How’s Your Ki Today?

Squirreling Away

Dear Reader:

The squirrels have formed a regular food court underneath my bird feeder and the flower bed near the beech trees. Twenty times a day, my poor little dog, Delilah, jumps to the window and barks to be let out, races out the door when I open it, and charges over the snow. Unfortunately for her, but infinitely fortunate for the squirrels, Delilah never manages to capture one of the furry, grey mauraders of bird sustenance. The squirrels know the quickest route up the beeches. They know she can’t chase them across the road. They high-tail it, wait for her to retreat to the house, and then they resume foraging, taking time off to chase each other across the crusty snow and past the compost bin in fits of squirrely joy–or maybe in a less benign territorialness.

While I find squirrel culture mildly fascinating, I am much more amazed by the variety of sub-cultures present in our society. There are the usual circles with which we are all familiar, i.e. political groups, motorcycle enthusiasts, wine lovers, church-goers, and those guys that jump into icy water in the middle of January in nothing but their Speedos. There are goths and DAR members, needle-pointers and Beanie-Baby collectors, people whose aim in life is to tattoo every square inch of their body and people who go to ashrams to learn meditation practices. Whole non-profit organizations have been formed for comic-book lovers, STAR TREK fans, and romance novel writers. It’s a wild and wonderful world out there. No matter who you are, you can probably find likeminded individuals who have organized themselves to some extent. If I were to become a journalist, I might make exploring all these sub-cultures my life’s work. Who needs to travel to India or Venezuela or some island off the coast of Africa in order to study another culture? The United States is a smorgasboard of social rituals, symbolic adornments, lexicons, taboos, and ceremonies.

Just recently, thanks to one of my current writing projects, I’ve been introduced to one such sub-culture found here in America and around the world–the Reiki community. Reiki (pronounced Ray-Key) began in Japan in the early years of the twentieth century when a man named Mikao Usui fasted and meditated for three weeks and either received or developed (depending on your view of these kinds of things) a system of energy work that he used to heal people–spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Click here to peruse the FAQ section of the International Center for Reiki Training website.

Reiki is a concept that includes the belief in a creative force (what some call God), a higher intelligence that acts as a guide for the universe and for the individual and a belief that everything is made up of energy, material things being simply a denser form of energy than say, air . . . or the soul. Reiki teaches that individuals can be more in tune to this energy, can use it to manifest peace and health for themselves and for others. Meditation is a big part of this process. Those who have studied and practiced are also believed to be able to help others by placing their hands on a client during an “attunement” which clears any blockages in the clients’ energy centers. For practical purposes, these energy centers are often referred to as “chakras” and are symbolized by the colors of the spectrum, but this is just a way for practitioners to visualize the concept, not necessarily the reality of the energy itself.

A quick journey around the internet reveals hundreds of testimonials from people who claim to have been helped/healed by Reiki. Spas regularly offer Reiki attunements along with their hot-stone massages, seaweed facials, and French manicures. Hospitals encourage trained Reiki volunteers to work with their patients–including the terminal ones.

“No way,” you might say, shaking your head. “It’s just the placebo affect. I don’t believe in any metaphysical energy mumbo-jumbo.”

I say, “Maybe . . . but so what?” If patients are getting some benefit from it, no matter what the underlying reality is, then great. If someone is feeling depressed and stressed out and goes to the spa for a Reiki treatment and comes out feeling calm and happy, does it really matter why? Maybe her energy centers were cleared or maybe she needed some quiet time away from the hassles of work and kids and the daily commute. Either way, she gets to go home, make a nice dinner, and not scream at her husband for leaving the tiolet seat up again. Everyone’s happier!

Can these results be accomplished without Reiki? Of course. Whether or not the energy concept is reality or a mirage, I believe the pschological affects of concentrating on various aspects of your life can be liberating. Too often we travel through life without analyzing where we are going, why we want to go there, and where we want to end up. We mindlessly cram food and alcohol into our mouths without taking the time to enjoy the flavors or ask ourselves if what we are eating is good for our bodies. We feel angry and upset and lash out, but we haven’t practiced analyzing why we are reacting in that way, dealing with the analysis, and then letting go of the emotions that bog us down. We strive after more . . . more money, more prestige, bigger houses, fancier cars, status jewelry and clothing . . . not realizing that greed is maybe just another form of insecurity, that stopping and appreciating what you already have can fill that space that thinks it needs more and more and more.

The Reiki energy centers, as I understand them so far, correspond with psychological concepts that a counselor or pschiatrist might discusss. Taking the time to focus on first, the basic survival instincts, and then moving on to the higher levels of our psyche–communication, intuition, spirituality–can be of great benefit to the individual, to the community, to the country, to the world. When we begin to realize we have enough, we will stop mindlessly trying to get more. We’ll be healthier. We’ll be happier.

Maybe Reiki is just one of many schemas that provides a design for understanding what is real and common to all of us. The Rei of Reiki may be just another way of talking about God. The Ki of Reiki may be just another way of talking about the id of psychology or the strange attractor theory of modern physics. The point is, if you keep an open mind, life lessons can come to you from many different directions . . . Outside the Box.

Tee Shirt Eureka . . . or not so much.

Inspirational Tee Shirt?

Dear Reader:

So, I’m sweating and aching and groaning my way through my Thursday night aerobics class at the Limington Town Hall, and I’m thinking about the tee-shirt I’m wearing because, let’s face it, my brother-in-law’s paving business doesn’t exactly make for sexy workout gear (see picture) when the various pieces of my latest obsessions coelesced into one glorious idea. I would have shouted “Eureka!” but I didn’t have any breath to spare considering we were doing the umpteenth set of leg kick/arm punch combos. Here’s what I was thinking:

a)I probably look like a dork in this tee-shirt, but at least it’s black and black is slimming. (huff, puff)

b)Actually, printing company logos onto tee shirts is great advertising for local businesses. If someone makes a snide comment about my exercise outfit, I’ll claim I’m doing it because I believe in local business. (Ouch, my thighs are burning!)

c)And anyway, everyone else is advertising various national sporting goods companies on their Nike/Addidas/Columbia/Insert Name Brand Here workout clothes. Why shouldn’t I advertise a local business? Or in this case, a family business? (Hey, thighs about to fall off here!)

d)And, hey, wouldn’t it be kinda cool to start wearing all kinds of tee shirts and hats and sweatshirts with local business logos? It could be my new “thing.” (Seriously? Another set of eight? Is she crazy?)

e)But those tee shirts are so baggy and boxy . . . (Oh my god. I can’t feel my left toe!)

f)Unless I TRANSFORM them and turn them into a fashion statement. Eureka! (Water break? Water break?)

