Dec 23, 2009

farewell he says as they say goodbye with their eyes to him. he is satisfied with another human interaction. he thinks that they think well of him. he ponders what kind of person they think he is. he brings this newly formed identity into life inside his mind and places it into bizarre situations. could he ever be like this person? he distrusts his own romanticism and concludes no. he begins immediately to think of his flaws and he feels safe in his convictions because most of his thoughts lead him there. he loathes safety and comfort because it always leads him to think of his inadequacies. he knows this is not the road to the home he desires. he opens his breast to the outer winds and is carried away by it. he trusts that he will sleep wherever he falls. he says his dreams are more powerful that way. he wishes for life to begin now.

small city living

fresh air, no jobs, dog poop and pee in the house, catch in the barn, laughing kids, and books.

sure, ill take it. its where i am needed most for the moment.

dream, night of 10/20

beings of tornadoes with stars, and the relationships between humans while running away from them.

i can help you get a job

your body needs to go to work.
ill tell you why.
your body was built to work
better get on going.
how else can you make money
for someone else to steal
Succeed in your business suit
no mustard stains on your collar
work towards efficiency
by wasting your time with practicing for it
so that you can have all the time in the world
and then you can use time to……
you can use time to……
……………………..
play video games and watch movies and television until your eyeballs fall out.
no worries about the health of your body
you are putting an end to your suffering, right?
as a gift I grant you listlessness and a life with no purpose.
alls it will cost is your time.

american ennui

so much of the world is on fire.
how can we sleep at night
while many are starving and dying
few others are rich and laughing.

all of the problems are much
too much to comprehend
brain sweating out of every pore.

what purpose is pain felt for others
if we are not intricately tied together
no friends or enemies
simply hearts beating.

the seeds of the fruit seem insignificant on harvest day.
beyond the moment
it is really
the only thing of significance.
the preservation of existence.

September 17th

An almost succesful attempt at a geodesic dome.
If I would have made the paper rods stronger it would no doubt have been able to stand up.

a poem from awhile ago

Words dripping off the human tongue.
How absurd to not use a comma.
For what reason was language created,
if not to translate the human experience.

Silly thoughts
Hopeless desires,
Monkeys on a typewriter.
Pavlovian control over our desires.

What does revolution mean to our family?
Should we succumb to their desires.

Constant questioning is a privilege.
Let us use it to better humanity.

Whatever is understood is with human deeply in love.
Don’t let it make sense.
Lets us call it for love.

-sprouts

September 16th

study study study.

mushrooms
http://books.google.com/books?id=y1fnacRg1AYC&dq=stamets+mushrooms&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=pemwSp2RI5OoNu7TofIN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=14#v=onepage&q=&f=false

geodesic dome
http://www.instructables.com/id/Build_a_cheap_and_easy_Den/

ill post a pic when im done with it.

September 9th

Over labor day weekend I went to a little town called Scott City for the most serene adventure I can remember having. There are some really lovely pictures of it on facebook.
can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=2163472&id=6908032&ref=mf

Other than that I have been to check out a few of the other farms around town. Yesterday we went to Drumm Farm. Another average organic farm, although at this one is was invited to come back for a possible work exchange in which Cross-Lines would be able to use space in their greenhouse. Im so down with doing that, these cubicle walls are starting to make me shiver with fear thinking about being confined to them in the winter time.
The other garden that we checked out today is TroostWood Youth Garden. http://kcfoodcircle.blogspot.com/2009/08/troostwood-youth-garden-market-fridays_28.html The leader, Ericka Wright, was a lively woman confined to her wheelchair due to Muscular Dystrophy, but she aint gonna let that stop from doing up a garden. It is completely run by children and teenagers within their community. It was pretty damp outside when we arrived so our meeting took place entirely on her porch where she gave us all good advice on how to bring the community garden together. In short, she said we were doomed because we are only here for a year and solid relationships with anybody will probably be in vain, and anything that we may start while we are here will probably crumble without us holding it together.
Suppose we will do our best.

Thinking about getting a cat and/or a car real soon.
Any suggestions?

