Vacant Lot Becomes Community Space

Posted on October 7, 2013 by resilienceguestblogger

Guest post by Lisa Boyles

My vision is to give purpose to a vacant lot. Where once stood abandoned houses, there will be a reflection space with a labyrinth and a community art installation.

In June 2013, we brought light to this space on the longest day of the year with a circle gathering and a modified sun salutation series. The children at this gathering helped decorate a stepping stone for the labyrinth entrance.

Since the summer, various people have joined me at this lot on the Near Eastside of Indianapolis. We have prepared the ground, moved bricks, unloaded wood, and removed trees. It is enlivening to get in touch with the dirt and have ruddy cheeks from working so hard outside.

Gordon removing an invasive tree.

The transformation from empty lot to Rivoli Park Labyrinth is primarily funded through a community action grant from Peace Learning Center‘s Focus2020 initiative.

The vision of Focus2020 is to create an engaged and inclusive city. I was one of several grant awardees at the beginning of September. The collective effect of these grants will be seen throughout the city over the course of the next year. The Peace Learning Center offers workshops so that more people can become Focus 2020 graduates.

John Ridder of Paxworks: the Labyrinth Shop created the triune focus design of the Rivoli Park Labyrinth. Logo by Susan Williams Boyles.

The Rivoli Park Labyrinth project brings the international labyrinth movement to an urban neighborhood setting. Our space will be listed in the worldwide labyrinth locator, putting the eastside of Indianapolis on the labyrinth map.

To offset the often solitary nature of walking a labyrinth, this project also includes a healthy dose of community celebrations. For example, on May 3, 2014, we will celebrate World Labyrinth Day. And workdays at the site include a potluck to celebrate our growing community.

Aaron, James and the neighborhood cat moving a young tree to a new place to make room for the labyrinth.

Aaron, James and the neighborhood cat moving a young tree to make room for the winding path of the labyrinth.

Many partnerships are arising from this effort to give purpose to a vacant lot. One example of that synergy involves the documentation of the upcoming Oct. 10 workday (part of Indy Do Day). A KI EcoCenter videography intern is mentoring another young man that he met through this project. We can’t wait to see their collaborative videography of the workday, when volunteers will place bricks outlining the labyrinth path.

Meanwhile, the soil needs repairing and we plan to use hugelkultur to do it. We’ll mound soil and compost over woody debris and put our plantings on top of that mass. Permaculture designer Katherine Boyles Ogawa says, “Hugelkultur is an ideal method for urban lots where the soils are usually very compacted and often contaminated with heavy metals.”

Permaculture designer Katherine supervises unloading of logs for hugelkultur.

We hope to eventually make the space into a certified wildlife habitat through the National Wildlife Federation.

Another goal is to display artwork and illustrated quotes along the fence. Panels would be created by special education students at the nearby public school and the art group at Midtown Community Mental Health Center.

Sarah donating paint for the community art wall

Sarah, a fellow Focus 2020 workshop participant, donating paint for the community art wall.

The community art aspect of the project is being funded through this crowdsourcing site.

We would love to have you join us in celebrating a year of this project coming into being on the summer solstice, June 21, 2014.

Like the Rivoli Park Labyrinth Indianapolis Facebook page to see project news. Join the Rivoli Park Labyrinth community group to collaborate with others and be invited to the annual celebration. We will post monthly featurettes and more detailed updates on our blog.

My Day at School

Posted on September 26, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

Yesterday I drove down to Bloomington to spend part of the day with my homeschooling coop friends. These two families use homesteading activities as the basis for their children’s learning, along with traditional math workbooks, writing assignments and the like.

The task of the morning was to prepare cedar limbs to build a spit for cookpots over a campfire. The previous week, the kids had cut branches off the cedar tree, with a goal of being able to climb it. They’d christened it Fort Cicada.

Climbing ropes and nubs of branches make it easier to scale Fort Cicada.

The brushy limbs now needed to be trimmed and the bark removed with a draw knife. The kids coached me on sawing. I can’t remember the last time I sawed something. It’s satisfying to cut right through a branch and have it fall.

Prepping the cedar limbs for use as fence posts and building material

The draw knife was a revelation. I have never experienced the pleasure of skinning a tree branch with a sharp instrument. I wasn’t sure I was qualified for the work, but the kids taught me well.

Using the draw knife

They assured me that they would use a regular knife to shave around the knots where the draw knife caught. Here’s the youngest, working with her knife.

