Movies, movies, movies

My mom has been sick and Jasmine now has caught it. What a perfect time to watch movies. Yesterday evening she got her grandma to watch The Taming of the Shrew with her. And this morning she wrapped up in a blanket and watched Much Ado About Nothing with her mom. I shelled fresh local pistacios from our CSA share while sharing my daughter's passion for Shakespeare with her.

Jasmine felt better this evening, and continued preparing her Halloween costume--a gypsy. She watched Latcho Drom, a documentary about gypsies, and made angle bracelets out of bells and beads.

Latcho Drom-"safe journey" in Rom-follows the path of gypsy migration from Northern India to Egypt, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Spain. A stunningly beautiful movie, it has no dialogue or explanation, but lets the action and music speak for itself. Since Latcho Drom is one of my all-time favorite movies, I am posting excerpts from it.










This evening, Jasmine picked Lives of the Presidents as a bed-time story. No, the learning never stops.

Friends and rainwater

My mom's house is in the historic district of town and for some reason no families with children live here. Several monthes ago, Elizabeth (age 7 just like Jasmine) and her family moved in a block away. Lately Jazz and Elizabeth have been spending a lot of time together on weekends.

Elizabeth's family is quite different than our--a lot of media and not much else--and she used to get bored really quickly at our house and want to go home. Lately however she is enjoying all kinds of new experiences with us including playing with chickens, going to the library and getting her very own library card, going to paint murals, going to the public swimming pool, and climbing trees. A whole new world is opening up for Elizabeth and Jasmine has a playmate that lives close by.

I finished taping Arnold Patent's You can Have It All. I can't say enough about this book. I am so grateful that it entered my life, that I had the idea to tape it, and that I can listen to it often.

And again I can't say enough about Arnold Patent's book, You Can Have It All. Beg, borrow, steal if need be, but get this book. Or do as I did and order it through Interlibrary Loan at your Local Library and read it into a tape recorder and then listen to it often.

This evening Jasmine went off to a sleepover at Elizabeth's house and I decided to work on one of my latest projects--actually a somewhat on-going project. Last winter, I wanted to give a set of talks at the local library on sustainable design. To this end, I started creating some Power Point presentations. Thanks to Brad Lancaster, author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond Vols 1 & 2, and his website http://www.rainwaterharvesting.com/, I have developed a fairly complete slide show on passive rainwater harvesting. A few days ago, a friend showed me around the Ajo Community Garden and I realized they could really use this particular presentation. So now I'm completing that slideshow. In this process I found a couple of videos that give a great overview of using earthworks to collect rainwater.

May you enjoy an A-bun-dance of water--free, beautiful, healthy rainwater.

Feel the Music and Dance like No one is Watching

This morning as I played the piano, I experimented with experiencing the music in my body inspired by Touch the Sound (an absolutely amazing documentary about Evelyn Glennie), which might be my favorite movie. When I really pay attention, I feel the notes vibrate along my spine and into the center of my body going up as the notes went up and down as notes went done. The lowest note on the piano was at the lowest point on my spine. This is simply amazing. The top few notes on the piano I'm playing are not sounding real notes, but the top note that had a pure tone resonated above my third eye. Could it be that the piano has the range of our chakra system?


I looked up Touch the Sound on You Tube to post the revelant part and the whole movie is there. I also found this--a TED show on Evelyn Glennie--that I've decided to post instead. She is simply amazing, one of my heros.




This afternoon, we played around with a bellydance DVD and the put on music and danced free-style bellydance. My little dancer is simply amazing.




Some wonderful things occured in my life today. I have much to be grateful for, yet my mind is heavy with old belief and the habit of negativity. I think it is the same as usual but now feels unbearably heavy. At times this inspires me to use the tools I've been guided to to change my thinking. I belive this is a time of clearing on fundamental level. In eating living foods my body is clearing toxicity and the rest of my life is ready to clear also. So my own negative beliefs are in my face ready to be dealt with. Thank you. All is so Perfect.

I finished one tape's worth of Arnold Patent and got to listen to it while I played in the kitchen this evening. I filled another load in the dehydrator with sprouted buckwheat apple cinnamon granola and butternut squash cookies.

....and more about watermelon rind...it is absolutely delicious cut up with just a bit of dressing (mine Olive oil, apple cider vinegar, a bit of agave syrup and a bit of salt) and sea salt. Absolutely divine and it feels so vital. I've been eating it all afternoon and I can't wait to cut into the next watermelon so I can eat the rind. Ha ha.

I'm back

Jazz's swim meet went well--she came within a second of winning the IM-- and we came back from Tucson with a case of young Thai coconuts (I've really been craving them) and lots of collaging stuff.





The electricity went out last Sunday afternoon and didn't come on again until Tuesday morning. As the lows were about 90 and the highs close to 110 it was an experience. We hosed off the porch on Monday morning as it needed cleaning after chickens and some construction work on the street in front of house. We then turned on the mister and sat and enjoyed playing UNO until the mail lady came by and told us it could be up to 7 days before the power came back on. Apparently there was a huge storm north of Gila Bend and somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 power poles were snapped in two. Wow! Well we moved into emergency preparedness zone and picked up some of the free dry ice they were handing out for the refridgerator and freezer, ate up our ice cream, and went to check on a house-bound neighbor. What a hot adventure! The power came on the next morning thanks to the hard work of the APS crew and I have been appreciating air conditioning like never before.