Here is where I thought I’d come up with a unique and inspired idea. I would collect a bunch of local tee shirts and sweatshirts and hats, figure out various ways to reconstruct them into more fashionable shapes and lines, and begin wearing them around town. I’d post tips and instructions so others could create their own DIY fashions. We cool loca-fashionistas could then pooh-pooh the silly fashion slaves with their manacles of Abercrombie and Aeropostale strapped around their chests or plastered on their butts liked cattle-brands.

Maybe I could talk to the home-economics (or whatever they are calling it these days) teacher at the local high school and suggest the students practice their new sewing skills on tee shirt transformation projects. Maybe the school could host a loca-fashion show (do you like that? The double meaning? Loca, i.e. local AND crazy) to raise money for the school system–since the state is going broke and has cut funding but not the mandates–or for local food banks or homeless shelters or people who are just having a hard time buying heating oil or maybe a scholarship or two for a kid who can’t afford the astronomical costs of higher education here in the U.S.

I began picturing a Massabesic High School model-wannabe parading down the catwalk in, say, a Waterways tee shirt halter top paired with a funky tulle skirt and black biker boots. Or a Limerick Supermarket baby-tee with ruched sleeves combined with a fringy, drapey skirt crafted from an F.R. Carroll’s tee worn over a pair of jeans.

“Too cool!” I thought. “Except I have no idea how to tranform tee shirts into anything.” I mentioned my idea to my friend Michele last night and she said, “Oh, a team from Odyssey of the Mind remade their school logo tee shirts a couple years ago.” She listed a number of transformative ideas, and about that time I started to realize that, like most good ideas, someone had already eureka-ed it ahead of me.

So, this morning I jumped onto the internet to see what I could find, and struck paydirt. Okay, I won’t get any big awards for this idea since apparently I’m way behind the proverbial 8-ball (see “My Sources Say No” post of January 6), because I found an amazing source for tee shirt transformation projects. Check out Generation T where you can find projects, books, and inspiration for your own DIY tee shirt fashions. The website is the brainchild of Megan Nicolay, a self-professed “obsessive Do-It-Yourselfer.” I am psyched, psyched, psyched to dive into this website and will probably purchase the books.

In a few weeks, I plan on having an updated, black and gold “Proseal” tee shirt to show you. Can you see me rubbing my hands in gleeful anticipation? I’m going to try to turn it into something I can wear to my aerobics class. I’m hoping that others will notice my cool shirt, ask how I did it, and soon the entire area will be wearing local logos instead of mindless fashion labels that are really nothing more than profitable advertising for the multinational company that owns the name on your hoodie.

Think about it: they con you into paying sixty to a hundred bucks for the privilege of advertising for them. Come on! They should be paying YOU!

Break free from your fashion chains, tranform a tee shirt, send me a picture, and we’ll have our own virtual fashion show right here . . . Outside the Box.

P.S. I’m calling my fashions Flabbercrabby & Stitch. I love the slogan “It’s cool to be Flabbercrabby!” It’s just so much fun to say, don’t you think? And in the spirit of collaboration and sharing, I am “open-sourcing” the name and slogan, so use it if you want (but it will be very bad karma if you take it and copyright it and sell it to some conglomerate. Very Bad Karma!)

Creative Website–Check It Out!

handspun yarn buttoned scarf

Dear Reader:

This scarf is the finished product crafted from the mohair fleece I carded and spun and plied on a borrowed Kiwi spinning wheel. The Kiwi is a beginner wheel, and because I’m a beginner, it works for me. I also have a more traditional wheel given to me by a good friend of the family. My next spinning project will be done on that wheel in hopes that I have acquired the skill necessary to spin the thin yarn that wheel requires. Learning a craft isn’t an overnight project. I’m expecting at least three years to even become halfway proficient. However, the journey may be more important than the destination. Every time I sit down at the wheel or hold a couple of bamboo knitting needles in my hands, I feel connected to the age-old crafting tradition . . . and so can you!

One of my online writing friends has started a new website geared toward crafting and do-it-yourself projects and the creative impulse each of us has inside us. They will be offering projects “in a bag” and blogs and articles. I’m very excited to see these kinds of sites going up on the internet. With all these resources at our fingertips, we can explore and experiment to our hearts’ content.

Make 2010 the year you learn to produce something useful and/or beautiful. I strongly believe that along with relocalizing, we also need to become a society of skilled craftspeople. Imagine producing clothes, furniture, houses, vehicles, toys . . . you name it . . . that are meant to last a lifetime rather than a few months or years.

Check out http://www.creativemindandhands.com/ and make something . . . Outside the Box.

Quick Post: Materialism in Children

Dear Reader:

In connection with the previous blogpost, I found this interesting, short piece on what some researchers say causes materialism to increase during the early adolescent years. Basically: Low self-esteem. Click on the link to the blogsite GROMIND to read the article.

However, here is one sign of a changing ethos. According to a Science Daily article published in June, ostantatious displays of materialism may be going out of style. In other words, maybe soon it will be IN style to be OUT of style. Cool.

My Sources Say No

Happy New Year!

Dear Reader:

The Year of Our Lord 2010 is here and with it a slew of prediction blogs which have just about the same odds of being right as that good old fortune-telling technology known as The Magic 8 Ball. Remember using those? You ask a yes-or-no question, jiggle the 8 Ball, and wait for an answer. For example: “Oh, Magic 8 Ball, will Billy Bob fall in love with me this year?” Jiggle. Jiggle. Message pops up floating in a pool of electric-blue liquid. “Absolutely yes” or “maybe” or “concentrate and try again” or “my sources say no.” If you don’t like the answer, you try again for one of the other seventeen answers in hopes that it matches your desire. Eventually, one does. Ta-da! Magic.

Well, I’ve been trying to read the signs for proof of positive changes in our society and so far the “oulook is not good.” Oh, I hate to be a party-pooper right at the beginning of the new year, but if we humans need to begin relocalizing rather than outsourcing, producing rather than consuming, conserving rather than wasting just so that we can continue with some semblance of civilization let alone the frenzied, glittery, electrified extravaganza commonly known as Western Society, then the following story my sixth-grader brought home from school yesterday does not portend warm and fuzzy things.

Actually, let me start this story a couple weeks before Christmas. While talking to various friends of mine, a curious common theme ran through the conversations about this year’s Christmas shopping. It is the phenomenon known as Wii. I would add a link but you would have to be from another planet (or maybe a Third World country) not to know what I’m talking about here. Just about everyone I know, except those who already possessed the glorious invention, bought one of these gaming systems for their offspring this Christmas.