September 2nd

Hey yall.
Lately I have been making friends around the area. Last Saturday I rode around the entire city with a bunch of bikers that showed me the ropes of the city. We went into a nice scenic wooded area, the local anarchist bike collective, and then for some good Korean food.
But, my best friends by far have been the Golden Girls. They are named so because all that they really do all day is sit on their porch and watch and talk about everything going on. Their house is right by Cross-Lines so I go and hang out with them for some time almost everyday. They like tomatoes and broccoli and always ask how Bethany is doing.
I was supposed to meet up with a few fellas at the Food Annex today to play a few games of chess, but they never showed up. I hope that they are alright.
Turnips and radishes are looking nice, but our chard is looking pretty yellow. I think I might take a handful or so of compost and put it in a watering can with some over night to make compost tea, so that I can give that chard a nice and chardy boost. I bet you chardly noticed my slightly recharded pun.

August 28th

Today I woke up to gray skies again, Im starting to miss the sun beating my face in. The garden was pretty wet still and I didnt want to muddy up the floors in the office so I stayed inside for most of the day. I went and served food in the food kitchen and I wore my "Listen to Bob Marley" t-shirt. I anticipated many comments from our patrons about my shirt. Instead they me asked me who Bob Marley was. I appreciated their honesty because many people would have just agreed that they had known him, not ever really knowing any of his radical history. In Western Culture we are conditioned do just that in social circumstances. Many people have dropped out of the "social loop", if an alleged society even really exists. Really, we are living in a bunch of cults, meaning that cult is defined by any system of shared belife.
Sorry im jumping all over tonight. But all of these ideas are connected. Just like everything and everyone. Too much coincidence for there to be any real coincidence.
Love you all.
I like comments if you so desire.

August 27th

Rotten tomatoes and gray skies.

August 19th - 25th

Hi there, its been a little time since my last post. My apologies, I have been busy, you know.
The seeds that I had planted about a week ago have all germinated (chard, kale, cilantro, turnips, lettuce, and collards) and are looking pretty good by now. The fastest germinating ones were definitely the turnips, lettuce, and arugula. I went out to water them yesterday and spent over 2 hours untangling the hose and getting wet while figuring out our overhead sprinkler system. *I am working on getting a donation from Baker Creek for some heirloom seeds to start a perennial herb garden over here. Oh, I love their seeds. *I got some worms over the weekend, and a girlfriend. Coincidence? I don't think so. Her name is Bethany and she helped me give our new worm friends a new home, and she helped me plant some radishes and beets. But back to the worms, we put half into the compost bin, and half I am going to use to start the vermicompost with. Poopy worm dirt will soon be the world's new gold. After peak oil, get ready for peak soil. Im not joking.

The past 4 days

The last four days have been pretty interesting. I have had ample time in the garden where my sweat merged with the soil, and the soil into my skin, the long awaited acquaintance. I have planted chard, kale, collards, cilantro, spinach, turnips, and salad mix. Much love for the weather because it started to rain about an hour after I got done planting. Just how I likes it.

I have also visited a couple of farms. The first one we saw this week wass the Kansas City Community Farm (http://www.kccua.org/) Daniel who was our guide while we were there was really helpful in all of questions and resources that he offered. Nothing particular comes to mind right now. I do remember though, that they got hit pretty bad by tomato blight, which I learned is a fungus that has plagued farmers since the beginning of time.
The next farm we saw was called New Roots For Refugees, here is their blog right here, http://newrootsforrefugees.blogspot.com/. This is the most succesful community garden that I have ever seen. All of the plots are reserved for refugee women to start their own business and earn a living. Rachel, our lovely guide, told of us that currently there are 8 different continents represented in this garden. She said that each culture has their own way of growing food so she is able to learn alot by working there. This place had alot of love and compassion, and humongous sunflowers. The biggest thing that I pulled from this farm visit is that the most important thing to do on a community plot is to develop personal and genuine relationships. Some solid advice, and although I knew that I needed to be reminded of it again because I just kept thinking of my job in terms of programs and humans as numbers. Hell naw, I don't want to be like that and have a plastic smile, because I dont want a plastic life. Plastic is toxic and smells funny.
I have met some interesting folks the past week or so, most of them homeless. Whenever a homeless person introduces themselves to me they always seem to label themselves as homeless immediately in the conversation, perhaps because in this capitalist system we like to label ourselves by the things we have, or in their case, dont have. Anyways they were telling me that people like to take lots of vegetables from our garden. I saw a perpetrator this morning and ran out to do whatever and get him, but he had fled in his white mini-van loaded with our beautiful veggies. Bastard. I hope he really needs them.

