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Saturday, June 28, 2008
We are to walk the Sacred Path
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Real Life: A New Forum
I have established a new forum on the www.Back40Forums.com site. It is more of a daily-reality based column about how to live an authentic nature based life in today's "Virtual world" It will be different in focus than this mostly spiritual blog and more interactive as well. I won't be abandoning this roost, just adding a new outlet for my works.
Here is some of my first post. Please visit the forum regularly or sign up for the RSS feeds.
Welcome to Real Life. This forum is for folks who want to wean themselves away from the many practices of the "virtual world": the world of manipulated prices, manufactured foods and exaggerated or untrue advertising claims and work on developing an "authentic" lifestyle that will be healthier, more satisfying, and good for our planet and all beings (animal, vegetable, mineral, forests, etc.). All Fall and Winter Linda and I have been eating fresh greens from the garden and nature, root vegetables from nature, fresh raw milk, fresh eggs, all kinds of meat (wild and domestic) and even delicious homemade wines. We will talk about that more prior to next fall. I'll be giving you information on when to plant the things you'll be eating throughout the winter. But first, lets talk about the present.
We are located in the Missouri Ozarks, zone 6, so your harvest and planting time periods may fall before or after ours. Right now we are eating Chickweed, violet leaves and flowers, simlax tenderals, field garlic, dandelion leaves, redbud blossoms and clover blossoms. Topped with grated and sliced eggs from our free-range hens, doused with extra-virgin cold-pressed olive oil and herb flavored vinegars we make ourselves.
All of these plants and foods are available right now in our area, free for the picking. It usually take Linda about 15 minutes to gather the ingredients. In the photo above you will note that we added some grated carrots stored in our garden all winter. I haven't figured all the nutrition completely but I believe this is a top quality lunch, full of vitamins and minerals and abundant protein. Earlier in the spring we had cottage cheese filled tulips!
We have planted a 4 season garden so we will have plenty of fresh domestic greens, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbages and Jerusalem Artichokes all winter. But every year we find our selves eating fewer cultivated vegetables from the garden during the green season. Coming up over the next months will be watercress, poke weed, plantain, field cress, raspberries, blackberries, and on and on.
This forum won't be just about food. We will cover all kinds of ways we all can save money, help the planet, stay healthier and live longer. Linda and I have been living this life for over 30 years now so we can offer a lot of tips. One of Linda's specialty areas is medicinal herbs. She recently discovered a fantastic oil she formulated to tame the poison ivy we always get at the first of the growing season and become immune to later. If you have specific questions to ask us, or, if you have tricks and methods of your own to contribute please don't be shy, ask away.
And visit often, I will be posting several times a week as time is available. We are planning a DVD on this subject so ideas are also welcome for that. If you want to get a head start of the foraging part you'll need one or more good field guides. I recommend you visit this link to see a great selection and get free shipping:
One of my favorite books for beginners is "Edible Wild Plants of North America" by Elias & Dykeman. Please add this link to your favorites now so you won't lose track of the new forum: Real Life
Friday, May 09, 2008
Meet My Friend Fluff
Yes, I know this doesn't seem to have much to do about Native Spirituality. But, in reality it does: We are are all to be respected equally, why can't a Cat become a valuable part of my business world. He is a part of every minute of my Life, every day. Fluff usually holds court at his Forum over at the Back40ForumsFluffy Cat Records List. He's promised me he will be a regular contributor. If you want to know where the Old Buzzard roosts visit the Back40Forums index and check out the various message boards. You might find one that will interest you!
Here is Fluff's first message:
Hi Folks-- Allow me to introduce myself: I am Fluff A. Catt. If it weren't for me there wouldn't be a Fluffy Cat Records. Without my best buddy Herm I wouldn't be enjoying this special life. One day when I was riding on the E-Z go that we drive back and forth to the office he said "How would you like to be Chairman of the Board at our new record company division?". Well, I had been watching butterflies soaring through our cart so I really hadn't been listening well. But, when it finally hit me I thought "what a cool idea". Me, the biggest, fluffiest Tom on the farm with a REAL position. I love good acoustic music (but I have to cover my ears around rock bands) and sometimes even sing along on vocals, especially if the singer is performing under the full moon. So I answered "yes", on the condition that I could be an integral part of the team. Herm suggested I write a regular column to our friends and customers and I thought that was a great idea.
So, keep checking back here on a regular basis and I'll keep you up to date on what's going on in my life. Of course, right now it's Spring and since I am a bachelor who plays the field, I might be pretty busy (if you know what I mean). Well, right now it's time for a nap on a nearby tree branch so I'll catch you later. Thanks for visiting!
Affectionately--
Fluff
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Stoking The Inner Fire-Turning Inward During Winter
In the depths of winter, we can forget that bare trees will once again be full with foliage, and grass and flowers hidden beneath a blanket of white or a deceptive covering of hardened earth will burst forth once again. While they slumber, nature is continuing its work at the center of each living thing. We can think of our blankets and warm clothes as similar protection—like the cocoon that surrounds a changing caterpillar—while we undergo our own inner transformational work. In the meantime, the lights that twinkle and the fires that warm us can serve to remind us of the flame of life that burns within us.
