School starts one week from today and this is what our campus looks like. I am exhausted and exhilarated by it all. For the past five years, we have planned and talked about and raised money for the school. It has pushed me into areas of great discomfort and frustration. But I have also been brought to tears by the generosity and kindness of people. One day last week, a young woman came into the school and said, "I just needed to be sure this building was still here. I loved being her every day." She was in my class when she was 3, 4, and 5, and now is in her twenties. It is humbling to know that sometimes our everyday actions have a greater impact than we can imagine.

So the dream buildings are rising from the dirt and now we have to fill them with children and adults in community with each other. Here is something I read today from one of my mentors:

"And so, Montessori teachers must teach children to read, write, and calculate - and they must do it well. But with these academics, spiritually aware teachers can encourage children to love, to forgive, to be responsible, to be tolerant, to feel compassion for the less fortunate, and to work for the common good. Spiritual nurturing, by spiritually aware adults, can give children the spiritual strengths they will need to work for Montessori's goal of creating a better and more peaceful world."

and this:

"In a democracy, election of the most able leaders depends on the voters' ability to analyze the claims and arguments of those seeking office. Such analysis can only occur when the electorate can listen discriminately, think clearly, and express themselves accurately."

Time to get to work.

On Harvey ... by Kenny

It’s oil over now, baby blue

You must leave the coast, take what you think will last

And look for higher ground, you better find it fast

Yonder seas are dead, and they're a-rising

There’s a tar sands fire on the horizon

Look out now, hurricanes are coming through

and it's oil over now, baby blue

The highway is for truckers, better use your sense

Crude/chemical explosions and pipeline spills, coincidence?

Carbon fumes are fogging up your streets

and fracking’s uncontrollable methane leaks

the sky's the source for solar power too

and it's oil over now, baby blue

All your oil-slick sailors, they are rowing home

your empty-handed armies, are all going drone

The coal market just walked out the door

renewables now promise so much more

the ring of fire is rumbling under you

and it's oil over now, baby blue

Leave your fossil fuels behind, something calls for you

Forget BP and Shell, conserve and follow through

If we don’t want to bring the planet to a boil

we'll have to leave some oil in the soil

walk or ride, share, go start anew

and it's oil over now, baby blue

- Kenny D., with apologies to Bob D.

On Harvey ... by Maggie

Eronga, Lunes, 28 de Agosto

Hurricane Harvey

Houston

oil refineries, chemical plants, pipelines… 

Are we ready? Beautiful ocean are you ready? 

Terrorist attack on fossils

by the power of nature 

to respond – resist – reset

man- made imbalance Hurricane Pachamama, 

are we ready? NO. 

When's day morn 8/30/2017 

Rain off and on 

all night, all morn 

90% chance, all week 

Rain outside

Rain inside - Rain around the planet 

on the monitor and flooding our minds 

drenching any other thoughts.

After-math, 

the never-ending equation... 

Business, as usual? 

Is there such a thing? 

Recovery? 

Let it go! 

Recover the CO2 from the air; 

recover the plastic from the ocean; 

recover our connection 

our con-science 

our humility.

And, for the "white" clan,

if you think for one moment 

that the survivors will be the "white thoroughbreds"...think again

You may be the first to go with your “cold, dead fingers” wrapped around the triggers.



Well, it’s twelve noon 

 Kenny has gone to Patzcuaro. 

 Fresh Lemon pie arrives at the door 

 maybe another cup of coffee will rescue me from the rain. 

 I’ll have a Skype chat with Molly, 

 put on the latest playlist from Max 

 and carry on, 

 in the slick of it.


- Maggie D

Land

Powderhorn.

Wake up to the sound of grosbeaks,

mountain water, horses stirring. The sun's

not quite up yet, and the fir needles

haven't quite come up out of the dark.

The boots are wet when you put them on, and

the tall meadow grass goes soaking through your jeans.

It's cold up here, looking way out down on

sunburnt sage. There's birdsong slowly rising

with the day, squirrel chatter, on last star

glowing out south and east. Stay quite a moment,

walk up slowly to the horses. One by one

they are hobbled and let go, the line

taken down, and you walk back toward camp

through the knee-deep nightsoaked grass. The sun now

is almost risen; the fireweed is beginning

to glow.