We want Christmas to be fun for our kids. I understand. I am not blaming any parents for buying their kids a nice Christmas present. What you buy your kids is your business. That’s not my point.

Yes, there is one and I’m getting to it so stop rolling your eyes at me.

Anyway, maybe if my kid had been clamoring for said homophone of “we”, I would have joined the crowd in line at the big-box store on Black Friday and purchased one (maybe but not likely). However, for some reason my child’s desires were of a simpler nature this year, and I thanked my personal deity of choice (the lifeforce of the universe, unnamed, if you are curious) and proceded to fill up her stocking with small gifts I thought would delight her when she got herself out of bed on Christmas morning. They did. We spent the day sitting around in our pajamas, eating cinnamon rolls, and hanging with my parents.

It was a nice day, and everyone was happy and contented.

In any case, because I’d had these conversations with parents of her friends, I knew what would happen as soon as she got back to school. I tried to prepare her. “Honey,” I said. “Lots of kids are going to be talking about what they got for Christmas. Alot of kids got stuff like Wii’s this year, and you got a bunch of nice, little things. You might want to figure out what you are going to say when they start asking to compare presents.” Did she listen to me? Sorta. I think what she heard was, “Other parents got their kids really cool stuff for Christmas and we didn’t so you are going to be embarrassed to death when school starts up again.”

Unfortunately, we were both correct, but at least my offspring was prepared for the bus-stop talk and the cafeteria talk and the hallway talk and the locker talk. “I got a Wii what did you get?” “I got a PS something or other what did you get?” “I got a cell phone what did you get?” Yup. Junior high hasn’t changed a bit from when I was there. I was always happy with my presents, but I do remember being embarrassed by the comparisons with kids whose parents had more money to spend. I dealt back then. She could deal now. At the very least, it’s character-building.

According to her, she handled it with as much dignity as she could muster and went off to first period social studies class. This is where things went into the Twilight Zone, at least as far as I’m concerned.

According to my twelve-year-old (and yes, I’m taking everything she says with a grain of salt), the teacher started off class by saying, “Okay, let’s get this over with. Go around the room and tell everyone your biggest present. Or your most special vacation activity.” As a parent, listening to this tale, I knew what the teacher meant by vacation activity. Trip to Disney. Trip to Washington D.C. Trip to the Bahamas. Probably not sledding or ice-skating or sitting around in pajamas watching White Christmas with the grandparents. My kid didn’t pick up on that, poor little semi-innocent that she is.

“I spent the whole time trying to figure out what I was going to say, Mom,” she told me “Everyone was like ‘I got a Wii, I got a flat-screen tv for my room, I got a cell phone, I got a DS. I was the last person. I said my special vacation time was typing up my story on the computer. I felt stupid. Did I sound like I was trying to impress my teacher?”

Um, yes, I thought, but that’s beside the point. What in heaven’s name was that teacher thinking?

I grumbled and mumbled and, yes, ranted. I called my mother and ranted. When my husband got home I told him, i.e. ranted. I hopped on Facebook when everyone else went to bed and guess what? I ranted!

I’m not naive. Junior high is the age of figuring out where you stand in the social hierarchy. Comparing yourself to the rest of the kids is de rigeur. The trick is to look, act, talk, smile, smell just about like everyone else . . . only a little bit better if possible. I know. I remember. I’ve watched The Breakfast Club a couple times.

So, while I understand the underlying junior-high pschological need to compare, I can’t for the life of me figure out why a school teacher would not only tolerate that behavior but also encourage it! What about kids who don’t celebrate a holiday? What about kids who are too poor to eat let alone get fancy presents? I’m just curious to know what possible benefit there could be to this classroom exercise. Don’t they need to learn about China or Ancient Egypt or something?

My Facebook friends came through with encouraging yelps of indignation on my behalf. Bless you, girls.

The consensus is that while we all have our own levels of gift-giving and recognize that kids will brag about their new stuff, we don’t appreciate teachers promoting that behavior in social studies class.

I hate to jump all over hard-working, underpaid, public-school teachers. For one thing, the teacher didn’t buy the kids all that high-end stuff. The teacher isn’t responsible for telling those children that it isn’t polite to brag about their acquisitions. It’s also possible my pre-teen drama queen blew the whole thing out of proportion–it’s been known to happen.

The discussion on Facebook also brought up all kinds of reminiscing about Esprit shirts and Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and Nike high-tops. Some moms said they shopped at low-end department stores when they were teens and figured they turned out all right just the same. Another shared that she started buying Vogue in 8th grade and never stopped but now contents herself with knock-off bags from Target rather than spend a month’s grocery money on Coach purses.

I used to save up my money in order to buy the Bonnie Bell Makeup Collection advertised in Seventeen magazine which I took out religiously from the Bangor Public Library. Oh, the Prom Dress edition! Oh, all those fluffy Gunne Sax dresses! (Did you know Jessica McClintock is from Aroostook County, Maine? How cool is that?) I still buy the September issue of Vogue and vicariously enjoy the $16,000 couture dresses and $6,000 shoes. I understand the pull of the Sex and the City phenomenon. I’m not totally immune to what is considered hip and cool and fashionable.

A little fashion never really hurt anyone. However, people saying you aren’t cool because you don’t wear Ambercrombrie & Fitch and Aeropostale clothes does hurt when you are a kid. (I’m thinking of starting my own clothing company aimed at teenagers. I’ll have the tee-shirts made for pennies in some Third World country and mark them up like six-thousand percent and sell them in cave-like spaces in the mall where the smell of expensive uni-sex perfume will draw them in like flies to honey. I’ll call my company Flabbercrabby & Bitch. I even have a great marketing slogan: It’s Cool to be Crabby. What do you think?)

Which all leads me to the possiblity of our society changing anytime soon BY CHOICE. My daughter will survive the social stigma of being Wii-challenged. She will get by with tee-shirts from J.C. Penny and, gasp, Mardens and, double-gasp, maybe even homemade if I can get my sewing maching out and running. Yesterday’s experience gave us the opportunity to discuss, as a family, our values and what mom really thinks about clothing labels. But what about the rest of society? What about the future? Do we have any chance at all of evolving from our materialistic, consumeristic ridiculousness to a more enlightened, thoughtful, productive way of life?

If my daughter’s experience in school yesterday is anything to go by (maybe a little more accurate than the Magic 8 ball) I’d say we have some work to do as parents and educators in pointing out what really matters in life.

When do the kids get a chance to go around the room and share the last time their parent said, “I love you” to them? When do they tell about how their parents played a board game with them after supper. Will they get to stand up and compare how many nights their family sits down to dinner together at the table rather than scarfing down take-out in front of the television? How about going around the room and saying whether or not their parents live in the same house, if their mom is home when they get off the school bus in the afternoon, if they visit their grandparents regularly, if they attend church together every Sunday, if they volunteer at a soup kitchen together as a family.

