include:

o  A wood-fired boiler to supply hot water both for domestic use and for the hydronic systems.

o  The batteries and master panel for their solar photovoltaic power system.

o  A washing machine.

o  A small rental housing unit, the income from which will cover their warren fees. As the ecovillage is growing at a steady clip, housing is always at a premium and they anticipate an easy time finding renters.

The main drawback to this plan is that they don't expect Power House construction to start sooner than 2014. Of course, the good side of such incremental improvements is that they get to savor each one as it comes along. (Think of how many people miss the chance for that particular pleasure by moving into a house that's completed built!)

As the electrician on the team, it was a somewhat embarrassing and anticlimactic moment this afternoon when we finally had everything hooked up and I had everyone pause while I dramatically flipped the switch… and blew a breaker. Hmm. My nightmare thought (which flashed in my brain in a nanosecond) was that I'd failed to make a watertight connection when wiring the submersible pump and I was going that have to wade into four feet of 42-degree water to fish that sucker out. Ugh.

However, there were other things to try first, and my spirits were buoyed when I isolated the pump from the circuit via an outdoor cut-off switch, reset the breakers, and tried again—only to blew the breakers a second time. Aha! That meant the problem was before the pump, and by studying how I'd wired the pressure relief box I realized that I'd done it wrong. Whew. That was an easy fix, and after reconfiguring the wires, the next time we actually got water (and no blown breakers). Eureka!

Like many things in life, plumbing and electrical work are both quite easy when you do them right. The corollary to that adage is that plumbing and electrical work can be quote humbling when you mess them up. Today we got a bit of both. But the main thing we got today was running water.