Books!

Last night, I was thinking about books that I love to read. In particular, ones that I can read over and over and enjoy every time.

It became apparent to me, that besides books of poetry (like those of Hafiz or e.e. cummings), or books having to do with midwifery (like Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin or A Book for Midwives by Susan Klein), books that I like to read cover-to-cover multiple times are illustrated.

I think this train of thought is largely due to my day spent reading the same three children's books over and over again to a bunch of 1-4 year olds at the Waldorf day care I sometimes work for in Saratoga.

So, in case you are the type who likes to collect great children's books, here is a short list of some of my favorites:

1. Animalia, by Graeme Base
2. Big Mama Makes the World, by Phyllis Root and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury
3. Tuesday, by David Wiesner
4. Pigs, by Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko
5. The Napping House, by Audrey Wood and illustrated by Don Wood

You Should See the Icicles

In a few days, I am moving out of a rather old big farmhouse and into a rather old tiny apartment about four hours away. There are many things that I anticipate missing about living here, most importantly the program that brought me here, which showed me how to be friends with eleven and sixty-five year olds, and my brilliant housemates. (youngfriendsinresidence.blogspot.com) Other things include the incredibly wild diversity of wallpaper (I have both thousands of pink strawberries and multi-colored trains just on one half of my room), the creek and backyard, being in close proximity to the town of Ithaca, NY, as well as all the beautiful gorges and our impressive collection of collage supplies.

Some Nifty Things

Sorry for the long absence!

In order to continue to share with you all some of the nifty and wonderful things passing through my life, I will attempt to begin a practice of updating regularly with short posts concerning small things of interest.

For example, today I would like to share with you this awesome website full of street art images.

I discovered this site, and many other fabulous things through my friend and lovely housemate Helen's blog, Things I like.

p.s. My family went on a road trip down to North Carolina and back, and on the way, we stopped at this pretty amazing seven-story treehouse.

Visiting Earlham College

My housemates, Franklin and Anna, joined me on a trip down to Richmond, IN, this past week. I had been invited to come give a workshop on Permaculture (and more specifically, worm bins, or small-scale composting with worms) at Miller Farm, a college house located about eight minutes off campus on a little farm. The workshop went well, and it was really lovely to get a chance to see some of my old friends for a while and explore their exciting spaces. A couple of highlights were the hidden treehouse in the woods and the greenhouse built out of tires filled with rammed earth and covered in cob.It was also really great to find, while going through the house's old scrapbooks, some pictures of my aunt Andi, my dad's first cousin Louis, and my current boss Chris DeRoller working on various farm projects. It turns out they were some of the first farm residents.

...and we're off!

The Young Friends and Residence Program is up and running! We are busy with a wide and wonderful variety of activities and adventures!
Facilitating Youth Retreats at Perry City Meetinghouse has been one of my bigger projects these past couple of months. The attenders have been kids from the Farmington-Scipio region of New York Yearly Meeting, most of whom are between the ages of 11 and 14.
Along with youth program retreats, we have also hosted a couple Circle of Young Friend retreats (for folks between the ages of 18 and 35) at the Beloved Community House in Newfield, NY. Young Adult Friends have also come out to be Adult Presences at our youth retreats, which is a whole lot of fun for everyone involved.

My Latest Adventure!

After arriving home from Ecuador on New Years, I have begun to settle into my new space in Newfield, NY (near Ithaca) at the Beloved Community House. Here, I have come to be a Young Friend in Residence Intern, running youth retreats, doing community outreach and personal inreach, and actively participating as a member of this small intentional community.

Please check out our blog to learn more at: http://youngfriendsinresidence.blogspot.com/

Franklin Crump (on the left in my coat) and Anna Obermayer

are my (on the right in Franklin's coat) fellow interns,

and wonderful people.

The Northern Beaches of Ecuador

I spent the last two weeks busing between some of the northern beaches of Ecuador and Quito. The first week, Aaron and I spent at the beach Atacames. It was beautiful with medium-sized waves, friendly people, lots of fresh fish and shrimp to eat, and artisan stalls.

There were also many stray dogs, including one (we named Sandy) who followed us around for an entire afternoon. Stray dogs are as common here as squirrels are in the United States, though (perhaps due to my now taller height) it seems there are fewer now than there were when I came as a child.

We took a walk to one end of the beach where a fresh water river had its delta, and found a field of trash. Plastic bottles, shoes, styrofoam, plastic bags, building materials, old clothes, fishing line, and glass seemed to be the most common artifacts. Walking along barefoot, we opted to start back toward the cleaner beach when we looked down and saw an old syringe half-burried in the sand. Though we walked away, the trash field was heavily populated by birds, crabs, and where it spilled into the water, small fish were congregated.

We took the bus back to Quito, saw Malaika briefly, and Aaron got on a plane back to the States. The following morning, I got back on the bus and took it back to Atacames, where I discovered that the buses to Mompiche beach stop running after 5pm. Atacames, like most of the country, experiences daily power-outages due to the country-wide drought, and so I waited in a quickly darkening town for my parents to make the drive to pick me up. Driving in the dark in Ecuador is especially harrowing due to large potholes, unmarked speed bumps, and a general lack of street lights, coupled with other crazy drivers and the tendancy for most trucks to have one or more non-functional head- and/or break lights. I was thankful to finally meet my family and find them all in one piece.

At Mompiche, the waves were awesome for body-surfing, and the beach was less touristy. We took a boat ride around the edge of the cove and out to a newly-formed island covered in sand dollars (which here they call sea stars because of the perfect stars in their middles and which have a "nursery" right inside the bend of the island) and little red crabs...

...as well as young mangrove trees, which are part-creaters of the island. Some of local food and profit comes from the conch shells which are collected from the muddy roots of these cool trees. The trees also support a wide-variety of birds and insects, and their steady destruction in Ecuador (and other parts of the world) due to shrimp farming and other commercial enterprises, is threatening the biodiversity and health of the coastal area.