I should really start blogging.

doctor sez i gotta have a backiotomy

So, poor Erik’s busy healing his broken neck up these days. If you haven’t heard, he got three cervical vertibrae fused after getting run into by a crabby scab at a union strike line… sounds like something that would happen in a Bruce Springsteen song, but, alas, no. He’s doing a really, really good job not being super-pissed, imho. He’s in a lot of pain still but, from what I can suss out, it’s better than it was.

st. paul snapshots

I actually really, really like St. Paul. This is good, because as far as I can tell, we’re going to *die* here. If I’m going to be totally honest, it’s a little hard for me to admit that I like it here in this rather small city — part of the NYC snob coming out in me I suppose, even though I’m not originally from there, either. But, I do. Here’s one reason:

At the post office the other day, mailing off my eBay crap. Ahead of me is a 60-something year old Ojibwa granny with a heavy duty, Jherri-curl like permanent in her hair, dressed head to toe in hot pink Spandex, listening to her iPod. She even had a hot pink bum-bag. Also:

20-something year old Hmong Target employees bitching to each other in Hmonglish at work: Huy banh bun tuy the fuckin’ manager ty reh quan, youknowwhatimean? *Love* it. And:

All the Somali women employed at the junkshops I haunt, Goodwill + Savers and so forth. These are the nicest people on the planet. They are loud and friendly and will grab your elbow when they’re talking to you. A lot of them have this bumpersticker on their cars that says SOMALIA 2020 COUNT ME IN that I’ll have to ask one of them about one of these days. Does it mean that some of them are committed to emigrating back home in 12 years, no matter what Somalia looks like? I don’t know. Furthermore:

Arts & Crafts Movement architecture. You can’t spit without hitting it in our neighborhood. I’m really surprised the city’s not more famous for it, particularly since it’s got the Prairie stuff as well as a number of other vernacular substyles.

do the collapse

I’m pretty freaked about the $700 billion bailout. I’m not really sure your average American knows what it means. I’m not even sure I really know what it means (700 billion is kind of a large number), but what think is happening is this: the dollar is going to be worth less, and things are going to get more expensive, so there will be sudden shortages of essentials like gas and food and work, and then stores and banks will shut down, and anyone who doesn’t have cash on hand isn’t going to be able to buy anything. It makes me very, very thankful that we bought this house when we did (4 months ago), for two reasons: it means that we can’t get thrown out into the street by some landlord (provided we pay the mortgage regularly), and it means we have land that we can turn into food production. This whole situation makes me want to turn the yard into a permaculture garden yesterday.

We’ve been working on it bit by bit this past summer, but we’re pretty cash-poor at the moment. We compost like mad, but there’s no way we can make enough soil in the next few months, over winter (slows down decomposition.) We have a pretty specific plan for the land at this point, though, with Erik even having worked up a map. I look at the lawn at this point with some derision — it’s as wasteful as a golf course, why wouldn’t you grow food on your land? If the fit really hits the shan hard, we can even turn the garage into a stable for a couple of goats, some chickens…

Also on the list: learn canning + smoking, get together a reserve of grains in rodent-proof containers, set up rainwater collectors…

Love, Leah