Here is a picture of the garden. All of that empty space is what I just planted in.









this is Scat, my feline companion for the year. Momina takes care of her, but she likes me better.

August 11th, 2009

*I translated the flyer I made from the previous day from English into Spanish. Learning the dynamics of a new language is very difficult after having been conditioned my entire life to think one way. I got much help and patience from Momina on this, she also speaks Hindi. I am trying to learn the basics of the Spanish language because I feel a responsibility to be as present here as possible for the people in this community, and the language gap is a very large barrier for the work that i wish to do here. *Today I started this task journal, everything written before this day has been written in retrospect. Its amazing how much the human mind can remember. This has taken many hours of sitting in my cubicle. I have never been so motionless.

August 10th, 2009

*Harvested for Food Pantry and then went tilling with Bill until the heat exhausted us into sweaty unproductive puddles. It would not have been so bad if it wasn't for the demolished house that used to stand where our garden now is. We kept having to pull out huge concrete peices the size of infants. I really enjoyed working with Bill, he has a calm and productive demeanor that is great for getting serious work done. *I Showed Glen the garden plan that I created a few days ago and he completely changed it around claiming that there is no conclusive data that companion planting works, indeed he is correct, but im sure that it would be more advantageous than harmful for the garden. *I Created a flyer (with much help and criticisms from Bethany) for the Annex, Food Pantry, and Office to help and get the word out about our produce. I plan on updating the list of vegetables on new flyers all of the time as new things become available. I got to get that hype going for veggies. Word.

August 7th, 2009

*Turned the compost, it still stinks pretty bad, MUST GET WORMS. It has decreased to about half the size it was when I first re-did it on July 31st *Made a garden plan by going outside and measuring the garden plot. I searched for a schematic of the Cross-Lines campus but found nothing, word around the block is that Pastor Gary may be able to provide promising results. Anyways, the garden plan is based upon plants with small maturity dates and what the community will find desirable thrown together using companion planting principals. *I called around to 4 or 5 nurseries about trying get some perennial plants donated, we are 501c3 Non-Profit so businesses can give us stuff as write offs instead of throwing things away. I want to try and spice this place up with an herb garden or just some sexy looking good smelling things around for people to be happy about. There is alot of unused space around this place, lots of potential for more beauty. *Went to First Friday down in the Power and Light District to hand out vouchers for free produce. This place blew my mind. I ceased handing out vouchers and just fell into the creative vibe emmanating from everyone around me. I don't know if it was the scene or the full moon that night but I felt intoxicated as we were all leaving.

August 6th, 2009

*Harvested lots of beautiful veggies and fruits (tomatoes are fruit, they are a large berry, the supreme court is wrong in ruling that it be labeled as a vegetable). Bill (another committed volunteer) and I talked about my idea to do some planting for a fall harvest and he volunteered to use his tiller on Monday to tear up some earth for the occasion. Glen was not thrilled about this and said that it was too late to plant, as he had said many times before, but in the end gave some good criticism and advice for me to work with. *I started gathering materials for a worm bin, found a good plastic bin from the garage and filled it with shredded paper from the front desk. Most importantly, I NEED WORMS. *Later on in the evening we went and visited the Hun's Family Garden. This is one of the finest farms I have ever visited in my life as a human being upon this planet earth. It was so amazing because it was the most practical farm for his unique purposes. Paul, the farmer there, explained to us why we never weeds, irrigates, or hires staff or voluteers; because there is not enough time so there is no need to. Simple enough I suppose. They were insane genius farmers, many times Paul told us "Whatever your parents told you to do, we do the opposite." They sure did, for instance, they plant their tomatoes 6 inches apart from eachother whereas modern farming suggests at least 1 foot (their tomatoe plants we at least 10 feet tall with lots of fruit, much bigger than ours), they plant their potatoes in furrows not in mounds like traditional farming (Paul lifted up the straw covering the potatoes and they were just sitting there waiting to be picked, no digging necessary), and they were growing ginger (thats crazy, I have never seen a growing ginger plant in the United States). The Huns are farming gods in my eyes, searching through weeds taller than they are only to emerge with the beautiful treasures that they had planted in early spring. Next time I see them at market im going to buy out thier whole table.