Knife skills

I love how fearless these kids are. I find that my own hands are better suited to a keyboard than a hand tool. Yet, I pulled off a passable job on bark-peeling task.

Not bad for a beginner

After a while it was time for lunch (fresh-baked bread!) and conversation. I asked the four kids what life would be like if they went to a school where they sat at desks all day. They agreed that they wouldn’t have nearly as much fun and flexibility in their lives, and probably not be as fit. Nor would they spend as much time with their families. On the flip side, they have to schedule activities to connect with larger groups, whereas students in school interact with lots of different kids daily.

Asked how their education is preparing them for adulthood, they pointed to skills like gardening, cooking, and researching solutions to problems.

After lunch, it was time to split maple logs and stack wood for the winter’s fuel. This was more fun than I expected. I consider myself something of a pipsqueak—but seeing the kids demonstrate, I thought, why not try?

Demonstrating wood splitting

After numerous tries and tons of pointers from the peanut gallery, I managed to stick the splitting maul in the top of the log. I whapped at it with a mallet till the firewood split with a satisfying crack.

Alas, no one captured the moment on film, but I have the sore muscles to prove it.

All in all it was a great time with lovely people, and felt wonderful to be outside doing real work on a pristine fall day.

A Week in the Life, Irvington-style

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

Last week, I realized how much I rely on my neighborhood for commerce, entertainment, exercise, and other essentials. To wit:

Tuesday morning I took part in the Writing Habit, a weekly mini-retreat for writers put on by Urban Plot in the library of a local church. With two other writers tapping away on their keyboards, I cranked out some verbiage.

Kitley finds writing more taxing than stalking sparrows. Sometimes I agree.

In the evening I walked two blocks to Dairy Queen (OK, it’s not locally owned, but a business in our own little plaza). My neighbor had called a meeting, sweetening the deal with ice cream. We were there to explore teaming the Irvington Green Initiative and a budding arts initiative with local organizations like Trade School Indy to share admin/event/classroom space sometime in the future. An intriguing possibility.

Wednesday, before sunup, I went to earlybird piyo (Pilates/yoga fusion) at Irvington Wellness Center, my favorite place for yoga and other such pursuits. In the afternoon, I biked over to meet a writer friend at Starbucks (because our old haunt, Lazy Daze Coffeehouse, tragically closed this summer).

I walked from there to Help My Mac Plus, where I found a refurbished MacBook Air with my name on it. A stunning development, given how terminally conflicted I am about gadgets and the resources they require. I had just begun to put out feelers for a lightweight laptop for my upcoming research trip/ writers’ residency. I’m thrilled with my find, awarding myself double bonus points for supporting a local business and avoiding buying new.

Thursday evening it was back to Irvington Wellness for yoga class, taught by another Irvingtonian (I inquired after her hens, as one does here).

Friday evening was the highlight. First we went out to eat with a friend at local eatery Legend, where the owners know us by name and the food is delicious. Then to see Delta Duo and friends perform at Bookmamas in the Underground 9.

JJ plays a resonator slide guitar in the style used by Delta bluesmen of the 1930s. Irina’s violin accompaniment is haunting. Photo courtesy of the Delta Duo.

Two local singer/songwriters kicked it off, after which the headliners laid it down. Delta Duo pairs JJ the Chicago-born bluesman with Irina the classically trained Russian violinist for a sound like none other. Suffice to say this monthly show will be a priority from now on. (Bonus: no cover charge.)

But the weekend wasn’t over yet. Saturday after supper, Judy and I rode our bikes to our new neighborhood ice cream shop Wyliepalooza, then popped in on old friends to catch up.

And Sunday was the farmers market. Judy and I biked over, bought bread and produce, and ran into several friends, including the aforementioned JJ and Irina.

This is the third mention of ice cream in this post. Confession: I actually can’t eat ice cream. Wish I could!

In short, it was a great week to be an Irvingtonian. What’s new in your neighborhood?

A Beautiful Indebtedness

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

I’ve been reading Rebecca Solnit’s latest resonant book The Faraway Nearby, and every day there’s a new discovery—about writing, about alienation, about the uses of stories. This morning’s passage evoked the web of interrelatedness and care that can happen among neighbors and friends.

In the author’s case, a cancer diagnosis showed her how much goodwill she had banked. People came from everywhere to help her.

She reflects:

“Before money…people didn’t barter, but gave and received as needs and goods ebbed and flowed. They thereby incurred the indebtedness that bound them together, and reciprocated slowly, incompletely, in the ongoing transaction that is a community.”