Until those sorts of topics become the bragging points for our kids and ourselves rather than who bought the latest and brightest MP3 player and video gaming system, I don’t see much hope for the future.

My family mantra for 2010 is “It’s not what you buy; it’s what you do.” I challenge each of my readers to join me in this quest. If you can make it, don’t buy it. Don’t buy something, do something. It’s a start . . . Outside the Box.

Christmas Crazy

Dear Reader:

Merry Christmas! Yes, I am blogging on Christmas morning. Does Shelley have a life, you wonder? I do. Really. But all through the house, not a creature is stirring . . . and it seems like a good time to wish all my constant and dear readers a Happy Holiday. Last night, my family stayed up late to watch A CHRISTMAS STORY which is running 24 hours straight on one of the cable tv stations. We then switched over to WHITE CHRISTMAS with good ol’ Bing Crosby that was running 24 hours straight on another cable tv station. These are probably the only two shows I’ve watched on a cable tv station in the last couple of months. I hate cable television. Happily, my husband is giving me the best Christmas present ever . . . he’s canceling the cable in March.

I’m sorry, but 600 channels of nothing is a big, fat waste.

Like I need more distractions, anyway. Let me tell you about my Christmas experience this week. On Monday I was at the library doing my usual volunteering, when one of the librarians sighed and said, “I just can’t wait until all this Christmas is over,” in the way people do when they’ve burned out on the holiday stuff. The other librarian gave a short laugh and said, “Me too.” I chimed in with an honest, “Not me! For some reason this year I’ve really enjoyed the whole Christmas thing.” They looked at me sideways, incredulous. “Well, what’s your secret?” I shrugged. “No idea. Except I’m just not stressing about getting stuff done, not trying so hard to make it magical, just letting it happen.”

Ha! Three days later and I’m suddenly realizing we’ve eaten all the cookies I baked, I still have date balls to throw together, quiche to bake, presents to wrap, and my allergies have hit for some ungodly reason so I’m stuffy, wheezing, and bubble-headed from the antihistamines. What do I do to compensate? I tell myself that everything is going to be fine, turn on my “Crooners” Christmas cd, and make a list.

Wednesday morning, and things started out okay with no indication of the craziness to come: My husband is on vacation, so we went out to breakfast. Nice, but probably not smart since it wasn’t on “the list.” Still, we enjoyed great food and service at The Peppermill, as usual, and we were charmed to see a bright red fishing shack already pulled out onto the smooth, new ice on Sokokis Lake. I ran into the village market to pick up a few (cartful) of last-minute groceries and baking supplies, and chatted with the guy who was stocking the Squire Mountain tub cheese. Click on the link to read about the company. Squire Mountain was started in 1996 in Fryeburg, Maine, and I asked the guy if it was still made locally. He grinned behind his wire-rim glasses and said, “My wife and I make it.” I said, “I served this at my last ladies’ craft night. The cheddar kind.” He said, “You have to try the new one, Garlic & Herb.” So I grabbed a small container and a package of crackers. It is delicious . . . and local.

So I went home and commenced to baking. Well, melting and stirring and burning and cursing is more like it. I tried to make date balls. I’ve made them before with no problem, but a few things were working against me: an old pan I picked up at a yard sale this summer, my bubble-headed state, and too many things running through the bubble-headed brain. While waiting for the egg/sugar/date mixture to boil, I decided I should water the Christmas tree before it dried out and burned the house down. From beneath the fragrant branches of the balsam fir, I smelled . . . scorching. Ack! Sure enough, the mixture had some to a boil and burned completely black on the bottom. Apparently the old pot had been burned-on before, making it much more likely to scorch again.

I took the goop off the stove, dumped it into another pan, and hoped nobody would notice the slight smoky flavor in the date balls later on. In went the rice puff cereal. I buttered my hands, reached in to form a ball and . . . nothing. It wouldn’t stick. About this time I realized I had forgotten to add the melted butter and vanilla. I quickly added those ingredients and stirred them in, but that greasy butter didn’t help. Frantic, I did what all good cooks do when they get into trouble with a recipe. I called Mom.

She sympathized, but didn’t really have any suggestions other than, “Well, can’t you just eat it like it is?” I thought, “With what? Spoons?” But I just wailed and said, “I’ve gotta go. I’m getting nothing done and it’s already 1 o’clock!”

Keep in mind that I’d already missed a)my dentist appointment on Monday (woke up at 3 am on Tuesday and said “oh s%$%!” and b)missed my friend’s daughter’s violin recital on Tuesday (woke up at 3:13 am on Wednesday and said “oh s%$%!”). My brain was definitely on vacation. My hands attempted to take up the slack, but, alas, the results weren’t good.

So, I dumped the date ball mixture AND the pan into the trashcan and started chopping cranberries for cranberry bread. I’d already made some small breads to take to the neighbors, so I figured this would go smoothly. It did, for the most part, except when the bread was in the oven baking, I relaxed with a cup of coffee and jumped onto the computer to catch up on my email. Which wouldn’t have been a problem except I forgot it was a school day . . . and forgot to pick up my daughter at the bus stop!

Those of you who know me are probably gaping at the computer screen right now. I’ve given up job opportunities fearing I’d miss her bus. It’s a sign of how discombobulated I was that my irresponsible parenting didn’t even faze me. By the time I headed out in the truck, she’d done the right thing and hitched a ride from a neighbor. When I got back into the house, I looked at husband and child and said, “You go shopping without me. I need a nap.” I think the two days of 3 am waking had taken it’s toll (plus don’t forget the allergies and antihistamines.) I think my husband was slightly afraid to leave me home alone with a stove, but he manned up and took the daughter to Cabela’s and Pizza Hut while I napped. By the time they came home, I’d roused myself enough to wrap presents. I guess we’ll find out this morning if I managed to get the right tags on the right gifts.

Finally, I’d accomplished something. Oh, yes, the cranberry bread came out okay except I tried to wrap it too early and it broke in half. No problem. I sliced it up and stuck the slices on a plate.

Did I mention I was still working on a handknit, felted bag for my mother? I finished that up and stuck it in the washing machine on the hot/cold setting. When I took it out, it had felted up beautifully. I lovingly placed it out in the mudroom in front of the electric heater, hoping it would dry enough by the next afternoon so I could wrap it before my parents arrived. It did.

My Christmas Karma was back to normal.

