Living the Slow life in North Carolina
A long overdue label. Monsatan will probably sue. Eden Foods is one of the most conscientious large food producers out there.
‘Non-GMO’ Seal Identifies Foods Mostly Biotech-Free
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: August 29, 2009
Many makers of organic and natural foods said their credibility depended on ensuring that their products were free of genetically altered ingredients.
Someone asked me where to buy field peas for planting today. Any country hardware store that sells seeds in the South carries them, but for areas where you’d have to order them, here are some suggestions and links:
Slow Food Triangle had a field pea tasting a while back. Here are the results and some recipes: http://slowfoodtriangle.org/community/?p=26
Baker Creek Seeds: http://rareseeds.com/seeds/Cowpeas
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange: http://www.southernexposure.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=SOUTHERNPEA
Dixie Lee: I have not ordered from either of these companies; I’m sharing my Google results because Dixie Lees seem to be hard to find online.
http://www.reimerseeds.com/dixie-lee-cowpeas.aspx
http://www.naylorsbr.com/seeds/
I have grown Dixie Lee, the standard in southeastern North Carolina, Purple Pink Eye, which is on its second crop, and Whippoorwill, from Monticello. I’m considering trying Red Ripper next year, but I’m happy with these three varieties.
Most places will be out of stock right now, but field peas (or southern peas or cowpeas or crowder peas or whatever you choose to call them) need heat, so you should definitely wait until next summer to plant, after your last frost date. Once you get a crop, let several pods go dry and you’ll have your seed for the following year. This is true for any bean or pea that I’ve tried.
Anna Banana gave me a good prompt in the comments: “Do you think doing art facilitated/facilitates your transformation? Can you say more about how you got from there to here?” This requires a much longer answer than I can do justice to in the comments, so here it is.
I guess that to explain this adequately, I need to give a touch more history. I haven’t had a panic disorder for only eight years, I’ve probably had anxiety/depression since the fifth grade, and in retrospect my first symptoms of panic disorder began in my mid-twenties. I was diagnosed with anxiety at that time but I had no clue about what the panic attacks were until they became disabling in my early forties. I just thought it was part of my general craziness.
I’m very happy to say that my last panic attack, was, I think, a couple of years ago. I was already going through a very tough time when Squirt got sick and died, and that was pretty much the worst thing that could have happened. I’ve just now stopped reeling from it, but I still dreamed about protecting him last night.
Did art facilitate my healing? This answer might surprise you. I don’t think that it did. I’d like to think that, but if I’m truthful then I’d have to say that it was the other way around. I think that my healing facilitated my art. And now that I feel healthy most of the time, I think that my art energizes and nurtures my soul, and fuels my growth.
I’ve been an artist all my life, but I’ve struggled with it. I was always very uptight or I was crocked. Once I got my “self-medicating” under control, I had to let go of a lot of other things too. One was my best friend. One was my self-loathing. I decided that I had to look within and become my own best friend. I had a strong visual affirmation that I got from a stop-smoking hypnosis group – imagine seeing yourself as a three-year-old child. Are you going to let your three-year-old play in the traffic on the street? I decided to love my three-year-old and guide her to safety. I was very proud of this strategy.
But what I didn’t realize that I was doing at the time was that I was slowly corraling my wounded 3-year-old into a corner. Agoraphobia is a behavioral disorder that often develops as a response to panic attacks. You begin avoiding places and situations where you’ve had an attack, and then places where you might have an attack, until your life pretty much revolves around avoiding living outside your own self-constructed ever-shrinking bubble.
And I was doing art during all of this. It was very processed, tight art. I beaded obsessively. I wove, a very process-driven art, and during my worst time, I wove traditional patterns. I did make some pottery as I began to force my way out of my hole. And I really thought of it as a hole. I remember saying that I felt like as soon as I peeped over the edge of my hole something kicked me back to the bottom. Leaving the bottom of my hole was one of the hardest things that I ever did, but I read about agoraphobia, and I knew that it was up to me to do it. Drugs do not cure agoraphobia.
