Local community

I went to a "Sustainable Ballard" meeting tonight. Seemed important - I wanted to connect with people who were actively doing something about our changing reality. And this is an energetic group! On Wed they are doing a press release for the goal of making Ballard the first carbon-neutral community in the states.

I sat with the "Food and Health" guild. They've organized into "guilds" to address different areas of concern and expression. I am intrigued by the 100-mile diet (you can only eat stuff produced within 100 miles of your dwelling...)

Frankly, I have to say, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the things I *could* be doing with my time; my evenings. Take up swing dancing again? Throw myself into dating, join some singles groups? Go gung-ho on environmental causes and community building? Yoga several times a week? Plug into the Monkfish Abbey? Join a business-networking group, and work on the new job thing? All while maintaining relationships with current friends and family, and keeping a healthy balance in my life?

I don't think I can do it all!

Reflections


The newspaper

Local leaders plan to spend
creating 2012
ways to keep consuming

turn the page and
the oceans are dying
oil is running out

Reality?

Conflict

The city came to the country
when the food stopped flowing in on black rivers
only to find that the country was armed and waiting

"it's us or you"

The city chose itself only
unprepared to use the artifacts of an eariler age
it wasn't that way after all

Back from my trip

Well, I appear to be over the jet lag if not the cold. We had a great time, packing Sydney, the Outback, the Great Barrier Reef, New Zealand and Hawaii into 22 days.

The first week back was a fog, the second only slightly better. But I'm now back to doing yoga in the mornings and starting to feel like I'm me-ish again.

Highlights of the trip: snorkeling, and seeing all the biological diversity of different climates and a isolated continent in a compressed amount of time. It gave me a clearer sense of the great variety available on this earth, and the sobering reality of Things Going Extinct. (Kangaroos? Only one type of a veritable cornucopia of pouched, long-tailed hoppy things. Many of which are now endangered or gone.)

Oh, and I ate ants. (an ant) Green ones - a little burst of citrus flavor. Really. Apparently they are high in protein and valued by the aboriginals, a great source of food.

If you did not already get the link and are interested in seeing more pictures, drop me a line and I'll direct you to the online photo album!