This week was A-day, the fourth anniversary of the day we adopted Brooke. She's decided to wait until Brenden and I get there and Alan is available to go out to her celebration dinner. So fun.


That's me and Brooke at our first Christmas. Cutest sisters ever.



And there we are this past June. Man, she's grown up a lot. And I look hot with pink hair, maybe I should do that again.

Anyway, she's a rad sister and I'm super lucky to have her. It'd be better if she ever wrote me, or even emailed, or even called....but you know, I'm sure she's really busy.

Tonight we're watching Serenity with someone who's never seen it before (fun!) and tomorrow I'm going to a workshop called "Growing your CSA farm" which includes lunch at a fancy restaurant,(yum!)

Peace and pink hair...

Alright, so even though I say I don't want to have tv so much in my life, I admit that I watch a bunch of it. Mostly the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and whatever sports Brenden has on. But we've also been watching complete series, one at a time. There was Firefly (I make everyone watch Firefly), then the Gilmore Girls (much to Brenden's chagrin) then Buffy (joy!) and now we're on to Heroes. I've only ever seen an episode or two so it's super fun to see something new. And it's suspenseful and whatever. A good direction post-buffy, too. Superheroes is my life theme.

Hottie:



Has anyone heard of this new movie Repo! The Genetic Opera? It looks super crazy and possibly interesting and it has Anthony Stuart Head in it and it will never play in my small town so I'll have to wait to rent it. Or maybe it'll play in Philly at some point when I'm there for holidays. Or I can stop in NYC just to see it. Gorey, but a musical so worth a chance.

OK, tired now.

I'm taking a day off so I should probably write something more cheerful so people won't worry about me.

 Dulli hugged me for a long tme and got me out in the field digging and laughing and enjoying the sun. That woman is good for the soul. I made dinner (stuffed pumpkin and stuffed squash, white beans, parsnips sauteed in butter) and had a good evening of social time with BF folks. Brenden came out and helped do the dishes which always makes cooknight an easier bit of business. And then we spent the night at my apartment which involved me falling asleep almost immediately and Brenden amusing himself with movies or something.

Last night I was planning on going to see Wes Jackson speak at a Gardenshare benefit dinner but I was awake and in a good mood and decided I wanted to spend that time with my man. He deserves a little awake, happy Nancy. So we had a little Partridge cafe beer and game night. So nice to just relax a bit.

So, all in all I'm ok. I'm a bit frustrated about some things in my life, mostly finances. I guess I just need to work on getting some winter work to make some money and also plan for next year in a way that will end up with Dulli and I making more as partners. It's just the end of the season and we worked so hard and it's frustrating to look at it in terms of making much less than minimum wage. I know how the food system works and that we don't pay enough for our food or appreciate people who grow it or value what we eat to nourish ourselves as much as we should. But, as a farmer, it's hard to be at the end of the year and struggling and dealing with the realities of the situation.



"The New Oxford American Dictionary chose locavore, a person who seeks out locally produced food, as its word of the year. The local foods movement is gaining momentum as people discover that the best-tasting and most sustainable choices are foods that are fresh, seasonal, and grown close to home. Some locavores draw inspiration from the 100-mile diet or from advocates of local eating like Barbara Kingsolver. Others just follow their taste buds to farmers' markets, community supported agriculture programs, and community gardens.



Love and vegetables....

This has been such a tough year for me. I just want to stay in bed, to hide away for a while. I can't....I need to be in the gardens...the sunchokes are calling. I don't know if it's revisionist or not, but I seem to remember a time when I was more peppy. I used to, literally, have a bounce in my step. I had the full range of human emotions but it seems like the fear and stress and despair and sadness used to be layered on this fundamental sense of joy and that isn't true anymore.

Life seems really hard right now. I'm afraid of not being able to live this farmer life successfully, I'm afraid of not being able to pay my bills in the near future, I'm afraid of never quite making it in community, I'm afraid of being lost....I wandered for so long and I thought it had led me somewhere but today I'm not so sure. I have dreams of leaving and I wake up confused.

I know that life is a journey and you never really arrive, I just thought my journey had taken on direction or purpose or something. And now I'm not so sure. Of anything.

I'm moody and crabby and the people closest to me get the brunt of it. I'm thankful they have found a way to continue to love me...I hope they feel my love in return.

Something needs to change...maybe it's me....

Well, for the first time since I can remember, the Philadelphia Phillies won the world series.



It was fun to watch with Brenden, I assume he enjoyed the fact that I was finally excited by sports. It was nice to get emails from my dad and brothers, to talk to my mom in between innings on the phone. It was nice to win.