In some parts of the world, surely this beautiful indebtedness is still the norm. In my neighborhood, it’s making a steady return, in many small ways.

Some intertwined examples from this past week: I put a call out for dill on the Facebook Neighbors Garden page, offering other herbs in exchange. I’d planted dill, but the black swallowtail caterpillars ate every single sprig of it.

Black swallowtail caterpillars happily chewing up my dill earlier this summer

Black swallowtail caterpillars enthusiastically chewing through my dill supply earlier this summer

I wasn’t too sad about the loss, knowing the beauty that would come of it—until I saw the enticing baby cucumbers at the farmers market and ended up buying three pounds’ worth. I wanted to make a crock of pickles.

Happily, Amy of Fraudulent Farmgirl fame offered her unused dill. Over the weekend I biked over to harvest some, using most of it for pickling and borscht.

On that same bike trip, I stopped at Laura’s to unload some goodies on her hens. That morning I had cut back my severely cabbage worm-infested collards. I brought over the collard leaves, creepy crawlies and all, for the chickens‘ enjoyment. Laura sent me home with heirloom tomatoes and a photograph of the hens posing for a family portrait.

Laura’s contented flock

Today Dawn Facebooked her own plea for dill, and since I had some left, I took it down to her house on my morning dog walk. Dawn put three things into a blue cloth bag of mine that was at her house from some earlier exchange. I came home with:

a salsa wrap made from her dehydrated tomatoes
grape juice from another neighbor’s unused Concord grapes (Dawn and I had picked the grapes Monday while catching up on life)
some maca powder, having mentioned in passing that I’d run out

I promptly put the maca in a green drink, the one I’m sipping right now. It also contains: frozen blueberries (brought back from Michigan by Anna), whey (received from Corinna down the street who makes her own Greek-style yogurt), lettuce (from farmers market), and kale (from my garden).

To add further depth to this web of connection: Laura was the source of my kale seedlings, a late-summer addition to my garden and currently the focal point of my daily worm-picking meditation. I no longer squish or stomp the worms while grimacing and/or squealing. I save them for Laura’s hens. The very hens that supply my eggs.

Writing this, I’m realizing my good fortune: my indebtedness extends even beyond my human neighbors.

What precious debts have you incurred in your community?

Calling All Lifelong Learners

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

Continuing an intermittent series on education
“Crazies only need apply,” jokes Blaire Huntley, speaking of Trade School of Indianapolis’s call for teachers. Previous “crazies” taught such varied topics as law, nail art, beekeeping, creative writing, bookbinding, public speaking, yoga, and even cuddling.

Making this curriculum even more unique: not one cent changes hands. Instead, teachers request items and services in trade for their tutelage.

I took this class last fall: Primitive Natural Cordage with Creek Stewart of Willow Haven Outdoor. All it cost me was the stalk of a yucca plant.

TSI is part of a barter-for-knowledge network anchored by Trade School New York, which Blaire encountered when she lived in New York City.

Though she worked eight jobs in NYC and was way too busy to take classes, when she moved to Indy, she brought along her love of learning—and the seed of an idea. Why not start a Trade School in her adopted city? Now, she says, she feels like “the smartest person in the world,” because she gets to learn from so many passionate, creative teachers.

The community embraced the model wholeheartedly. “As people are learning about us, once they know about it, they want to be involved,” says co-founder Brittany West. In the year since its launch, TSI has offered 80 classes. For the fall 2013 semester (October-November), already a record 40 classes have been proposed, and the window to apply is still open.

Compared to other Trade Schools worldwide (there are now 50), “we are always the one with the most classes going on,” says Blaire.

TSI is also one of the few such schools so far sustained without funding. Both women work for free, devoting their off-work hours to coordinating, publicizing, and attending sessions. Classroom space is donated in several venues, including Indy’s Kitchen, where cooking classes are extremely popular.

Art of Indian Cuisine at Indy’s Kitchen. New this semester: teachers can request items on behalf of an organization. For example, the fall Indian cooking class will be offered in exchange for donations for Gleaners Food Bank.

Brittany says the philosophy behind TSI, that “education should be accessible to everyone,” is a powerful notion. “I love that I can bring an apple or a bag of oranges in exchange for learning these great things.”

People engage with each other differently when payment is made in nonmonetary gifts instead of cash, the women say. It creates a shared experience and a deepened sense of connection.

