Under The Cover Of Pines

Rain.

The rains have come.  They arrive this year, unlike the previous few, with a thud, a heavy settling of clouds low in the valley. They come in torrents, more rain than we have seen in any September in a hundred years. I am glad for them.  Autumn is my favorite time of year with its late harvest abundance and brilliant displays of color.  I love the challenge of making something other than Jack O Lanterns with my pumpkins, the delight of finding a new patch of mushrooms, and the Aspen, golden and lean.  I am glad to witness these passages, strange birds only passing through, wildflower stands disappearing into duff, antlers, fully realized. I am glad to be reminded of my own passages, and to find myself whole and on the other side, I take the rains as a sign of more big things to come.

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city

Photograph by:
www.rubygonewild.com

Will Tackle For Food

NFL.

Were you aware of the fact that the National Football League is a recognized non-profit organization with tax exempt status?  Did you know that many of the NFL's stadiums receive enough money in public funds to cover their operational cost, leaving all the revenue from ticket sales, vending, and advertising to go to training and salaries? This tax exempt status may or may not apply to individual teams, but since they have a non-disclosure policy when it comes to finances how much they pay to whom is not publicly known. What we do know is that while Food Stamps and student financial aid are on the chopping block there is no risk of the NFL losing it's public funding, at least not anytime soon. While I understand that the NFL does some amount of charitable outreach, it is by definition an entertainment organization, not a charity and from ticket sales and players salaries alone it seems clear that they can afford to build and run their own stadiums.

Greg Easterbrook has written a book about the impact of football on America and discusses the financial aspects of the NFL at length.  It's worth reading, especially if you pay taxes or watch football.

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city

To hear an interview with the author:

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/24/225775287/nfls-a-nonprofit-author-says-its-time-for-football-reform

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://www.bettingexpert.com/blog/field-position-goal-expectation

Still In Bed

Lazy.

I am not a terribly good sleeper.  I have never been particularly good at falling asleep or taking naps, but these I find myself waking up, unassisted, with the birds at first light.  My initial approach to this was to pout, and toss and turn until the alarm went off, starting my day in a grumpy huff.  That being clearly untenable in the long-term, my next approach was to embrace the extra time in my and launch myself out of bed and into a flurry of early-morning activity, which really only exhausted me before my day had even gotten started, my over-trained body needing more rest than my over-active mind.  Now, I choose the middle road.  The early morning has become a time for me to read or write from bed, a chance to make notes and relieve my busy mind from the constant turning over of things I have to do.  I use that time to acknowledge my cat, who after more than eight years with me can be forgotten but love thrives with additional attention.  I snuggle.  I look out the window at the birds.  I rest. I do not judge myself or insist that my body conform to an ideal model of sleep, but I do not rob myself of the precious time I have carved out of my life for rest and restoration.  I do not allow myself to feel lazy for taking this time.  Overall, I feel better for this, more psychologically prepared to face my day, and more physically rested.  Slowly, I am learning to accept my own internal rhythms and the idea that my body may have a wisdom all its own.

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

Could Go Either Way

Thirty-Something.

Now that I have a firm hold on my mid-thirties, I find a peculiar phenomenon taking place among my cohorts. They are magically able to appear as young as 25 or as old as 45. While some of us are still lithe and fit others carry beer bellies and ponches, close to two decades past our physical prime, the annual three pound weight gain is taking it’s toll on many of us.  There are wrinkles and gray hair and receding hair lines and interesting middle-aged fashion choices.  There is also a tendency towards either much older or much younger behavior, those who cling to social circles much younger than themselves and those that have adopted a world-weary way of interacting.   I can only conjecture as to the cause of this discrepancy, and must assume that genetics plays some role, but what appears to be going on is that our lives up to this point, are decidedly catching up with us. I can tell who has spent too much time in the bars or out in the sun and not enough time in the gym or getting a decent nights rest.  I can see the tracks of worry and hard living etched across faces and have watched friends go grey after a single hard year. The tolls of life come due early, it’s up to us to take good care of ourselves because really, at just halfway through our thirties, we are still young and have a long way to go.

Some conventional wisdom on staying young at heart and looking it:

Eat well, but not too much.

Exercise.

Sleep.

Drink water.

Laugh.

Have hobbies.

Spend time with friends.

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city

Photograph Courtesy of :
http://www.readmyblogplease.com/2013/07/youre-only-as-old-as-your-age.html

Stick It To Me

Needle.

There is no way for me to understate the value of my acupuncturist in my life.  Acupuncture has helped me with anxiety, stomach illness, shin splints, tendinitis, and allergies among other things, sometimes providing relief the moment the right needle is set in place.  With that being said, it still feels a little magical and woo woo even though I have solid proof, from within my own body that it is effective.  Having grown up in the west I have western expectations for what constitutes medical treatment.  Mainly, sterilish looking rooms, staff in scrubs, odd instruments, and the prescription of medication as courses of action. In my life, this formula has largely failed me.  