Baseball is a sport of nostalgia. In my life, games were a frequent destination during the summers of my childhood. I remember sitting next to my mom who was always keeping the box score, watching my dad drop peanut shells on the ground, hoping my grandmother would pull twizzlers or sandwich bags full of popcorn out of her purse.

Ah, the eighties....


And...an historical moment for my country.



I don't know what to say. i'm glad he won, mostly because I didn't think McCain would be a good leader. President Obama will be a lot easier to listen to than the bumbling Bush. And, even though it's 2008 and we should be beyond this....how can you underestimate the importance of electing a black man to the presidency?

But it weights on my....where my country is, where it's going, where it's been....I was reading something about how democrats are always voted into office in times of national economic crisis. It's as if we suddenly realize that we need each other, we need our government to be pulling us together....and then things get better and we forget and go back to our rugged individualism. Why can't needing each other be something we value instead of something we're ashamed of?

Losers - Prop 8 in California passing really bummed me out. i dont' know if I should go into it...when are we going to stop passing laws that limit rights? how can we defend freedom in other countries and then pass laws that take freedoms away? When are we going to learn from our mistakes? Relegating groups to second-class status has never ended well, it's always been something we look back on with regret. And we do it again and again....

peace.

So, I voted. And not for Nader.

I'm tired of it all, I wish I felt better about the system. Or the leadership. Or the country.

now i've drawn closed the curtain
in this little booth where the truth has no place
to stand
and i am feeling oh so powerless
in this stupid booth with this useless
little lever in my hand
and outside my city is bracing
for the next killing thing
standing by the bridge and praying
for the next doctor
martin
luther
king

Oh, Ani, I feel your pain.

So it's after 2 in the morning, on the new time, and I'm still up because we went to the midnight showing of rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead. It was pretty good. It took a little bit for everyone to get warmed up but the leads did a decent job. The player was excellent, though. He really brought a lot of nuance to the part. At one point I blew my nose loudly during a quiet part and one of the leads reacted and everyone laughed and it's possible the audience thought I was part of the show. They've been here for over a week doing a shakespeare festival and at this last, late night performance they do some silly extra stuff.

LIKE they started the show singing the first verse and a half of the three minute hamlet song. You probably haven't heard of it but michael cooney sang in on a prairie home companion when i was a kid and my mom recorded it, learned it, and then sang it on a continous loop every time she was driving on a bridge or in a tunnel and was nervous.

The only version we could find online that was sung at the same speed was by Seamus Kennedy. You can listen to it here.

So sleepy....

The second part of the game is just starting....I just can't get over that my younger brother is there. Could I be more jealous?

Tonight I brought over one of my pumpkins and made some pumpkin curry soup. It's creamy and delicious.

So, Philly got some cold weather, some rain, a light dusting of snow. The North Country got a little more than a dusting.



It's going to melt tomorrow and we'll have several more weeks before weather like this becomes the norm, but it was quite the snowfall. I lost power this morning for a few hours and realized that means I don't have heat or a stove. It feels weird, I've lived in a place where wood heats everything in the winter for two years now. i have lots of blankets and I was pretty cozy but no tea!

Go Phillies!!

That was crazy bad luck...the weather and all. This is a bitchin' hat, though. Perfect for the North Country.

So, I got some kind of stomach thing that led to a lot of vomiting. Yummy.

I seem to be all recovered and found my way to town to watch game four of the world series. FUN. I mean, it hasn't started yet, so we'll see how it goes, but I'm feeling pretty good.

I spend this weekend, between bouts of nausea, getting ready my last mailing of the year as secretary of the Canton farmers' market. I just put them in envelopes so all I have to do is get them in a mailbox and hang some signs around town and we'll be ready for the meeting. I'm not much of a graphic designer but I can make a pretty simple flyer with the best of them. I'm going to try some facilitation techniques at the meeting in November to see if I can help the meeting along. I'm a bit nervous about it...it can be hard to facilitate when people aren't familiar with that kind of process and there is often a lot of drama at our meetings. And I might be a little rusty, I haven't run a meeting like that in a while. Oy. Why do I get myself into these things?

I also have to decide by November 8th if I'm willing to be nominated as secretary again next year. It was a lot of work and more stressful than it should have been because of some contention about the last election and the vague language in our by-laws. But we're going to propose working on the by-laws and rules and regulations and I'm excited about the prospect of working them out to be more helpful. What can I say, I'm a process nerd and I like working on language problems. So, unless someone else gets nominated, I guess I'll end up taking the job. That is how I get myslef into these things.

Next weekend Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is playing at SLU. A Shakespearean group is in town and they're doing Hamlet and Comedy of Errors, too. But I love Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. It's my all-time favorite play, more than even Waiting for Godot.



Rosencrantz: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is "not." Death isn't. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no... What you've been is not on boats.

Brilliant.

Gotta pay more attention to the game...