An Egyptian princess surviving the heat with misters

(I've been reading The Royal Diaries: Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile-57 B.C. to her)

Since then my computer time has been spent binging on a couple of e-mail lists. I'm a member of the radicalunschoolingwithLOA and have been for a while but I haven't checked in on them for many months. I love this group and through my perusing this week I found another group that is a breakoff group from the RU/LOA called Unschoolingmiracles. How simply beautiful. I am so greatful for finding this group. More than once I have done a search for "unschooling, A Course in Miracles" and never really found anything and now a whole group of wonderful people I completely admire. Thank you universe.

It is especially very timely because this week I have been really putting time into letting go of limiting thoughts and beliefs. This has been a topic on the list and I feel less alone in this adventure and learned of a new process that really spoke to me--The Presence Process by Michael Brown. I just ordered his book from the library and also 2 others inspired by the list Arnold Patent's You can have it all and Joe Vitale's Zero Limits, which I was able to get on CD. Here's to listening while I create a Space of Love within my home.

Here's a few neat things that came my way this week:

A Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart A mathematician laments the way Math is taught in schools. Really good read. Well at least the first page that I read and I do want to finish it sometime soon.

This is a very well done short documentary on the history of schooling in our country.



And another fun movie, this is some absolutely beautiful sand art.



Yesterday was Learn Nothing Day, a holiday to show how hard it is to actually not learn anything. For an amazing post on Learn Nothing Day, go here.

Saguaro fruit, miracles, and the history of art

The rain has dried up and it was time to harvest saguaro fruit again. We headed out to Alamo Canyon in Organ Pipe National Monument where there are huge stands of fairly short saguaros--all the better for picking.

Alamo Canyon, Organ Pipe National Monument

A beautiful red head

Loaded with fruit

We got home and found this; our first egg (on the right) from our girls. You go, girls!!

One of the local eggs we've been buying (left) and Bess, our Araucana's, first beauty (right)

I found Jazz playing my guitar a la August Rush

After we got the saguaro fruit into the dehydrator and everything cleaned up, Grandma decided she wanted to watch a movie, How Art Made the World: How Humans Made Art and Art Made Us Human. Jazz absolutely did not want to watch it, but before long she was deeply into it. In fact when Grandma went to take a nap, Jazz kept watching and didn't stop until I insisted that there would be another opportunity to finish this 290 min. movie. Learning just keeps happening.

Last week, one of the mom's from my homeschool group asked me if I stopped [homeschooling] for the summer. I replied that Jazz is learning all the time. Well lately she has been doing more schooly stuff. She went to public school, her choice, for about 4 months during the first grade school year. During this time she learned to read (she was well on her way anyway) but she has not been interested in doing much of it. This week she has been asking to read to me out of a 1950's Alice and Jerry reader given to her by a little old lady down the street. And even though she hasn't read much more than a few signs here and there, her reading has improved tremendously in last 5-6 months. The Alice and Jerry reader is easy for her now, which she loves because it allows her to read it dramatically instead of stiltingly.

She's also writing again--this time copying down song lyrics into a special notebook. A few months ago she was writing a novel and taking notes about chickens and horses from some books she got from the library. Since then, she hasn't written much, but like the reading her writing has improved. This is something I've noticed several times as she has been writing things for a long time but tends to go through phases. Each time a new phase starts her writing has improved. Practice makes perfect does not apply to developmental tasks like reading and writing. And in answer to the homeschooling mom's question, "Not only is she learning all the time, I couldn't stop it if I wanted." Well I suppose I could suppress her passion and joy in learning by imposing a curriculum on her. Thank goodness I'm on this path and thank you to all the books, blogs, and websites that have helped on the way. I have some posts linking to stuff that did help inspired that journey here and here and here.

This evening, I just barely got on the computer and before I knew it I was watching this. Oh my word how did I find this when I need to hear the message so badly right now. Oh thank Universe for your goodness. Amen.

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

This is a great movie and as of right now the whole thing is posted on You Tube.

Jun 30-Joy, Chocolate, and Saguaro Fruit

On Tuesdays, my mom's official hours at the clinic are from 10am-7pm so we were out saguaro fruit picking this morning until 9am. I came home and emptied and filled the dehydrator. Here's the haul so far not bad for a weekend.

Sun-dried saguaro fruit(left), a pile of saguaro fruit leather(right),

and dried tomatoes(behind).

Joyfully, Jazz and I organized and cleaned and played more 10 days in Europe. She is becoming somewhat competent on European geography already. Me I'm so tired of cooking and processing food (I've been putting up tomatoes, corn, and saguaro fruit) and cooking, or uncooking as it may be, two different meals all I wanted was a day of junk food. We went the store and bought chocolate, coffee ice cream, and Kettle chips and I didn't cook a thing. But I got some organizing done and stayed out of the hot kitchen. After more Mind of a Raven and cuddling and chatting with Jazz, I came to computer to blog but instead I went to Path to Freedom and explored. I've been meaning to check it out as I keep seeing it referenced. It' s the site of a family in Pasadena, Californina who are growing a huge amount of food on their small urban lot. They've been doing it quite a while and have inspired a lot of people. Here's a short documentary, Homegrown Revolution, about them.




While I was in this frame of mind, I checked to see if they had The Power of Community:How Cuba Survived Peak Oil on You Tube. They do, at least for now and I'm posting it here in it's own post. It's a very inspiring movie.