Thursday, Christmas Eve: My mother brought date balls and gingerbread cookies, so I could concentrate on the Christmas Eve dinner: fish chowder, spiral ham, sweet potato casserole, sour pickles, and cranberry bread. There was tub cheese and crackers for appetizer along with some dates stuffed with fresh goat cheese from Downhome Farm that Laura gave me when I went to pick up my milk. The table sparkled with my good crystal and the fancy dishes I bought back before my wedding (at Mardens, where my mother also found my wedding gown, something nobody can believe.) With jazz on the cd player and cheerful hearts, we sat down to enjoy our meal. It couldn’t have been nicer.

So that’s my Christmas horror story with a happy ending. I also wanted to share this year’s most unique gift idea. Laura also suggested this one, and it worked out just fine. I purchased her first emu egg of the year, blew it out, made a bacon/cheese quiche, and presented the quiche and beautiful, dark green egg to my artist friend, Sandy. I thought she might like to paint the egg. Here is a picture of the egg.

I leave you on with wishes for a Merry Christmas, dear Reader. And remember, it’s not about the gifts or the food or the tree, not really. It’s about family and friends and the darkest days of the year passing and the light coming back to the world.

Christmas Carding

Dear Reader:

I haven’t sent my Christmas cards out yet, but I have been doing some carding . . . fiber carding.

One of the neat things about trying to be more local has been meeting new and talented people and learning new and fascinating skills from those people. I took up knitting a few years ago thanks to my friend, Sandy, who bugged, er, encouraged me until I grabbed a pair of bamboo needles and crafted my first fuzzy scarf. Coincidentally, knitting is an activity that allows me to support local business by buying yarn, needles, books, and other supplies from small business owners like Rosemary at Rosemary’s Gift Shop in the neighboring town of Cornish.

If you ever get a chance to visit Cornish, Maine, do so. It is a small New England village with an old-fashioned common green surrounded by vintage buildings, many of which house antique shops, quaint stores, and restaurants. Rosemary has a gift shop downstairs and a large inventory of yarns on the second floor. I can never leave there until I’ve spent at least an hour looking at yarns that run the gamut from tiny fingering weight for socks to airy, bulky yarns perfect for fun hats and scarves. The only problem is deciding which to bring home!

As much as I love buying factory-made yarn in all its variety, I yearned to learn how to spin my own yarn.

I had seen demonstrations at fairs and craft shows, and the process fascinated me. I suspected the repetitive motion and resulting product–usable yarn–would suit my daydreamy personality. I love activities that keep my hands busy while allowing my mind to wander at will. Solitary activities with only the sound of music from radio or cd to accompany the work. Writing falls into this category. It is active, my hands moving over the keyboard and fingers tapping the keys while my mind spins stories and ideas and dialogue. Spinning, I thought, would be similar, but even more tactile.

Lucky for me, I met Laura who offered to teach me the basics of spinning and to let me borrow her cute little Ashford Kiwi wheel. Over successive Thursdays, Laura taught me how to predraft wool rovings, how to spin the rovings into yarn singles, how to ply singles together into double-ply or navajo ply, and finally how to card washed and dyed wool and roll the carded fibers into round, skinny bundles called rolags.

In essence, I started at the end–knitting a garment–and have worked my way back to carding the fiber. If I continue on this course, I’ll end up dying wool and then washing wool and then shearing a sheep and then buying my own flock. I’m pretty sure my husband will stop me before I get to that first, basic step in the life cycle of a sweater. However, this week I’ve been practicing my carding skills, and thought my readers would enjoy learning a little bit about the process.

Dyed Goat Fiber

The dyed fiber comes in a clumpy bundle. This particular fiber comes from a goat–probably cashmere–and contains the outer guard hairs that look and feel just like human hair to me. There’s plenty of woolier stuff in there, too, but the little locks of hair make for an interesting texture. See the picture above.

The first step is placing bits of fiber onto one of the carding paddles. Here you can see the rough, curly pieces of fiber snagged onto the curved teeth of the carding paddle. This paddle I balance against my left thigh while pulling the fiber onto the other paddle in my right hand. As the fiber is transfered from one paddle to the other, the teeth pull and straighten the individual fibers.

After a couple of exchanges

Notice how much fluffier and straight the fibers are now after a couple of passes from one paddle to the other? Once the fiber appears ready, I can lift them in one long, somewhat flat sheet of wool that I roll in a somewhat spiral fashion from one end to the other.

All carded and ready to roll

The resulting tube of fiber is called a rolag. Here is a pile of rolags I made this morning while listening to NPR.

Rolags

From these rolags, I spun a wiry, hairy yarn. The consistency of the fiber was slick and slippery, and I experimented with a couple of different techniques. I finally settled on a modified inchworm technique, pulling out a few fibers at a time with my left hand and smoothing the yarn as I went.

Spinning fiber into single ply

The spinning went fast, and before I knew it, I’d used up all my rolags! The resulting yarn isn’t perfect. The fibers tended to slip past each other as I drew it out little by little, creating tiny bumps called slubs. Luckily, another friend gave me a pile of back issues of Spin-Off Magazine. If you are at all interested in spinning or weaving or simply knitting with handspun yarn, take a peek at this informative and colorful publication.

Looking through the back issues, I made a happy discovery: slubs are cool! In fact, I found a number of how-to articles teaching experienced spinners how to create these slubby yarns on purpose.
Apparently, as you become more adept at spinning, the muscles in your hand get into the habit of making nice, smooth, even yarn–a good thing when you want perfect, beautiful skeins. This muscle memory become a handicap, however, when you decide to try your hand making funky “art yarn” full of bumps and twists and uneven textures. I’ve decided to consider my beginner yarn as art yarn and stop beating myself up for the imperfections. After all, I may never be able to make natural-looking slubs again!

Single ply on bobbin

Here is the yarn on the bobbin. I will work for a few more hours making rolags and will continue to fill the bobbin. When I’ve filled the bobbin, I will decide whether to make a double ply yarn by twisting two strands together, use the yarn as a single ply, or maybe even try to navajo ply–looping the yarn over itself from one strand. Maybe Laura can help me decide which would be the best treatment for this kind of fiber. I can get a pretty good idea of what the double ply would look like by pulling out the end section of the yarn and letting it twist back onto itself.

Test for double ply

Isn’t that cute? I’ve already thought of a use for this fuzzy yarn. It will be perfect for accent rows on a striped hat I will create from various balls of my beginner yarns. I’ve even thought of a name for this dark, shiny maroon yarn–Cherry Holler.

Which makes me think of chocolate-covered cherries.

Which makes me wonder how it would look plied with a dark brown fiber . . . oh, dear, you can see where this is leading.

Next week, tune in for a blog about unusual, local gifts for the holidays. Enjoy your present-wrapping, egg-nog drinking, carol-singing and whatever it is you do between now and your solstice-tradition of choice. That’s it for today . . . Outside the Box.