August 5th, 2009

*Worked with 4 volunteers weeding the peppers in the garden. The volunteers were much older than me which came as a bit of surprise to myself and to Amber who had asked me to lead them. Everything went along quite fine. I felt at first the older folks would not want to be lead by a young buck so I framed everything in the form of a question. Like for instance when I wanted to go and weed peppers I asked "So do yall think we should go and weed the peppers?". All of the peppers soon got weeded, and I learned of some great seasonal recipes from one of the volunteers. Soon after the heat took hold of us and we retired. *Carey took all us VISTAs to Planter seed company right by the city market. I was very impressed. We bought 6 varieties of seeds, 1 ounce of each, and it amounted to about 5 bucks, Ive never heard of such extrordinarily low prices on seeds. I was madly in love with everything, even the lady who rung us up who had an enormously beautiful mullet. Ill be back there for sure, it smelled so good.

August 4th, 2009

*Went and checked out Herb n' Gardener, a local city plot. The farmer Lew is a beautifully intense artistic farmer. He had lots of interesting sculptures and empty beer bottles in his garden. His garden is entirely made from found materials. For instance, his friend dumped a bunch of radiators on his lawn with no warning at all, so Lew took them apart and made a raised bed with them, genuine spontaneity. He has a very interesting method of farming, using whatever is around to the best of his advantage but he doesnt obsess over the small details which is probably why he is so pleasant to be around. I would love to go and work or volunteer with him, he is a great teacher because he is constantly learning, failing and succeeding on the little bit of land he has. He also said that there is still plenty of time to plant crops this year, looking at what he has accomplished in his plot I certainly believe him.

August 3rd, 2009

*First real day of work, YES *Woke up and went to harvest produce for the food pantry. Lots and lots of tomatoes. The thrift store had lots of extra tomatoes and other produce that we harvested from last Thursday. Nancy (one of the faithful volunteers) took the leftovers to a nearby local church so they didn't go to waste. Why do we have so much extra produce from last week? .....Perhaps people just don't know about our produce, or maybe they don't want it or even care that it exists. This definitely is a question that I will seek to resolve during my time here. Some other questions that I have about this garden is where are all of the community members. All of the consistent volunteers, bless their souls, come from Johnson County, which is known in this community as the nearby rich suburb. Is it a priviledge to be a volunteer?...... I will work with Momina on this issue as she also desires to increase community involvement and empower those in poverty. The purpose of our job is to do it so good that our job is not needed anymore. *I discussed with Glen, the garden's master gardener, about planting in the fall and he immediately shot the idea down saying it was much too late in the season. I wish my position with Cross-Lines would have started at the beginning of spring season so that I could feel like I have a purpose with the actual growing of the garden. Oh well, time will tell.

