While at the library, I happened upon the book The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. It’s subtitle is, “Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century”. It seemed like an important book to dive into and a great random library find, so I snatched it up. I didn’t recognize Kunstler’s name at first, but now that I’ve noticed it on this book, I’ve see that his name pops up now and then in other writings I encounter, so appreciate having this book under my belt to fill out the other things that I read.

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron is a book that leads you on a 12 week program aimed at recovering and releasing your creative self. Through reading the inspiring book, committing to writing exercises and participating in activities on various themes, the book seeks to help you overcome self-limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, negative messages from the past, guilt, and other blocks to your creativity. Cameron presents this journey as a spiritual path, linking creativity and spirituality and helping you connect with the creative forces of the universe.

A friend of mine said the other day that she could never see herself giving up her car for a bike. I realized that two years ago, I couldn’t either. If someone had suggested the idea, I would have claimed that I was too lazy, too out of shape, I liked my car too much, it was so much more convenient, and I just generally wouldn’t have been able to picture myself trying it. I realized that there was a small string of decisions that led me to do it, and it all started with my natural gas being shut off.

Here’s what happened:

How often do you say that you “have to” do something? You have to go to work. You have to pay the bills. You have to call your mother. You have to clean the house. We use this little phrase constantly. It’s such a tiny phrase, but it has great, big implications!

The message behind “have to” is that you don’t have a choice. The choice has already been made for you, and your actions are inevitable. What a sad dismissal of our ability to choose the direction of our own lives!

It can be hard to follow along with all the nutrition advice out there. Eggs good or bad? How many glasses of wine? This fish or that fish? And that’s not even counting the moral choices of free-range, free trade, etc.

I cleaned up my computer a bit last night, deleting unused files and programs and sorting everything so I could find it all easier. I ran across some photos that I’d forgotten about. It’s strange to see photos of The Wallow covered in snow, when it’s 90 degrees out right now. Since we’re not using air conditioning it’s 80 degrees inside. Joshua and I have taken several measures to help cool our home naturally, but at the height of summer, there’s only so much you can do! It was fun to run across these pictures from the complete opposite weather.

I have said for a long time that if I couldn’t kill an animal for food, then I would want to become a vegetarian. I’ve never said that I had to kill an animal, or that everyone should. I never actively sought out the experience of doing so. But, I said that if the opportunity arose and I couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t want to eat meat anymore.

I’ve always wanted to be closer to that process and to learn how I felt about it and to see how that would affect my thoughts on eating meat.

Last week I made sun-dried tomatoes to go in my custom spice mix. I love this mix and use it on all kinds of things. My favorite is to use it liberally on fried potatoes, but I’ve been known to sprinkle it over all kinds of things. I used to just by random Italian seasoning mixes at the grocery store, but it’s even more fun to make my own. Just a mortar and pestle and a bunch of stuff thrown in, and I think it comes out super yummy.

Here’s the recipe in case you want to try yourself.

I’ve got a spice mix I make that really needs sun-dried tomatoes. They’re expensive, though, and there are plenty of tomatoes coming out of the garden. I could make my own! I did, and they came out great, so if you’d like to try it yourself, here’s the process. Are sun-dried tomatoes from the store [...]

Joshua and I got four chickens a couple of months ago. Joshua built a movable chicken coop for them, which they’ve been kept in full time. They are laying eggs regularly, now, very consistently three a day. This past week, Joshua decided it was time to let them out during the day. Now, the four chickens wander about the yard during the day and wander back into the coop in the evening.