Local Ties

Mary Jane Slippers

Dear Reader:

Some of us are lucky enough to be living in our hometowns. We have extended families and familiar friends with whom to talk and laugh and share our troubles. Our grandparents, great-grandparents, even great-grandparents lived and worked and loved and died within the familiar boundaries of our town. We know the best swimming holes, the crankiest citizens, the oldest trees. The creaky floorboards of the corner store are as known as the creaky stairs in our own homes. Older folks remember us from when we were kids. We have a support system. People know us . . . love us or hate us . . . but know us. We feel connected and involved.

Others of us aren’t so lucky. We’ve relocated to new towns and cities in search of work, or perhaps we just wanted a fresh start. Without the security blanket of shared history, we find ourselves exposed to the coolness of strangers. We are more isolated than we’d like. We wonder why we just don’t seem to “fit.” Perhaps we’ve landed in a place that doesn’t really suit our personality. Perhaps the natives are distrustful of newcomers. Perhaps we are homesick for the familiar landscapes of our childhood and cannot find even an approximation.

We crave companionship and a sense of belonging. We cast about for fellow pilgrims, for friendship. We wonder if we’ll ever feel at home in this new place. We join circles, salons, teams, groups, clubs, societies, packs, parties, neighborhoods and tribes. We seek soulmates, friends, companions, partners, neighbors, and colleagues. Eventually, if we are lucky, we find some fellowship.

I’ve been talking with various people about this lately (okay, pretty much non-stop for the last six years or so), and it seems that the older I have gotten, the more difficult it has been to hook-up with likeminded individuals, to make connections, to find a circle of friends, to forge deep and lasting friendships.

Growing up in a rather insular church society that included a private school, I had few friends outside the small, yet secure environment in which my parents placed me. My friends were the kids who attended Sunday school with me every weekend and whose desks were next to mine in our Christian-school classrooms from kindergarten all the way up through twelfth grade. We grew up together, went through the process of “becoming” together.

We shared clothes and books and food from our lunchboxes. We slept over at each others’ houses and talked all night. We listened to the same music, had crushes on the same boys, watched the same television shows, and hated and loved the same teachers. We played on sports teams together and sang together in the chorus. We endlessly discussed who we wanted to be, what we wanted to do, who we wanted to marry, where we wanted to live when we grew up. We analyzed our relationships with other friends, boyfriends, parents, and siblings. We talked about our bodies, our fears, our dreams, and our humiliations. Oh, those humiliations.

College friendships were easy, too. There we were, young adults with no more than four years difference between us, attending classes with the same professors, eating the same meals at the cafeteria, sleeping in indentical dorm rooms, drinking out of the same kegs at the same parties and watching the same people pass out behind the couch (okay, so I didn’t go to too many keg parties, but you get the idea.)

Here, too, we shared our thoughts and feelings about anything and everything, growing wiser and deeper together, feeling the possibility and power of our youthful potential. Heady days, figuring out who we really were . . . or were becoming.

Inevitably, graduation and careers and marriage and moves forced us apart, and now most of us live hours and days from each other. We are left stranded in our adulthood and wondering why it is so difficult to forge new friendships that are that easy and comfortable and close. What has happened to us, we wonder?

Dinner Party Table

After much discussion and thought, I think I’ve figured out the secret ingredient to strong friendships–time. When you are a child, and even more so when you are a young adult in college, you have countless hours in which to “hang-out.” As an adult? Not so much. Some of us have jobs and long commutes that eat up most of the weekday hours. We have PTC meetings and volunteer duties. We have houses to clean, wood to get into the cellar, pets to take to the vet’s office, cars to register at the town office. We’re lucky if we can squeeze in a half-hour for exercise and dinner with the family. Heading over to the coffee shop to sit with a friend feels like a luxury we can rarely indulge in.

Mant of us have children and spouses demanding our attention. Grown-up social gatherings don’t just “happen” like they did in college. There is no designated party house for every Friday and Saturday night. Parties are now planned well in advance to allow for childcare arrangements and coordination of schedules . . . and God forbid anyone comes down with a virus or a snowstorm hits.

When we aren’t involved with the daily ups and downs of our companions, though, we lose intimacy. The word “time” is even embedded in the word “intimacy.” In our older friendships, shared history is a shortcut to intimacy. With new friendships, there are no shortcuts. It’s just plain work. Fun work, but time consuming work. And the path is full of twists and turns and false starts and missteps.

Time is the big factor, but we may also be psychologically closed to the kind of friendship we made in our younger years. Having outgrown adolescent narcissism (hopefully) we are sure the other person doesn’t want to hear all about our past triumphs and failures, and so we hold back. We’ve been through stuff. Maybe we don’t want to be completely open because we’ve been burned in the past, shared with someone who took our stories and broadcast them to our embarrassment. We have our reputations and our spouse’s and children’s reputations to worry about.

We don’t want our crazy pasts (or presents) to reflect badly on our families. Maybe a fresh start and a clean slate were part of the reason we left our hometown in the first place. Perhaps we feel foolish, admitting lonliness, admitting mistakes, admitting failures. We are adults, now. We should know better–about everything. It would be daft to admit we don’t, in fact, have it all together.

No longer looking ahead to our adult lives, we are smack in the middle of them. We feel silly talking about our hopes for the present, for the future. Where do dreams and aspirations fit into a middle-aged life? We are supposed to BE there, to have ARRIVED already. We can talk about our hopes for our kids and maybe about retirement (but, really, that’s a little depressing, isn’t it?), but we’ve forgotten how to dream for ourselves . . . or at least we’ve forgotten how to share those dreams. We are embarrassed. We’ve learned to hold in our feelings. It’s what adults do.

Yet, we feel alone. I know I’m not the only one who feels this lack of connection because so many of my women friends confess to feeling the same way (somewhat self-consciously and reluctantly). We don’t know our neighbors the way we imagine we should. Our activities pull us in many different directions. Our kids have baton and music lessons, Lego League or basketball practice, and homework.

Even though we live in the same town and our kids go to the same school, a great bit of life is spent in our cars traveling out of the hometown to points hither, thither and yon. Spouses work in the cities an hour from home. We are so used-up at the end of the day that the thought of getting into the car one more time–even to visit with a friend–exhausts us. In all this hecticness, something gets lost, and most often what is lost is regular time with like-minded companions. Friendship, like expensive chocolate, feels like a luxury we shouldn’t indulge in.

All this busy-ness fractures our communities, as relationships form the structure on which a community is built and relationships are glued together by time.