July 31st, 2009

*Today was a day where each of us VISTAs figured out what we would like to accomplish individually and collectively during our year of service here. The three of us had a nice brainstorming session. I mostly tried to get an idea of how group dynamics will work with all of us. So far, each person seems to feel a sense of freedom with each other and nobody tries to dominate conversation, unless im mistaken and I fullfill this role, I hope not. Im really excited to get going on some projects with these other motivated minds. *Some of the projects that I am very interested in are getting more produce from the garden into the Annex, further developing the garden and surrounding areas on the Cross-Lines campus, meeting other local farmers, help out with giving nutritional classes, and getting the community involved to provide a form of guidance for my work. *I wanted to get my hands dirty so I went out and attacked the compost now knowing what was in store. It was so terrible, there was lots of trash in it, shoes, and a pair of pants. Somebody through in a bunch of sticks which separated everything thrown on top of it (which was the majority of the pile) from the worms, so there was about 4 feet of rotting wet gross material I had to scoop out. Yuck city. Once I found worms, which was at the bottom of the pile, I collected leaves and other plant matter and just kept layering the leaves, plant matter, rotting nast, dirt, and repeating till everything was used. It was like making a septic lasagna. I would really like to add some red wiggler worms to speed up the process and make it more appealing, like sprinkled parmesaen on top of the meal.

July 30th, 2009

*We began the day by harvesting, which is every Monday and Thursday. This time there were so many tomatoes, we harvested just about over 200lbs of them. *The Americorps team went and worked at the Thrift Store and met Linda and Mandy, the exquisite Thrift Store overlords. All thrift stores seem to have that same stale smell that my grandma's unopened cabinets have, odd. Anyways, for the most part the Thrift Store is entirely operated by volunteers and donations. I was sent to work with a lovely fragile lady named Glenda behind the cash register for some hours. There wasn't much to do as Glenda repeatedly told me that it was slow day, so I checked out a few things for our house, which Cross-Lines so generously set up for us, which the ladies at the Thrift compassionately gave me, they really take care of us over here. *I met Evelyn who runs the Food Pantry. Work was not discussed rathed she told me of some of her wild old days traveling through the desert, crazy life, etc. *After lunch we came and had a meeting with our supervisors to give us a better run down of what is expected of us and the things that are available for us. I feel very fortunate to have these women as my bosses because, at least now, it seems as though they wish for most of our work to be self guided and not held to strict requirements. This inspires me to work hard for them.

July 29th

*Today we went to the soup kitchen aka. the Annex to work and see how it operates. I felt rather useless and misguided as there were many volunteers on hand but was glad when eventually we were given the job of washing and drying dishes, having a task helped to ease my tension of social awkwardness. Cross-Lines has many things going on, not only do they have a massive amount of volunteers from all over the state, mostly from church groups, but they are a mecca for people serving community service as ordered by the court. At lunch time I helped to wash down tables and then pour milk into peoples cups. I really enjoyed serving milk to people, I think because it was a simple way to interact with people without using direct verbal communication, I suck at that sometimes as can be seen while reading this journal. I must say though, that the Cross-Lines Annex is one of the most diverse environments that I have ever been in, the whole spectrum of human beings were represented there. Poverty is not restricted to one classification of people.

July 28th

*Amber (my other awesome boss/supervisor/mentor) took us all down to the Levy to help and unload a big ole' semi truck. The levy is the place where Cross-Lines distributes food through their CSFP program that gives out food to people over 60 on fixed incomes and to women and children of any age. The semi truck was late and the driver creeped out Amber, as she later admitted that most truck drivers creep her out. It took us quite awhile to unload all of the pallets off the truck as Samantha and Momina were learning for the first time how to use a pallet jack. We had a group of about 10 volunteers to help and pack bags for the clients to come and pick up later that day. We listened to country and Christina Aguliera, some people found this acceptable, myself not included.

July 27th

*First day in the garden, I came dressed appropriately in a tank top and sandals. Kansas is hot. We all (Momina, Samantha, and I) met the volunteers in the garden: Nancy and Bill (long time committed volunteers), Glen (the master gardener that helped to plan the garden the last two years along with Carey) Katie (a soon to be departed intern), and Carey (my awesome boss/supervisor/mentor). The garden looked pretty decent, about 10 or so different plants growing with some weeds starting to stake out territory in various spots. *The rest of the day the three of us VISTAs just kind of hung around and tried to become acquainted with this large system called Cross-Lines. There are lots of things going on here, figuring it out will take some time, so many intricacies to note.