Blaire and Brittany are looking to crowdfund classroom space for a permanent TSI home, potentially shared with other likeminded community organizations. They envision tripling the number of classes, and offering daytime sessions as well as their current evening classes.

Instructors of Backpacking 101

Are you a lifelong learner, or someone with a skill to share? Have you experienced the fun of bypassing the money economy and found that you’ve made a deeper connection as a result? Then check out the following:

1.) Go to TSI’s Kickstarter grant appeal (great incentives!) and give what you can before Aug. 31.

2.) (For locals) Plan to attend TSI’s one-year anniversary party September 5, featuring a swap-and-trade area, teacher meet-and-greets, live music, and complimentary Sun King beer.

3.) Propose a class! “We believe everyone has something to offer, so no fancy degrees or certificates required.”

Photos courtesy of Trade School of Indianapolis

Book Offers a Vision of the Possible

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

I’ve had this book out from the library the past few weeks, but after test-driving it, I just emailed Kathleen at Bookmamas to ask her to order it for me. It’s a keeper. Here’s my review:

Wendy Tremayne’s The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-on Living gives a powerful example of a reimagined world in the shape of one couple’s desert homesteading adventures.

Prickly pear, an example of the desert bounty gathered by Tremayne. Photo by Jon Sullivan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Many of us work toward self-sufficiency (or better, community-wide resilience, broadening the circle from homestead to neighborhood). But we’re hampered by the need to make money to prop up our lifestyles, cutting into the time we have to learn and practice new skills. Wendy and partner Mikey demonstrate what is possible by leaping into a completely new way of life. They cash out their retirement accounts (a prescient move, before the crash) and transplant themselves into Truth or Consequences, NM to build a new life.

And build they do: using waste materials and nature’s bounty, they craft a beautiful, abundant, interconnected home base that allows them to live their deepest values.

In contrast to some “green lifestyle” books that focus on giving up luxuries for the earth’s sake, this book offers an exuberant romp through the reclamation of life’s biggest gifts: time, beauty, creativity, connection, purpose. More than just a memoir, it is an invitation to adopt the “maker” mindset. Tremayne’s lyrical descriptions of the spiritual aspects of this journey, coupled with the gorgeous, whimsical artwork and photographs, make this an inspirational book.

The author (who founded Swap-O-Rama-Rama, a community-based textile repurposing/skill sharing extravaganza) observes, “When all of life is for sale, it is a revolutionary act to become a maker of things.” She describes “life in the waste stream” as the ultimate freedom.

“By relying on waste, on what nature provides, and on ourselves, we gave the world a chance to demonstrate abundance. By becoming makers of things, we let our creativity become a transformative link between the free materials available to us and the finished goods that made our lives better.”

She notes that mistakes are part of this process, and describes combatting the inevitable “I can’t do that” by simply taking the next step. For those of us who consider ourselves less than handy (ahem), the book offers both challenge and a roadmap. The last section, in fact, provides concrete steps toward reclaiming the building blocks of life, covering food, power generation, fuel, and shelter.

The physical book itself embodies the new world by its very design, in which art and joy and utility are married into a brilliant manifesto.

In short: Stop what you are doing and order one now from your local independent bookstore, people!

(Can’t wait till your book arrives? Hungry for more after reading it? Check out Wendy and Mikey’s blog at Holy Scrap.)

Elders Building a Healthier Future

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

They meet in Chase Legacy Center’s art room every Thursday for herbal tea and the deeper refreshment of conversation. Known as WeAct (When Elders Act, Communities Thrive), the group began as a natural living discussion circle, and evolved into a discussion/action group.

The weekly gathering of elders is convened by the decidedly youthful Greg Monzel. Today he’s harvested Echinacea and mint from the herb garden tended by the group just outside. With curved shears, he snips the big healthy blooms and fragrant leaves into a blue teakettle as people stroll in.

An herbalist, Greg offers his prodigious knowledge of wildcrafting and permaculture, but participants have a wealth of information too. The discussion moves in spirals, touching on plant medicine, gardening, and other homespun topics.

We explore the identification and uses of lamb’s quarters, with one member noting that this “weed” is high in iron. From another participant, we get the inside scoop on Distelrath Farms’ new cooperative model, which allows the farmer more time to pursue his mission: educating children.

From another, we learn of Taj Mahal’s original plan to be a farmer, and why he changed his mind: “He couldn’t figure out how you could keep from being poisoned by putting poison on the ground.” We lament the way conventional agriculture wages war on the land.