If we want to feel connected–to our friends, to our community, to our neighbors–then we need to give those ties time to bind. Schedule a regular coffee break with that nice person you met at the PTC meeting. Call your friend two or three times a week and share the highlights and lowlights of your days. Don’t rely on social networks on the internet. Get face-to-face with your favorite people on a regular basis. I can’t emphasize this enough: schedule friend-time.

Maybe you can exercise together, shedding pounds while sharing your life stories. Work on a home project together–first at one house and then the other. Invite a buddy over to watch a football game on Sunday afternoon (you were going to watch it anyway; why not bond over a plate of nachos and a beer?) Host a craft night.

There are layers of connectness. You might not want to be “best-friends” with your neighbors, but recognizing them in the grocery store would be nice. This is something I need to work on. My idea this holiday season is to bake cranberry bread for my neighbors and deliver it along with an invitation to a get-to-know-your-neighbors open house sometime in January.

Shopping at local businesses and volunteering for local charitable or civic organizations are two more ways to make community connections. It’s next to impossible feel part of the “Wal-Mart community” or the “Target community.” But when you go to the local supermarket and chat with various townspeople two or three times a week, you begin to feel connected. You know which cashier can never remember the price of the farm butter but makes the toddlers riding in the carts laugh when she says “see ya’ later, alligator.” When you volunteer at the library, you learn which patrons like the romance novels, which ones gravitate to the home decor section, and who never returns their books on time but always has a friendly comment about that month’s art display on the walls.

As we head toward the beginning of a new year, take a minute or two to think about your local ties. Is there someone you’d like to know better? Is there an organization you’d like to join? Can you maybe give up an hour or two of television in exhange for some quality time with a new friend or neighbor? Give a little of yourself, take a chance on sharing some of your history. If you don’t connect with one person, try again with someone else. Maybe the current place will never feel like your hometown, but it will be your kids’ hometown. Maybe the current place isn’t perfect for your temperament, but you can create pockets of comfort in the community when you begin to forge new friendships. Examine this place in which you find yourself, focus on what you like, and ignore those things you don’t like. At least that’s what I am attempting to do . . . Outside the Box.

P.S. Here’s an idea for a handmade gift for a friend–old or new. Cute little Mary Jane-style slippers. I got the pattern from a most excellent magazine called MARY JANES FARM. The slipper pattern was in the August-September 2009 issue on page 88. I purchased the yarn at the Steep Falls Farmer’s Market a few months ago. The wool came from a nearby farm and was processed into yarn at the Barlett Mill in Harmony, Maine–a wool-spinning mill that has been in operation since 1821! Check it out, grab your knitting needles (there’s a crochet pattern, too), and whip up a quick pair of slippers.

Money Talks

Handknit Felted Purse

Dear Reader:

I thought it was about time to talk a little bit about money. With the holiday shopping season upon us, it might be good to remind ourselves that money doesn’t a)grow on trees b)come cheap or c)come with no strings attached. In order to get money, you either have to earn it or borrow it. If you borrow it, you have to pay it back within a certain period of time and you have to pay extra in the form of interest. A basic rule of economics is that unless you like those nasty strings and expensive interest, you shouldn’t spend more than you earn. We Americans have trouble with that concept apparently, both at the personal and the national level. It’s no secret. We are in serious debt.

The National Debt
When Bill Clinton left office in January 2000, we had managed to balance the federal budget. Oh, we still had debt, but we were no longer adding to that debt. After 9/11, however, our spending increased as we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, our revenues in the form of taxes were decreased–three tax cuts were initiated even as we were increasing our military and other spending. This fiscal policy greatly increased our debt. According to the Department of Treasury, Bureau of Public Debt, on January 1, 2000 the national debt was 5.7 trillion dollars. By 2008 it had ballooned to 9.2 trillion dollars. This was during the “reign” of a supposed fiscal conservative!

Personal Debt
It’s hard to point fingers at our leaders when we are just as guilty when it comes to our own fiscal responsibility. According to Credit.com, Americans now have a revolving debt balance total of $972,494,000. While some statistics put the average credit card holder in debt of upwards of $8,000, this particular website claims that the median balance is $2,200 which really doesn’t sound all that bad. What it tells me is that if we simply bought less stuff, we could easily pay off our credit cards debt and then–gasp–maybe even begin to save some money. If we don’t begin to be fiscally responsible individually AND as a country, we are going to be in big trouble in the coming decades. Let’s talk about why.

An Informative Documentary
This morning, I watched a documentary film called I.O.U.S.A. Slanted neither to the left or right politically, this excellent film directed by Patrick Creadon explained how our country’s budgets have changed over time, the amount of debt we have taken on and when, what a balanced budget really means, how federal debt relates to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), why and how so much of our debt is owned by foreign countries (Japan, China, etc.), how the trade deficit impacts the monetary supply, the difference between fiscal policy and monetary policy, how much debt we really are in (when you count in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits we will begin paying out as the Baby Boomers reach retirement age), and more. Click HERE to go the the I.O.U.S.A. website where you can view a 30-minute version of the film and find stats and other information of interest.

So, how did we get into this fiscal mess? Looking back at history, it seems that most of our debt has been incurred during times of war. Wars cost money. Lots of money. The War for Independence put our fledgling nation into debt right off the bat. We managed to pay down that debt. Then the Civil War plunged us into debt. We paid that down, too. World Wars I and II were huge money-suckers. The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing us hundreds of billions of dollars.

Wars are not the only debt-producers, however. In the 1930’s we spent our way out of the Great Depression by instituting social programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Until now, these programs have actually brought in more revenue than we’ve spent, making the fiscal deficit appear smaller than it really is. According to a treasury website, today’s debt is $11,991,506,876,413.07. But this figure does not include the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid dollars we actually used to help balance the budget rather than saved for when the Baby Boomers retire. According to the writers of I.O.U.S.A. if we added in the entire debt owed in 2008, the amount would be $53,000,000,000!

Stop Paying for . . . what?
Some of us believe that simply ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will allow us to balance our budget, but the war is only 4.7% of our budget spending. Some of us believe that getting rid of earmarks and “pork-barrel” spending will solve the problem, but that only accounts for 1.27% of the budget. To see a pie chart of the 2009 budget, click here.

According to this chart, much of our budget is taken up by Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment/welfare, and interest on the national debt. If you are my age (forty-ish) or younger, you probably don’t expect to ever see Social Security or Medicare benefits, but the generations ahead of us certainly do expect to keep on getting their benefits. Unemployment benefits have been pretty important for Americans who have lost their jobs to outsourcing and the scaling back of businesses due to the housing bubble in our economy. The interest owed on our debt in probably non-negotiable. Every year as our deficit increases, our debt increases, and that pesky interest obligation will take up a bigger chunk of our pie. And just imagine what the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid portions will look like when the Boomers start retiring in earnest.

