update from malavika in DC:

A brief bleep on what's going down here in DC, for those of you who aren't in the area. The capital of this country is on fire, y'all.

 

Since last Monday when the congressional hearings for Petraeus' reportback began, there has been at least one, if not 4 different actions, most of them involving both civil disobedience and unintentional arrest (Big Brother cracking down on random activists walking down the street or standing in line peacefully to attend the hearings), EVERY DAY in Washington, DC, and this is scheduled to continue at least for the next month.....

The Iraq Veterans Against the War and iraq war resisters (www.couragetoresist.org) are part of the spearhead for this movement, and it has been an inspiration to watch them at work, but I'm sad that the stories of what's happening in the streets, the offices, the parks, the halls, the jails, both the mindboggling injustice, and the creative people's resistance, isn't going out to the rest of the country, let alone the rest of the world.
Or maybe it is, and you already know? Or maybe you have stories of the ragings in your own community that you can spread like the wildfire that has thousands of signatures on this petition already?

- Malavika

program notes from dungeness

good morning friends,

and a good morning it is. the fog has succumbed to a flaming sun here in the dungeness lowlands and the flowers have all taken note. jess sneezes in the kitchen and scott is off running his dog. the roosters and drying machine proclaim in symphonic regularity: all is right in your corner of the world.

we have bathed in desserts -- peach cobbler, spice cookies, carrot cake, coconut frosting, delicata squash -- and are free and clean. at last.

there are hundreds of species of mushrooms in the mossy old forest, and miles of mycelium beneath are feet. i suspect the earth is made of mushrooms, even as i suspect dick cheney is made of love.

i'm supposed to have the gift of presence here in rural washington for almost four months this time around. from august 6th to thanksgiving. and riding down the hill yesterday it's very clear how important this time is -- that though there are various threads of color weaving structure through my spacetime, it is my involvement with the earth and the people here at nash's ( nashsproduce.com ! farmers meet the web) that really supports me.

we can lean heavily against the earth. and we do.

i spend my mornings picking carrots by hand, riding the back of the harvesting machine ("carrot cowboy", video to come), grabbing beans of the vine and purple potatoes from the dirt. we wash the tops gentle and the roots with gusto, pack ice into cold boxes and send them off to the unmet city dwellers who make this large (and somewhat unsustainable) circle a reality. it's a great mix of grunt and reflection, spanish and english, political indignation and noblesse oblige.

farming.

we dream up recipes while picking potatoes and have the afternoon to make blue potato tacos and fresh pico de gallo, whirl together

dates pinenuts cocoa chile clove and butter

to top a baking delicata squash.

beetsteaks and beetcakes and beetsalads and beetjuices. breaking the local challenge with coconut frostings and chutneys with dosa and ginger beer fermenting behind the back burner, the only region warm enough for fungal procreation.

as far as other projects go, i'm happy to announce

* cooking com bigode 1st edition is out of gas and still rolling, sold out. we are looking to print another edition in the next month
* the book about the pilgrimage in india is in revision and should be ready for typesetting in two weeks, hopefully available online by october 2 (gandhi's birthday)
* we are soon hiring a Marketing Director for somethingconstructive.net to get the word out so I don't have to
* i will be moving into a small wood-heated abode for october and november, a little more isolated to favor music and other reflections
* you are still welcome to visit until thanksgiving -- denali and mali will be rolling through with all kinds of fan and fare
* the foundations sits foggily on the horizon.

now, 10 minutes til the carrot washing begins and it's time to ride down to the packing shed.

one love
psychiatric vedanta

ankur

--
in sequim from august 2nd through thanksgiving
201 . 736 . 9684  +  360 . 683 . 5398

neilu on vacation

mangolandia's iranian correspondent, hired in india and on duty
through sri lanka and various amerikan suburbs, has taken a hiatus
from her organc farm life (nashsproduce.com) to hike for two weeks in
the bosom of olympic national park's hoh rainforest.

she's leaves the following words of wisdom as a parting note to our
dear friends:

***

just in case i don't make it out, i was thinking that this might be
something for the blog. you can decide.

this is an except from a response my brother wrote to something in
time magazine many years ago. but the last line has stuck in my head
for this long. and i asked my mom to read me the quote this morning
before i go off into nature for two weeks. so this is what i wrote
down this morning as my mom read it from a framed picture of my
brother with the article, downstairs in the basement, next to a huge
screened tv (this is the second huge tv in the house). my point is
that, no one would EVER notice this small framed thing sitting there
next to this huge ass tv in a basement that no one ever uses. any
way, here it is:

----------------------------

Insights Into Iran

"The reader asks 'where are the self appointed moral authorities who
condemn the late shah's cruelties and were so happy to see the caring,
compassionate mullahs assume authorities?'