Comfrey root bearing a smile

Greg produces a section of comfrey root dug from his garden. A terrifically tough—and useful—plant, comfrey’s roots extend some 40 feet underground. He cuts the root into tiny pieces to send home with everyone. Each garden can benefit from nutrients pulled up from the depths.

After a while we take cups of bright-tasting tea outdoors to the raised beds designated for WeAct use. There’s the excitement of lifting carrots from the earth. We discuss uses of borage and alfalfa, remedies for mildew, and where to buy a hori hori. Greg urges us to take dill seeds and coriander seeds to plant or eat.

The sky is deep cloudless blue for the first time in days. We stand in the sunshine enjoying the cool morning breeze. It’s the kind of moment that you wish could last all day, and in fact Greg says it is the high point of his week. Too soon, the group disperses.

Harvesting carrots from WeAct's group vegetable bed

Harvesting carrots from WeAct’s shared vegetable bed

Though we don’t visit it on this day, WeAct also maintains a vegetable plot on the adjoining vocational high school campus near the Colonel’s Cupboard, a student-run restaurant. The group supports the school’s horticulture and culinary programs in gardening and preparing homegrown produce.

From the mission statement: “WeAct is an activist organization of elders (and elders in training) who meet weekly for continuing education and community engagement…We consider anyone age 50 and over an elder, though the group is also open to elders in training who may be under 50.”

Among the goals:

to reaffirm the wisdom of community elders
to advocate for the right to home-grown nutrition
to create awareness of community resilience and natural balance

How are the elders (and elders-in-training) in your community manifesting a healthy vision for the future?

Sharing Summer’s Abundance and Summer’s Work

Posted on August 4, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

You never know what might result from posting a request on Facebook. The other day I asked our neighborhood Facebook gardeners’ group if anyone would take my zucchini in exchange for peppers. Because really, how many zukes does one household need? This led to the idea of a veggie swap ‘n share. So I invited any interested gardeners to bring their surplus over yesterday for some trading.

Only a couple folks showed up, but it was just right, and no doubt more will come in the future.

Summer’s abundance shared at the veggie swap. (The eggs are a side deal.)

Julie brought heirloom tomatoes, the only thing she grows. I was thrilled to take some off her hands, since mine are ripening ever so slowly after initially falling prey to blossom end rot. Her cherry tomato variety is called Doctor and rivals my beloved Sungold for sweetness.

As the most ambitious gardener among us, Laura brought a slightly squirrel-chewed pumpkin that needed to be harvested because of an issue with the vine. She had also just picked yellow squash, collards, basil, and more lovely heirloom tomatoes, including a variety called Principe Borghese, reputed to be great for drying. (I’m happy to say these are in my dehydrator as we speak.)

Collards and basil straight from the garden.

I offered the aforementioned Zucchini Explosion, specifically a variety called Cordello, as well as some jalapenos and various herbs. Laura went home with catnip for her kitties (sorry Kitley and Maggie!), sage, and rosemary.

Funny how these things all work out and people go away happy to try something new. I think swapping could be habit-forming.

Clowning with cabbage at last year’s kraut party

On a related note, last summer our kitchen was home base for group preserving efforts, loosely connected to our community garden. With polka music on Pandora, we shredded up several heads of cabbage and packed them in crocks at the Kraut Party.

Kraut Party Action

Later in the season we switched the sound track to the Three Tenors and Andrea Bocelli at the Pesto Party.

And a couple of us got together to make a gazillion varieties of salsa as well, to share with the community at a Salsa Party.

When you try to cook and preserve seasonal produce, summer can be a crazy time, especially if some of the produce comes from your own garden. Most of us don’t live in the kind of multigenerational households that were the rule back in the day. So we don’t have the built-in helpers that our foremothers did. It can get lonesome, toiling away in your kitchen on your own.

So it’s been great fun to turn some of that work into social events.

There’s talk of another Pesto Party, and maybe even a group effort to “put up sweet corn,” as my people say. We can get a boatload of sweet corn from one of our many local growers and just go to town.

Hm. What musical genre would work for a Corn Party?

Postcard from FoodCon

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

Friday’s FoodCon was a thrill. I haven’t heard the final tally of attendees, but there was a steady stream of bright-eyed folks. I met so many people with interesting stories about foraging (which, as I explained to one non-native English speaker, is like hunting, only for plants).

Swapping foraging stories with a foodcon attendee

People spoke of making elderberry syrup for winter colds and congestion, of becoming more accustomed to the taste of bitter greens to the point of craving them, and of eating oxalis as kids.

