The Universe Gave Me a Pink Star!

I talked at length with an astrologer last night about what is in my birth chart. I had specific questions for him about what the stars and planets say I laid out for this lifetime in terms of purpose, learning and auspicious times for personal growth. I think he's a Master Healer.
(If this is a little too hee bee gee bee for you, you might want to navigate away now before I get really out there.)
He gave me some "homework" to move me toward my goals.

The first thing I got to practice today was not swearing at myself and calling myself bad names for sleeping late. I struggle with that. So today, when I saw  the clock at 10 am when I opened my eyes, I smiled and wondered if he hadn't somehow made me sleep late to test me.

Then I tried one of the things he suggested that I'm not outing myself on yet. He's says if I can master it, it will be a gift I can share with many. So I did a little experiment today in the kitchen.

Apparently I also need to relearn how to hug. This is not easy for me. So, I put it out there on FB to elicit help from my network. 

Then I went out for a walk with the girls after dinner and this too is in my best interest. It's social and it's movement. Double whammy!

He also said that I have many spirits around me waiting for opportunities to help. I forget about those invisible forces in our lives until they do something to remind me.

Such as give me a pink star for my efforts.
As I walked home the last few hundred yards alone, I saw something in the grass up ahead. Curious like a cat, I angled toward it.
As I got closer, I realized it was a helium balloon blowing on the breeze, but almost out of lift. My environmentalist kicked in and I picked up its string to take it home to the garbage can.

As I walked, it lifted off the ground and snuggled itself against my right shoulder just behind my head. By the time I got home, I realized I couldn't assign it to the garbage while it still had a lift/life in it. I tied it to the clothes rack outside my window. I is floating in gentle circles on the breeze and waving at me.

I get a pink star for my efforts today. How brilliant is that!

Why is This so Difficult?

Hi Juliana,
Thank you for sending me out into the rain! Truly, I am grateful. You found the perfect motivator for me - Take a Picture!

I walked 23.5 minutes today. I also got a draft of one of the newsletters done before I went for my walk.
I'm on a roll!

There is a park behind my house. At one end of the park up hill from my house, I get a view of COP. Right now we are watching the snow melt
from it daily.
It also has an excellent view of the John Laurie Blvd. and 53 street intersection as you can see. We also get the COP view from the house, but not the intersection.


At the other end of the park (there is a big circle path), I get a view of downtown Calgary. 

How about that sky eh?

You can see we have some excellent facilities here. It would be a great place to raise kids. I appreciate this park being literally right outside my back door. 


However, once around the circle only takes 10 minutes. 



So, I have to go off into the neighborhood to get the next 10 minutes. 
I spent enough time walking with my timer this winter that I know how long each loop is and can walk according to what time I feel I can take away from my desk right now. 
Because I included the park today and it's raining rather hard intermittently, I took the short loop that takes me past this enormous house.


 

 Seriously, it makes me want to make a racist joke. How many _____ can you put in one house?
But I suppose the real question is how big can you stand to let your environmental footprint get? 

Huh, a walk and a preach! How satisfying is that?

Foody Feelings

I think it’s fair to say that, at least in North America, our relationship to food has become Frankenstein-ish. We created a monster that repulses us, confuses us and slipped from our control.

hand-made buns & an orange

Consider how many of us relish with great gusto a well-prepared meal. Also, the iconic characteristics we imbue to certain foods such as bread, apple pie or coffee. 
We love food; have relationships with it and even impart it with special powers. Chicken soup cures colds. Chocolate revs up engines and wine loosens lips. 

You can even say that a persons’ style of food preparation and consumption can speak volumes about their character.

Flax in flower

It’s no surprise food holds a prominent place in our lives. We do after all need it to some degree; although we consume it for many other reasons.

In times past, food creation occupied much more of our time. So much so that anthropologists assert that food surplus is a necessary part of civilization advancement. It was not until we could take time away from hunting or growing food that we had time to think about anything else. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs points to this as well with food and shelter needs overshadowing all else. It is not until we meet these most basic needs that we can turn our thoughts to other things. In fact, food beats out sex!

Jared Diamond, through his book Collapse, taught me how human civilizations have repeatedly out-grown the capacity of their environment to feed them and subsequently perished. Then David Montgomery’s book outlined how our food production system is now global and, therefore, the next collapse will be as well.

All the while more people move into cities as we cut them off from natural resources through industrial activities that include farming on large scales as well as mining and activities that deplete or poison water resources making subsistence farming impossible.

This might be wheat or rye
- can't remember

Today, in Canada, I eat fruit from around the world all year long. A fond childhood memory is that an uncle sent our family a Christmas box of fancy apples from Ontario. We loved that glut of fresh colorful fruit so full of flavor and otherwise scarce in December. It was a box of riches and it looked like it when you opened the lid to see all the shiny apples of different variety.

I also recall childhood joy derived from a huge garden my mother and aunt created at the summer cottage. Snacks were right there! Beans, peas, carrots and radishes

Peas on the vine

soaked up the sun and waited for little hands to come pick them. The earliest days of summer offered asparagus over by the hedge and the fall supplied apples along the driveway. Food was part of the landscape of my childhood. I remember tomatoes that curled my toes, Hubbard squash too big for me to lift and beets sweetening the aroma of the whole house while cooking.

Wow! I sound 150 years old! Truly, we have abandoned our creative relationship with food in less than half a century! These memories are only 45 years ago.

Now, I have no way of knowing exactly where my food originates, what it might contain or which of my ethics it may insult. Sometimes I find myself looking at a food product and wondering if eating it is the right thing to do for my body, for the planet, for compassion and for balance between what I value and what I will tolerate to satisfy my desires.

Consider that I’m not an ignorant city girl that knows nothing of modern agriculture. I work with agricultural research hubs. I talk to farmers. I go to manure injection equipment demonstrations!

Oats ripening

But food production has become a subject that is so complex, so compartmentalized, specialized, scientific and diverse that it is impossible to know all aspects of it. It is diverse in type and in practice. Also, agriculture is only the beginning. Food processing has its stories too.

My best advice is to buy food as close to the way God makes it and take it from there yourself. If you have a spot, grow some food for yourself and share it.

We may have to survive the collapse to reboot the system, so knowing how to produce your own food could be helpful.