I am certainly on of the many who condemned the alte Shah's cruelties
and I was certainly overjoyed at his departure. The receptivity of
the Iranian people to Khomeni's promises was a reaction to the
policies and methods of the Shah's government. The emergence of the
mullahs as the dominent power was an unfortunate result. I can only
answer the question by saying that those of us who were against the
shah are quietly going about our business, but our hearts ache for our
country and sometimes when we are alone and no one is watching, we
cry."

------------------------------

god i love my brother. i love him so much and i feel i may never get
to tell him that before one of us dies cause for some reason we do not
talk. the stupidity of the whole thing explains all the wars. i
still can't even talk to my own brother that i love, my own blood
family. and i still feel that i have the right to question why we are
at war. for god's sake, the fight is here, right in front of us all
the time, and we have the fucking audasity to even think for one
minute that we have the right to judge anyone else. take a look at
yourself, stop judging, and just to the right thing. spike lee was
always right. DO THE RIGHT (FUCKIN') THING.

see you on the flip side ank.

***

more on the only message there is

Love is not a virtue ... it's a neccessity of greater importance than
bread and water, and more important than even light or air. Let no-one
have pride in their loving. Inhale and exhale Love just as
unconsciously as you breathe in and breathe out air. Love needs no-one
to exalt it. Love will only exalt the heart that it finds worthy of
itself. Don't seek out rewards for Love. Love is rewarded sufficiently
with Love, just as hate is a sufficient punishment for hatred. Love
accounts to no-one but itself. Love neither lends nor borrows; Love
doesn't buy or sell.

--Mikhail Naimy, From "Book of Mirdad"

ramadan karim

This year, September 12th was the first day of the lunar month, the
first shiny scrap of moon to cross the sky. It's Rosh Hashanah and the
first day of Ramadan. The year we lived in Lebanon, Amanda and I had
the opportunity to practice Ramadan, to abstain from letting anything
-- food, drink, or smoke -- pass our lips during the day. To gorge
ourselves at night. To cook without tasting and work without water.

As I'm back on the farm and it's the busiest time of the year, I don't
quite have the strength or discipline to celebrate Ramadan this year.
But the consciousness is no less important -- especially here on the
farm with so much abundance and blackberries and carrots and apples
and chard, to remember those who are lost in a world without food. Who
feel poor.

So I write this blessing and encourage all our friends and lovers to
try fasting for Ramadan, even if it's just one day -- from first light
to last -- or at least to wake up in the morning and take a few
minutes to consider what it's all about before that morning glass of
water or dried mango or whatever.

*

With this hunger
let us take consciousness
of the hunger,
the suffering,
and the poverty
of our brothers and sisters,
across this world we share.

With this pain
let us take consciousness
of the pain we bring
to our brothers and sisters
though our excess and apathy.

In a world of abundance,
there is no poverty without waste.

With this food,
with this satisfaction,
let us take consciousness
of the satisfaction we bring
to our brothers and sisters
through our hard work and compassion.

Humdulillah.

*

love ankur

the rollercoaster is made of love

or a carpet of green polarized glass and one white bar across your consciousness with cottonwoods in the background against the dungeness river. this morning i went for a walk and saw salmon chilling in the ponds, perhaps on their up the watery hill.

last sunday we went to the fremont barrio of seattle to work the farmers market. the dodge diesel and myself. alana met me there and unloaded in the early morning, preamble to goat cheese and roasted red bell peppers and pointing carrots at clueless passerby and learning for myself the age-old lesson: marketing is about sex appeal.

people weren't interested in the vegetables as much as smiles and flair and innuendo. they would stop for my lines and end up with a (reused) bag full of organic vegetables. which i am prone to feeling bad about -- it is manipulation -- but its manipulation to buy organic vegetables which could possibly

save
us
all.

as jen pointed out, im not using sex to sell crack. and poetry, too, is manipulation.

alana told me her friend, who works as a nurse, undertook a prozac study at the altitude of 80mg (whereas 20mg might be a normal dose). she said she noted she simply couldnt feel emotion. not that she wasn't sad or depressed, but rather, that she had no ability to feel those emotions, nor happiness, excitement. it wasn't until the study ended that she cried about her friends who had left town.

another dimension to the antidepressants and the war on language that should be calling them antiemotives or something. how can you be depressed by the incredible harsh reality of the Wars we undertake if you're on medication. could that be the point? a pleasant side effect for the power structure. you couldn't write it better. like dick cheney's robotic heart.

somehow the news got to me this week, harpers index, so in an overture to the social nature of misery, i'd like to share. cough up the prozac before starting if you want to short your keyboard with some tears. but its not online. oh well.

one love for everyone, even the robotic hearts,
ankur


--
in sequim from august 2nd through thanksgiving
201 . 736 . 9684  +  360 . 683 . 5398

my favorite line in the book, so far

They are hard and tart
and full of mangitude.

i cannot say it enough

how incredibly cool the possibilites are for collaborative art, and thusly, peace, with these weird machines.

astronaut . post-due


astronaut's last theme was "backyard" and here was our (ank + eric) contribution:

post-dude next swap is tuesday, i believe.

















one love / many artists.