So I enrolled in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies at UNCG. My thinking was that if I couldn’t drive to class, it was possible to finish the degree online. The second class took place at a location where I had to drive 45 minutes through heavy traffic. I forced myself to do it. The class also was extremely soul-searching, taught by a behavioral child psychologist and a lay minister for the location, called Healing Ground. I was often a real basket case in this class. I told the professor upfront that if I slipped out, that I was probably having a panic attack and that I would stay outside until I was over it and either come back or go home.
As hard as that class was, I believe that it was the real beginning of my healing. Ironically, I took my last class from the same professor in the same location, and I was, again, a real mess, but it was due to outside influences (Squirt) more than inside.
I drove to the classes held in several far-flung locations, made friends with like-minded people, and along the way became involved with Slow Food. I gained my confidence back and was able to travel to Italy with one of my classes. I learned to prioritize my life and pursue what was meaningful to me.
Once I learned to love myself as well as protecting myself, I was able to free my mind to play. And that’s what facilitated my new direction in art.
I won’t discount the good that the right anti-depressant has done for me. I had to try several medications over the last eight years, and for some of it I refused to take any. Anxiety and panic disorder is hereditary in my family. It has physical causes, as does clinical depression. Anti-depressants are literal lifesavers for some people. I am one of those people. I tried natural remedies for years that didn’t work.
I’m open about my mental illness, and in a way, I am grateful for it. It is part of what has shaped my life and made me who I am. I hope that anyone who is struggling like I did will try to find an understanding doctor and stick with trying different treatments until one works. It is a rough road but the destination is well worth the effort.
Well, I certainly have come a long way from eight years ago when I was diagnosed with panic disorder and agoraphobia. When I found any decision to be so difficult that I agonized over passing someone in the hall at work, because I couldn’t decide whether I should say hello or not. When it was difficult to drive across town, or down the same highway that I’d driven for years to my hometown. When I often had to pull over driving to work or class because I would get dizzy, and if there was a lot of traffic I’d go into full-fledged panic with nausea, breathing difficulty, and an enormous sense of doom.
I just made airline reservations to go by myself to Journalfest, an artist retreat near Seattle.
Take that, agoraphobia. Bam!
The tickets from Greensboro to Seattle were less than $300 round trip. And I’ll get to study with L K Ludwig and Dan Essig (again) if I get the classes that I am signing up for. I am THRILLED to take classes from L K Ludwig because of this book, which I love.
In a setting beside Olympia National Park on the Puget Sound. At a very reasonable price.
And I can pay cash for it. Why? Because I put $100 a month into a saving account for this stuff and I wear rags and drive a 92 Tercel. I walk to work and I don’t have a satellite dish and I get my hair cut at the beauty school. I don’t have children and I love myself enough to let myself do this.
It’s well worth it. I’ll just have to eat out less and stop buying art supplies that I don’t need and books to save more money for Italy again. I like rice and beans and cereal. I have a garden. It’s all cool. I’ll do this AND go to Italy.
Has anyone asked you to quickly say, without thinking about it, what you would do if you could do anything in the world? Mine would be to go on art retreats and take classes, all the time! I finally have the courage to pursue my happiness. I am happy.
Here I am again, writing whatever pops into my head until my little coffee pot runs out. Planning my weekend. A “normal” weekend at home for a change!
I woke up with “A Hundred Pounds of Clay” in my head this morning. I have no idea how it got in there, but it’s not the first time this song has been stuck in my brain. I haven’t been listening to beach music. I guess that it could be worse.
For the most part, I came back to a clean house because Cat did a great job of pet-sitting for us. However, I found mouse poop in four of my kitchen drawers. Fortunately these were the drawers that I kept junk and recycled bags and things that are easily replaced for the most part. I threw pretty much everything including my dish towels in the trash – I couldn’t bear the thought of using them again even if I bleached them. So one of my tasks this weekend will be to buy one of those battery-powered mouse repellents. I’ve been told that they work well.
Most of my time, I hope, I will spend bookbinding and finishing up decorating covers for books to sell at the August Art Oasis and on Etsy. I set up a Paypal button on a page here for credit card payments at events – I figure that I can take my laptop if someone wants to use that as an option. I just love the Internet. I could never have taken credit cards before now. I’ve yet to test it though, so that is another thing for my to-do list, along with making some new business cards with my new art business name – “Slow Turn Studio.”
Which also means that “jazzcat productions” will probably go away soon, when and if I feel like dealing with it.