                             -Lee Farese

New Tracks

Here is a copy of the playlist I sent to grandma and grandpa recently. I have attached a link to a YouTube playlist version as well. I'll be adding onto it periodically with more music discoveries. Hope everyone is well! 
- Max

Songs We Used To Sing - Possessed by Paul James

He's Fine - The Secret 

Handle with Care - Jenny Lewis

Easy Rider - Eddie Berman

I Will Not Be Afraid - Caroline Rose

Rhythm and Blues - The Head and The Hear

Getting Ready to Get Down - Josh Ritter 

Third of May / Odaigahara - Fleet Foxes

Meet Me in the City - North Mississippi Allstars

That's How I Got to Memphis - Tom T. Hall

1936 - PHOX

One More Night in Brooklyn - Justin Townes Earle

Hey Stranger - Mandolin Orange

Lady May - Tyler Childers

Lost in the Dream - War on Drugs

Golden - My Morning Jacket

Little Record Girl - Bahamas

Leave Here Standing - Hayes Carll

Kansas City - The New Basement Tapes

My Old Man - Mac DeMarco

YouTube playlist

Claire and Fraser tie the knot in Fernie

Some Fill With Each Good Rain

There are different wells within your heart.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far too deep for that.

In one well
You have just a few precious cups of water,
That “love” is literally something of yourself,
It can grow as slow as a diamond
If it is lost.

Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.

There are different wells within us.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far, far too deep
For that.

~ Hafiz in ‘The Gift’ by Daniel Ladinsky

Fashion Show at Nina's

Nina looked after June last weekend while Jenny took a much needed trip with here girls. Based on the photos below looks like Nina and June played dress up for most of that time :) Also some pictures of cuddles.

Spring Cleaning in the Shop

Spent a couple weekends getting the shop open for business this spring. Caught a raccoon hanging out in the wall when I hung the doors on the house, ended up stripping out old insulation and plywood that had been a nesting ground for mice and the furry bandit. Bodhi and I gave him a good scare and chased him off. Also was in bad need of some new work benches as I had no room for tools and hardware and was constantly playing hide and seek with essentials. When the shop shuts down for winter it very quickly becomes a tool shed for urgent household projects, like windows or a new water heater. Something very therapeutic with getting things in order. Even found a spot for a lathe that Calvin has in storage and says he his happy to lend me indefinitely until he sets up a shop.

Next stop is the lumber yard, time to start in on my backlog of projects. I think there is a wedding coming up or something.

Fish eye view of the shop. John, the shop foreman, getting our work plan ready.

New workbench and vise I got on kijiji for 50$. All the tools at arms reach finally. Put a little paint up and trimmed the windows out while I was at it, makes for nicer work space, perfect spot to work on detail stuff as I can see anyone coming. Shelves here and on the hardware bench are all basswood from the wedding table milling session. The 3" thick plywood bench top was a bit of a cop out but once I trim the edges in oak and drill some holes for bench dogs it should work just fine until I can build a proper 3" maple work bench. Despite the appearances of my nothing is square or level shop the bench top is perfectly flat and level. 

Hardware and sharpening station. Will need to figure out a better place to keep my gas, turpentine and kerosene before I fire up that bench grinder, but my chainsaw is happy. Hardware all visible in jars, my favorite being the "trip to town avoidance jar" with all the odds and ends I find around for that rainy day when you need just one of something.

Knocked out a new stand for the chop saw, nice place for processing stock and closer to the dust collector, long stock comes in, gets stacked up then can be jointed, planned and cut to length all in one footprint. Then over the benches for joinery.

Pathway to the Divine

Every now and then, a faint glimmer of god's hand reflects in that built by man,

When sunlight grazes a cathedral's spires revealing all their intricacies,

Or some such fleeting manifestation of godly beauty, that we,

Being imperfect, thinking lofty thoughts, imagine ourselves more.

But in all things not made by man, the cosmos, physical and natural world,

Does god's work beam forth with such blinding radiance, beauty and complexity,

As to shame the greatest, most daunting heights of human ambition,

With something as simple as a mountain stream.

With brutal indignity and self-delusion hath man pried himself from god's embrace,

To build up fortresses for our indifference and keep the sacred from our space,

The soil crushed and entombed beneath our streets, the water channeled underground,

The skies torn asunder by combusting jets and seas afloat with a discarded anthropogenic scum.

But god is not defeated, not yet at least, alive and well in forests flowing among the trees,

In soils richly teeming it leaches life from rock, in oceans swimming ever against human onslaught,

In clear nights, dancing lights along the milky-way,

In windswept mountain meadows whispering to us of play,

With infinite love and patience the gift of freedom god bestows.

Shall we come to live in heaven or hell? Our generation may never know,

God is of all things, our universe, our creator,
She is all of this, nothing less and nothing greater.

I pray we find amidst her many gifts, a state of peace and grace,

Though I rest my head in the knowledge that, regardless, we all return to her embrace.