In order to stoke our inner flame, we can use the time indoors to focus our attention on our homes and families. We can become distracted by the world outside and forget that we need to nourish the lights that warm our hearts. Interacting at a soul level can be done by sharing stories from our hearts, doing projects together, dancing, or playing games. Devoting energy this way helps us build a stronger bond that will sustain us once the world allows us each to pursue our individual goals again.
Winter allows us to feed the flame in our own centers by reading or researching to nourish our dreams and plans for the future. This can mean catching up on all the quieter things we wanted to do but didn’t have time for, like reading books, watching movies, or listening to music. We may have set aside creative pursuits such as painting or writing that can be brought back to the center burner now. It is also a great time to do some journaling to look back on the year that has passed and perhaps the years before this one in preparation for forward motion in the coming year. Nature’s wisdom offers us opportunities to nourish our inner seeds of hope in preparation for our future, so let us enjoy the inner warmth and be grateful for it all.
For an excellent selection of books and music about Native American spirituality, lifestyle and Antique Indian Ways of living in Harmony with all creation visit the Native American Store at Back 40 Books
Thursday, December 06, 2007
No Left Turns
This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed.
My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.
"In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it." At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh, bull----!" she said. "He hit a horse." "Well," my father said, "there was that, too."
So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the Van Laninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.
My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines, would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.
My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.
But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one." It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.
But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.
It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car. Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother.
So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.
For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits - and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.
Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)
He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."
After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."
If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"
"I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre. "No left turns," he said. "What?" I asked. "No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."
"What?" I said again. "No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights." "You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support. "No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works." But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."
I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing. "Loses count?" I asked.
"Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again." I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked. "No," he said. "If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week."
My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90. She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102. They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)
He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.
One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.
A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer." "You're probably right," I said. "Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated. "Because you're 102 years old," I said.
"Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day. That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night. He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said:" I would like to make an announcement.
“No one in this room is dead yet". An hour or so later, he spoke his last words: "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have." A short time later, he died. I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot.
I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long. I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, Or because he quit taking left turns. Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you right. Forget about the one's who don't. Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it.
“Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it."
My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.
"In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it." At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh, bull----!" she said. "He hit a horse." "Well," my father said, "there was that, too."
So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the Van Laninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.
My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines, would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.
My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.
But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one." It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.
But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.
It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car. Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother.
So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.
For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits - and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.
Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)
He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."
After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."
If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"
"I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre. "No left turns," he said. "What?" I asked. "No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."
"What?" I said again. "No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights." "You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support. "No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works." But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."
I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing. "Loses count?" I asked.
"Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again." I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked. "No," he said. "If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week."
My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90. She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102. They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)
He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.
One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.
A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer." "You're probably right," I said. "Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated. "Because you're 102 years old," I said.
"Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day. That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night. He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said:" I would like to make an announcement.
“No one in this room is dead yet". An hour or so later, he spoke his last words: "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have." A short time later, he died. I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot.
I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long. I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, Or because he quit taking left turns. Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you right. Forget about the one's who don't. Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it.
“Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it."
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Fend For Yourself
When did we decide campgrounds needed laundromats? When the car stalled, whose bright idea was it to reach for a cell phone instead of a tool? When did we decide to eat manufactured food instead of growing it ourselves, cooking it ourselves, and sharing it with our families and friends?
There was a time when the words "quick" and "fix" were never found together in the same sentence. When our homes needed to be built, we grabbed brothers, fathers and hammers, not a mouse that clicked on Mr. On-line Contractor. Our nation's great accomplishments were a testament to hard work, sweat and ingenuity. After all, we not only put a man on the moon, but built him a rover to drive while he was up there.
What will we achieve today? Can we turn our backs to the enemy known as convenience before it makes us helpless? Do we have what it takes to depend solely on ourselves? Can we learn the skills necessary to survive in a nation without electricity or public services such as heat, water sewage disposal, electricity and readily available gasoline? Think it can’t happen here? Look at Baghdad, the CAPITAL of Iraq, a city without reliable utilities for over four years. Think back to 9-11. Can we protect all of our water systems from deliberate contamination? Our power generating facilities from a 9-11 style attack? Our cell phone towers and transmission systems? Our country has made a lot of enemies over the past few years and those enemies are dedicated to destroying the comfortable life we Americans have become accustomed to. We can’t possibly expect to protect all of our infrastructure all of the time.
Ponder these questions, consider the consequences. Learn to be more self-reliant. Gather self-help books or instructional DVD’s. Consider acquiring the tools, knives and outdoor gear that are essential, not only for the task at hand, but for bringing back something lost: our self-reliance.
Fend for Yourself!
This article was inspired by one written by Gerber Legendary Blades and featured on their web site at www.GerberGear.com. Many book, DVD’s and tools to live the self-reliant life can be found at www.Back40Books.com . This message was written by the Old Buzzard on September 26, 2007. Permission to reproduce is granted if the article is printed in it’s entirety and credit is given to http://the-old-buzzards-roost.blogspot.com/
© 2007 The Old Buzzard
Friday, September 14, 2007
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