I don’t have any expectations of making any money. It would, however, be nice if I could sell enough to pay for supplies. And simply have a justification to make lots and lots and lots of stuff!
By the way, I hate selling my art. I’m terrible at managing money. I hate sitting at art and craft shows and events, watching people’s eyes glaze over as they meander by. It makes me want to curl up in a fetal position and stick my thumb in my mouth. I would ten times rather pay a gallery 40% commission to sell my art than to do it myself. But I don’t have a gallery since Two Art Chicks closed. And since I’m doing this one with Susanne and it is free and associated with a very reputable gallery and great community art organizations, I think that it will be fun. I sure do hope so.
It is definitely one of those thangs where I have to weigh the costs (mainly to my ego and energy) and the benefits (hopefully to my ego and energy).
I’m still waking up in the middle of the night. I hope that I’ll work this out this weekend. Yesterday I came home from work and laid down for “a few minutes.” This has become a bit of a habit. Then I normally get up refreshed and pick peas or go to the studio or whatever until dark. But yesterday I woke up just before 8 p.m., too late to go to Deep Roots for their owner sale day. I’m pretty bummed about that. I want to get back on a normal sleep schedule.
Sandy wants to work on cleaning up and mulching an overgrown area of the back yard this weekend. Although I am happy that he is taking an interest in the yard, I wish that his timing was better. I want to concentrate on my artwork, and I usually let this kind of yard work go during the humid heat of July and August when the mosquitoes eat you alive. We’ll see how it goes.
So, this morning, since my coffee pot is almost empty, I will go to the farmers’ market for the first time in quite a while. I want to buy meat and soap and veggies and peaches. Then I’ll head back to the studio to finish preparing some book covers and to make some paper that I have soaking.
On August 28 at 5:30 p.m., if everything goes as planned, I will declare independence from AT&T. At least, until they decide to buy up Sprint. I finally gave in to the Credo ads and I’m replacing the landline with a cell phone. This will cut my phone bill more than half. We spend so little time on the phone that I can’t imagine needing more than 200 minutes a month.
It has no bells and whistles and it will remain in the house with our old landline number.
Tonight I am making fresh tomato sauce again and I started putting in the Cherokee Purple tomatoes that Sandy keeps forgetting to take to work. They are surprisingly meaty fellers and so they should make a great sauce. I’m also boiling some squash and sweet onions for a squash casserole that I’ll probably make tomorrow night. Tonight I’m still eating leftover meatloaf and field peas from the weekend.
Work is going so smoothly for the first week of the semester. It makes such a difference to have a receptionist that is smart, trained, and sane. And fun. We love her dearly.
I think that the Medieval Art class will be interesting, although the dim lights after lunch could be a problem.
Why am I not surprised that the representative of the development company who is planning to build a large apartment complex two blocks away could not name even one specific example of sustainable/green building or landscaping in their many past projects?
I mean, the guy couldn’t even come up with an easy plausible lie like plant more trees, or use energy-efficient windows. He said something about making the walls six inches thick instead of four inches thick and wandered off-subject for a while hoping to distract me. But he didn’t. I tried to rephrase the question as “green” instead of “sustainable” and he began scoffing at the phrase “green building” meaning all kinds of vague things so I nailed him again to give me one specific example. He could not.
The issue was so far off these people’s radar that they didn’t even have a damned bluff prepared.
Holy cow, they’re planning a huge apartment complex two blocks uphill from my house. Guess I’d better start howling to my local gummint officials.
Trying not to dread tomorrow – first day of classes, lots of phone calls and confused students, and a major problem that will have to be dealt with first thing.
I began working on an altered book about our Alaska trip today. I have a thick 1939 high school self-education book that I cut out a hole in the front cover and about an inch worth of pages just big enough that my little journal that I kept on the trip will fit into the hole, but stick out about a quarter inch. I was pasting pages together thinking how completely tedious it was and taking a lot of glue when I came up with the idea of wrapping tyvek around the hole in the cover and pages to hold it together as a block. It worked beautifully.
Now I realize that I have the perfect paper to wrap the cover in for a background – Sherri, my friend from Juneau, gave me some handmade purple paper. And I still have some of the handmade paper that she gave me last fall. So the paper will be from Alaska, yay! In the back of the hole, I glued a map of Alaska showing the part of it that we toured. The little journal has a piece of map of Vancouver on its front cover, so it is all coming together. It is very exciting when you’ve been stuck and suddenly things just start falling into place.