This is not to say that western medicine does not have it’s place.  If you are hit by a truck or infected with a super-bacteria, or have something in your body that needs to be removed, then western medicine is by far the superior choice.  But for systemic problems, prevention, or chronic conditions, there may be a better course of treatment.  More than that, non-western treatments such as herbalism, naturopathy, and acupuncture are often community-based and far more affordable than western medicine.  Many of these types of treatments empower the patient to successfully self-treat one they understand what works for them.  And that is my point, whatever works for you works for you, regardless of how woo woo it may seem.

When if comes to your body and your medical care, the best course of action is to investigate all of your options and try them out, with an open mind, before dismissing them based on biases or ingrained messages of “correctness’ or “Modernity”.  The reality is that western medicine is a young science that is becoming increasing less effective as is entrenches itself in an unhealthy economic model and focuses on the treatment of symptoms and the lengthening of life at all costs rather than illness prevention or quality of life.  In the end, whatever works for you works for you.  There may be another way.

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/may/30/acupuncture-pain-natural-painkiller

Paralyzing Fears

Doubt.

There are moments in course of our lives that feel like standing on the edge of a diving board. While the obvious is true, that the only real course of action is to move forward, fear, self loathing, and doubt can stick us in place. I see this in dancers, especially very young children, that have figured out the world's expectation of correctness and fear failing to the point of becoming unable to move.  They stand, motionless, rooted to the round beneath them, unable or willing to speak or interact in any way.  Adults, they quit.  They stop trying, they skip an activity, or they leave the class never to return.  From both groups I receive a lot of this plaintive cry, "This is hard for me."  I used to think that this was all about work ethic, that having to try, repeatedly, and the energy and commitment that required was deterrent enough.  Now I believe that is has more to do with fear than anything else.  Fear of failure, fear of looking stupid, fear of judgment, fear of not rising to the level of our own expectations or hopes, whatever the specific fear, the impacts on success can be devastating.

These days, I find myself at the edge of the diving board, toes curled over, looking into the water not even sure what it is exactly that I am afraid of, but peering into the water with apprehension. I wish for the adult in me to tell the small child that everything will be okay. I wish for the rational part of my brain to win the argument in a landslide. I stay at the edge of the board. And then this, a single line of text from my mother:

"Wherever you have dreamed of going I have camped there and left wood for you."

And I jump.

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city

Photograph Courtesy of:
http://www.123rf.com/photo_3906409_underwater-view-of-swimmers-on-diving-boards.html

Two's Company

Crowdsourcing.

The Oxford English dictionary added the term crowdsourcing to it's dictionary in 2013 defining it as the "practice of obtaining information or sources by soliciting input from a large number of people."  Since it's first published use in 2006 crowdsourcing has been embraced by political movements, police investigators, and entrepenuers and artists looking for new and creative ways of obtaining funding.  It has been both incredibly helpful, and damaging; yesterday Reddit shut down a group looking for the DC base shooter, afraid that, similar to incidents after the Boston bombing, innocent people would be publicly accused.

My first experience with crowdsourcing was in the early days of SETI, an acronym for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  SETI uses the the combined computing power of personal computers to sift through radio waves and other cosmic noise in the hope of finding evidence of intelligent life.  It is the largest distributed computing effort in the world and the old stand-by for geeks and conspiracy theorists. To me, it also represents the best of our early dreams of the internet and what we might have done if privacy and piracy and commerce has not forced us to build fire walls and enhanced encryption; it is a relic from our naive days of "free sharing" on the internet.

I find the recent popularity of crowdfunding sites a hopeful indication that we are moving back towards a healthy kind of internet collectivism. What I love about crowdfunding is it's reliance on the numbers. The success of a project does not lie in the generosity of wealthy donors or you best friends willingness to cough up a donation equal in value to the blender you got them for their wedding, but on small donations from many many people.  Crowdsourcing is intended to cast a broad net, reaching as many people as possible and asking of them only what they can afford, and it work.  If 200 people all pledge twenty dollars to a project, that's 4000 dollars in the coffer, the same amount of money if 400 people give just ten dollars.  In this respect, a little goes a long way.

In an era of waning funding for the arts, an ongoing recession, and increasing dependence on the internet for social interaction, crowdsourcing is a necessary new normal and a great opportunity.  It is how new movies and albums and books will be chosen for publication and new products will get their launch.  Crowdsourcing skips the focus groups and market research and goes directly to the people.  You like it, you fund it.  It's that easy.

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city

Resources/Photograph:

http://www.senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/2013/07/24/crowdsourcing-and-history-or-crowdsourcing-history/

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/