One little girl said she likes to eat clover petals, which brought back my own flower-eating past: My friends and I used to pick the blooms off my dad’s tall phlox and suck the nectar, pretending it was a special elixir.

Most of my exhibit consisted of weeds picked that morning. All are available in the typical urban yard or garden. “If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em,” was my line.

Trees are a source of unexpected nutrition too: Even seasoned foragers were surprised to learn that basswood tree leaves are great in salads.

I told the uninitiated to start by topping a salad with the tangy, tender oxalis, which is prevalent in urban yards. Then see if, like me, they don’t get completely hooked on picking stuff from their yards to bring in to the dinner table.

My tablecloth got all wet after an early gust of wind blew a few cups over. But it didn’t matter: check that wilty salad!

Japanese wineberries (at the right edge of the above photo) were the star of the show. Though one website calls this bramble fruit a “bio-bully” for being invasive, the berries are dazzling little gems that are sweeter than should be legal. (Last year I learned the identity of this mysterious bramble I’d found just as the buds were forming. I was anticipating some happy picking, then they perished in the drought. This year: bountiful harvest.)

Some were amazed that you can actually eat mulberries, asking incredulously, “What do you do with them?” while others were right there with me on the “nature’s candy” point.

A friend and I had biked around the neighborhood questing for these berries.

Things I learned: There’s a “Poke Salad Annie” song, and you can eat milkweed flowers, and four hours of talking makes one hoarse.

The solar cooker got lots of interest too, though generally more as a novelty from what I could gather (my partner Judy fielded most of those questions, bless her).

As far as the other exhibitors, I was able to make a quick circuit late in the evening and talk to the folks from Wolf-Beach Farm, as well as friends at the “dumpster diving/dumpster dining” booth and the “making easy meals in 5 minutes” table. (These were all people I had referred to the organizer.)

I also found a couple standouts in the resilience arena. I’ll report on them in an upcoming post. Some great innovators there, helping people break their dependence on a shaky centralized food system that is wreaking havoc on both planetary and personal health.

Their Courage Becomes our Courage

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently devoured Frances Moore Lappe’s brilliant new book EcoMind. I now have a clearer sense of the risk people are taking when they first begin to step off Status Quo Railways and change the way they live.

It’s deeply ingrained in each of us as humans to to look and act like everyone else in our tribe. This has been a matter of survival since Day One of our species: Stay with the pack, or perish!

No wonder so many are hesitant to follow a different drumbeat than the dominant culture’s. Lappe cites experiments showing that subjects went along with the wider group’s opinion–even when it went against what they could see with their own eyes.

It can be quite powerful to join a movement, but what if the movement looks fringy and wrong to the people closest to us? It’s a big risk.

That’s where the power of relationship comes in.

Because those same experiments showed that “all it took was one truth-teller to enable people to be true to themselves.”

“Knowing this,” Lappe writes, “we can choose to seek out those who share our passion, those who encourage us to risk for what we believe in.”

In fact, there are neurological changes that take place when we observe others’ actions. “Mirror neurons” in our brains start firing–as if we ourselves were taking those same actions!

In this way the courage of others becomes our courage.

I have had several such exemplars in my life, people who showed me what it means to live a life of passion and integrity, with the lightest of footprints. Here is a photo of one of them, Keith Johnson of Renaissance Farm.

Keith Johnson, sharing the beauty and abundance of Renaissance Farm

Keith and his partner Peter Bane (who gave me my introduction to Permaculture) model a generous, resourceful, earth-sustaining way of life. It’s a way of life that will be ever more essential as we face the uncertainties of the future.

The photo above was taken in May when a friend and I drove down to Bloomington for Renaissance Farm’s plant sale. Though it was raining, Keith delighted in showing us the glories of spring on the suburban farmstead. The unveiling of a fig tree was particularly thrilling. As I recall, Keith insisted we take some of his surplus bok choy harvest, and when I swooned over the taste of chocolate mint, he pulled a clump right out of the ground and gave it to me to plant at home.

People like Peter and Keith give us all more faith in our own ability to heal the earth, to live in such abundance that we just have to share.

They offer me (and others like me) the assurance that Deepak Chopra talks about in this quote:

The famous adage is wrong: The journey of a thousand miles doesn’t begin with the first step. It begins with the assurance that you can take the first step.

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Shawndra Miller

Giving voice to the world’s remaking

Tag Archives: Do-it-with-others