What about revenues, you ask? We must be bringing something in. Yes, you are right. Revenues come in to the federal budget through taxation–and don’t we all just love taxes? But even with what some consider a huge tax burden, the expenditures in our budget outweigh the revenues by billions of dollars. Revenues for 2009 were estimated at 2.7 trillion while expenditures were estimated at 3.1 trillion, according to stats provided by the U.S. Government printing office and posted on Wikipedia. (click here for the site.)

An Informative Book
So, if expenditures are so much greater than revenue, where does the government get the funds to cover the costs? By borrowing. The government sells bonds–more and more often to foreign governments like China–or exchanges bonds for money to be issued by the Federal Reserve. I’ve been reading about the latter in a very compelling book entitled THE WEB OF DEBT researched and written by Ellen Hodgson Brown, J.D. Click HERE to read an excerpt and learn more about the book.

Did you know the Federal Reserve Bank is not owned by the U.S. Government? I didn’t. The Fed is an independent privately-owned corporation which creates and issues money at the government’s request. The government does the printing, but the bank issues the money on credit–with interest that must be paid back. There are twelve regional Federal Reserve banks which are owned by a bunch of commercial banks. Each of these twelve regional banks own a percentage of stock in the Federal Reserve System. At the time of the books printing, New York was the largest of these and held 53%–the commercial banks that owned this New York Fed Reserve bank were Chase Manhattan, JP Morgan, and Citibank. (WEB OF DEBT, page 127.)

In any case, the U.S. government (hence, we taxpayers) asks the Federal Reserve Bank to create money that will enter the economy. The creation of money is regulated by the Fed, not the government. The government does appoint the chairperson (for many years this was Alan Greenspan) whose job it is to run the Federal Reserve System and to set the interest rates. The money the U.S. government borrows, is to be paid back, with interest, to the Federal Reserve Bank. The commercial banks who own stocks in the Fed, profit. The stockholders of the commercial banks as well as the executives of these banks, profit in the form of stock increases and bonuses. Wealth, in the form of interest, thus flows from the taxpayer to the banks to the investors in those banks. Your taxes are funneled toward rich investors via national borrowing. When those investors are foreign countries–say, China–our taxes help enrich a foreign nation whose political system may be in direct opposition to our own. This is to say nothing about our trade deficit with said countries. Isn’t this interesting?

(I’m thinking that at least with Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Unemployment, and Welfare at least the money goes back to Americans. If we’d just buy American-made goods, we’d keep our money right here at home where it belongs. But that’s just my opinion.)

I am only about a third of the way into this book. As I learn more, I will pass along the information, but you don’t need to take it from me. Read the book yourself. Watch the movie. Search our other sources of information. A bi-partisan group called the Concord Coalition fights hard for fiscal responsibility. Check out their website HERE.

Stop Fighting Each Other
One thing I am taking away from all this research is that all of us–liberal and conservative alike–are being used by big money, big government, and big business. I believe we are being played against one another, like pit bulls put into a ring to fight it out while the handlers profit. A pit bull only wants to eat and sleep and live his doggy life. He is forced into a fight because someone else controls him, someone who is attempting to profit off him. The “enemy” pit bull wants the same things and is put into the same position. In the end, neither the progressive nor the conservative dog wins. Each comes away bruised, ripped, and bleeding . . . or dead. Meanwhile, the handlers collect the wagers and go home smiling.

By pitting “Libertarians” against “Progressives”, the big money interests can wheel-and-deal in the shadows while we are focused on ripping and tearing into each other. We fight about government regulation, income taxes, welfare, healthcare reform, the wars on terror, drugs, and illegal immigration while all the while the bankers and the power-mongers quietly gather vast amounts of money and influence. At least, that’s how I’m beginning to see things here . . . Outside the Box.

When life hands you chicken bones . . .

… make chicken soup!

(The picture here is actually a pumpkin/carrot/sweet potato soup, also very healthy with betacarotene. Sprinkled on the salad is dulse–a sea vegetable with lots of vitamins and minerals.)

Dear Reader:

Tis the season of sniffling–and coughing and aching and shivering with fever. Colds and seasonal flus and H1N1 are spreading thoughout our communities this month, weakening our immune systems, keeping our kids out of school, and making us feel miserable. The television news serves up fresh doses of anxiety every day with stories of severe illness and death and urgent warning to get vaccinated. Of course, the vaccine isn’t even available yet in many communities, so many people feel scared and helpless and stressed. Negative emotions like these do not boost the old immune system. In fact, they wear us down even more. Aside from getting adequate sleep, taking a multi-vitamin, drinking alot of water, washing your hands, avoiding crowded places like the mall, and quarantining your school-age kids as soon as they get off the bus so as not to contaminate the entire household (kidding), what can we do to make this season of sickness a little more manageable?

While waiting for the Swine Flu vaccine to finally arrive and kick in (I heard it takes a week or two), consider the simple power of chicken soup. Made from leftover bones and meat from your Sunday dinner with the addition of a few humble vegetables sitting in your refridgerator, homemade chicken soup is inexpensive, nutritious, and delicious, especially if served with a fresh loaf of homemade bread or maybe some apple muffins. Click here for a good recipe.

So, does chicken soup merely soothe your sore throat or are there some actual, scientific health benefits? According to Dr. Stephen Rennard, chicken soup does contain chemical properties that can ease cold and flu symptoms. The amino acid cystein, found in chicken, thins mucus, helping a sick person clear his/her lungs and nose. When you add onion, the anti-histamine properties of that pungent vegetable can offer some relief. Vegetables contain all kind of vitamins and minerals as well as delicious flavor for your soup.
Read all about it on Sixwise.com.

Also consider purchasing some sea vegetables such as kelp or wakame or dulse, soaking them for a few minutes, chopping them up, and adding them to your soup. Commonly known as “seaweed”, these greens contain concentrated amounts of vitamins and minerals such as Vitamin A, Calcium, Iron, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamins B 6 and B 12, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Iodine, Fluoride, Chromium, and Zinc. Maine Coast Sea Vegetables out of Franklin, Maine offer a large variety of seaweeds. Their products can be found in many grocery and natural food stores, or shop online by clicking on the link above. Sea vegetables can add a slightly more salty flavor to your soup, but there will be no fishy taste. If you chop them fine enough, and mix in some herbs such as thyme, parsley, and rosemary, even the pickiest eaters will never know they are eating, gasp, seaweed.

Do you have any immunity-boosting suggestions? Share you ideas and knowledge here, Outside the Box.