Hmmmm. I’m not quite awake yet.
This is the exercise where I write whatever my thoughts are until my little coffee pot runs out. I’ve been writing everyday for a while now, but usually just in little snippets. So by the time that I get to my coffee pot post on the weekend, there’s not so much to clean out of the brainpan.
Anyone that lives around here knows that this has been the Summer of the Bug. I know that I’ve complained incessantly about mosquitoes, but I’m actually fortunate in that the bites don’t seem to bother me as much as they do a lot of my friends. What is bugging me worse right now are the fleas. Miss Lucy is full of them – for some reason the Frontline is not working for her. Maybe because she is so fat? This morning I am going to run by the vet and pick up some Revolution. I’m trying desperately to avoid flea-bombing the house, but my options are spiraling down to that.
I hope that the vet will continue to let me buy this for all three cats without making me bring in Lucy. Lucy hasn’t been to the vet since she was spayed as a kitten (six years ago) and she is extremely skittish and afraid. Plus she is so fat I’m not sure that I can squeeze her into the cat carrier! It isn’t just that she is fat, she is a huge cat. I haven’t noticed that she eats that much more than the others so part of this has to be genetic.
We have also had a running battle with ants this summer that has never really been won by either side yet. I’m not sure whether the mice are gone or not. They seem to have left the kitchen area since I plugged in the electronic rodent repeller though. I never noticed that they got into food so they must have been stealing the cat food or getting into the garbage.
I grew up in a house full of mice so it doesn’t creep me out so much but I’d like to get rid of them.
I was invited to a party within walking distance of my house last night but I didn’t go. Partly because I can’t be social two days in a row, partly because I had a migraine that has surfaced on and off since yesterday afternoon.
We have a bumper crop of Cherokee Purple tomatoes. I’m trying to decide what to do with them. Officially they are Sandy’s because he wanted to grow enough tomatoes to give to his friends at work. However, he keeps forgetting to take them to work. I guess that I’ll chop some up and simmer them down for sauce along with my Romas and San Marzanos.
Hopefully on Monday we will be cutting our ties with AT&T. I signed up for Credo, which means we will be replacing our landline with a (shudder) cell phone. Which means that if you call me you will have to be patient with me for a while because I am a cell phone idiot. We won’t be carrying this one out of the house. It will save me more than half of my phone bill. I hope that it works in the house!
I’m giving the other cell phone to Sandy. It is a prepaid plan that I only use for travel.
NDN is off the deep end again. Yesterday she put a pair of shoes on the sidewalk with a for sale sign, and another sign written on newspaper that I don’t even remember what it said because it made so little sense. I feel so sorry for her and I wish that there was a way to help her. She won’t get help because she doesn’t think that she’s mentally ill and since she isn’t a danger to herself or others her family can’t commit her. But she is clearly miserable. “I know I’m a character,” she told me once, “but I’m not mentally ill!”
My worst nightmare used to be that I had gone crazy. I don’t worry about that so much anymore, although I do get concerned about Alzheimer’s having seen so much of it in my family.
Okay, I’m at the bottom of my second cup. Onward to the day!
Killian died today. I didn’t know him – I knew his mother and grandmother pretty well at one time. He was much too young, but from what I’ve learned about him he sure lived his life to the max with an incredible spirit. He inspired a lot of people, including me.
I received a couple of books in the mail today that I am excited about – Hannah Hinchman’s A Life in Hand and Volume II of the Keith Smith series of Non-Adhesive Binding books. If you’re interested in nature journaling or any kind of journaling that combines art and writing, Hannah Hinchman is very inspiring. And Keith Smith is the author that serious bookbinders study, from what I’ve heard.
My class on Medieval Art begins on Monday. I have a feeling that it will involve many more flying buttresses that I’ll be interested in, but still it might make me ache to go back to Europe – maybe France this time? Nope, I really am going back to Italy next year. France will have to be later.
I’m going to try to get serious about organizing and cleaning up my studio in a sustainable, meaning maintainable, way this weekend. Make it a place that I want to hang out in again.
slowly she turned 