Grandma Maggie's 80th - Evolving Playlist

Grandma's 80th - April in Eronga!

GLAD TO BE IN MEXICO AGAIN

by David Farrelly (the bamboo poet)

Well, I board a bus in Frisco for the border,

in Mexicali, catch the evening train…

Now we’re sliding out the station

to glide across the nation,

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again!

#(chorus) I’m glad to be, I’m glad to be,

Glad to be in Mexico again!

That Baja is mighty bald and dusty,

and Sonora sure could use a year of rain;

but with a little practice

some can learn to love that cactus,

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again!

#

Oh, the train was in the station in Los Mochis
and I was in the baño for the men,

when this gringo with a goatee

up and offered me peyote

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again.

#

Left the train to bus down to the beaches

past a town in Nayarit named Matanchen.

And I met a dozen locos

on the Playa de Los Cocos,

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again!

#

Well, I aint some Holy Pope or Dalai Lama –

a common mortal dwells beneath my skin.

and I met this sizzling mama

frying fish in Aticama,

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again!

#

I see lights of fishing boats out on the ocean,

light in the east means dawn is coming in…

and the surf’s long crashing motion

has been such a moonlit lotion,

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again!

#

When I was born, God meant to make a gringo,

and I think he nearly managed with my brain.

But I've got a Latin heart

beating in me from the start,

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again.

#

Well, you may not know tortillas from sombreros;

don’t forget amigo is the word for "friend".

Then when you get back home I reckon

ties’ll bind but beans’ll beckon

and you’ll long to be in Mexico again.

                                             

Spring Sprouts + Tomato Trials

Now, in early April, the vegetable gardens in the Pacific Northwest are coming to life. My peas are a few inches tall and starting to climb their trellises. Fruit trees are budding, rhubarb is sprouting, and salad greens that were started in greenhouses and cold frames are ready to be planted outside. This is the end of "the hungry stretch" - the months in late Winter and early Spring when supplies of squash, potatoes and canned harvests from the Fall are running low, but the new Spring growth hasn't produced much besides the occasional salad garnish. Now it is time to hunt slugs, prepare beds, and select the most promising starts to be transplanted.

Below: mustard greens from a variety mix

Below: lettuce starts from seed saved from last years mix

Below: trays of starts in the greenhouse

Here is the Pacific Northwest our long, cool spring is fantastic for salad and peas, but we have to plan ahead for good yields in Summer gardens. The most needy vegetables are the Solanum family - tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplants, and peppers. In the Pacific Northwest we need to start our Solanums early. This year I started peppers in January and tomatoes in March.

I decided to run some trials to find the best potting soil. My three finalists this year were:
A) Soil Blocks (compressed blocks of peat/compost/fertilizer that require no plastic pot)
B) Deluxe Mix
     1/2 Compost
     1/4 Peat/Coconut Fiber
     1/8 Vermiculite
     1/8 Perlite
C) Budget Mix
     1/2 Soil
     1/4 Perlite/Sand
     1/4 Peat/Coconut Fiber
     +Fertilizer

Left: Fertilizer and ingredients to be mixed.   Right: Three growth media.

Each variety will have six starts (two in each mix). varieties range from Italian paste tomatoes to dark Russian tomatoes to little wild tomatoes from Grandma and Grandpa's yard from their first spot in Morelos.

All of these tomatoes will be grown in my deluxe indoor grow machine - a chamber lined with reflective foil on wheels that grows plants on heating blankets under LED lights with 18 volt fans to promote air circulation. The entire system is on a timer - the only human interaction required is watering and fertilizing. This may sound a little too mechanized, but daily care of 126 plants for 3 months is a bit overwhelming.

Below: Pepper starts were already a few months old when tomatoes were started.

Below: Tomatoes today

Below: Soil trial results! L: Budget Center: Blocks R: Deluxe

As evident in the photo above, results were very clear. The Budget mix was superior to the more expensive Deluxe mix, which has more ingredients but no fertilizer, and to the Soil Blocks, which dried out quickly and had a very high seedling mortality rate. I was happy to see that ordinary garden soil can grow great tomatoes by simply: ensuring proper drainage and retention (with Perlite/Sand and Peat/Coconut Fiber) and providing proper nutrients (with powdered organic fertilizer and applications of fish fertilizer).

I'm happy to share a bit of what I've learned so far this spring. I hope that it proves useful. Much love to all of my beautiful and talented relations. 

-Ben

A poem for Jasper and Jenny

On Children

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, 

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might 

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

- Kahlil Gibran