May in the Midwest

May has been a very good month for enjoying God's glory, for learning more about Nonviolent (compassionate) Communication, and for volunteer projects.

In the Midwest part of the US, there are 4 very distinct seasons. With most of the trees deciduous, there is 6 months of barren gray and white (if we are lucky). So when the weather warms up in spring, and the leaves begin to emerge from the trees and shrubs, and the grass begins to turn green again, it is a huge cause for celebration - and even though I wasn't in the Midwest for the winter, I still could participate in the excitement and joy of the return of green to the world. People here are so thrilled that they will tell strangers that they saw a robin, or a crocus in bloom, or heard their first mourning dove. Everything becomes a sign of spring. Someone walking around in shorts, or the first child on a bike, or the sound of a lawnmower, and the smell of fresh cut grass. All experiences missing from people's experience for the past 6 months. And the rush, the explosion of colour and the joy in the voices of the birds can be overwhelming. Everything is new, fresh, green and perfect. I enjoyed it (and am enjoying it) immensely.


I felt so fortunate to be able to attend another seminar on NonViolent Communication taught by the master - Marshall Rosenberg. http://www.cnvc.org/ Marshall is speaking at only 3 cities in the US this year, and St. Paul is one of them. I took better notes than last year, and am more conscious of the words I am using when speaking with others. I got my NVC recipe card typed up and gave out about 35 of them at the seminar. It is very useful to have the basics of NVC available in your purse or wallet, for when you want to use the concepts. If you wish a copy, let me know, and I will send one to you.

One of my volunteer projects is to promote Nonviolent Communication in New Zealand, and support the trainers there. So I purchased many books and DVDs and CDs to bring back to New Zealand with me, to share.

The seminar was held at the University of St. Thomas and there was a coffee stand in the lobby of the building. I was riveted by photos taken by the barista, photographer Lorna Rockey, http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?rid=9705.
Take a close look at the sandals in the photo.



Lorna put up this poster for the privileged children who attend St. Thomas, to give them some glimpse into the lives of the majority of people in the world. It is a pretty powerful reality check! She was born in Kenya to East Indian parents, so brings a decidedly global perspective to St. Thomas.

I learned heaps at the seminar, and am happy to share with anyone who is interested the basics of Nonviolent Communication, and how it has changed my life. Just ask.

Leaving St. Paul, I headed down to the small town of Anamosa, Iowa to help out my sister Sharon for a couple of weeks. One of the things I did there was to plant the family vegetable garden. I knew Sharon and Jeff have little time for weeding, so I laid cardboard and newspaper down between the rows and covered it with mulch. This will keep weeds out of the paths, anyway! I prefer cardboard over newspaper for several reasons: It is stronger, and won't disintegrate as quickly, it will withstand foot traffic better without tearing and leaving openings for those oh so intrepid weeds to come through, and being brown, it blends in better when bits of it show through the mulch. Once the mulch is on it, you would hardly know it is there. You also don't need to till the garden when you use lots of mulch. Just push the mulch aside in the spring to plant your plants, and tuck them in. It works best with seedlings rather than seeds, but is still less work than tilling (no gas needed) and weeding. Let me know if you'd like more info on this, or if you have questions.



During my visit Sharon and Jeff took the girls mushroom hunting, and came back with morel mushrooms (delicious!) and photos of Jesina and in this huge field of mayapples.

It was a busy time for Kalli during my visit. She sang in the elementary school program, and had her first dance recital!
One night when Sharon and Jeff were out of town I took the girls into Anamosa for some bike riding and visiting friends. Kalli was still riding with training wheels, but as good a gymnast as she is, I knew she could balance a bike! So I suggested to her that she try to ride her big sister's bike, and helped her get going. In a few minutes, she had it down! And Jesina wasn't even upset that Kalli was riding her bike, which I was grateful for.

During my stay with Sharon I was helping out in her business. I often went next door to Sharon's office to enjoy the atmosphere of Grounds and Goodies, the coffee shop owned by Betty. She has posted on her counter the Cafe Press article I sent from New Zealand, which talks about how the keys to the state penitentiary in Anamosa were sold on e-Bay last year. So all the locals read how their little town made the coffeeshop news in New Zealand.

Sharon and Jeff's dog Kesha has a new friend, Bessie the cat. Kesha is a house dog. Bessie is supposed to stay outside and keep the rabbit and mouse population down, but her life aspiration is to be a housecat, not a barn cat. So when the door is open, she sneaks in and runs to Kesha to protect her from being sent back outside. One morning she took refuge in Kesha's cage with her, and I closed the door on them both. Cats do not like closed doors, so after 10 minutes of this, she was happier to go outside.

I left Anamosa to head to the small town of Fairfield, Iowa, famous for transcendental meditation http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3875438. I had heard about Fairfield when I was taking my father to the Veteran's Administration clinic in Iowa City, and was curious to learn how this alternative community could sprout in such a conservative environment as Iowa!! So when one of the attendees of the Nonviolent Communication workshop I met said she was from Fairfield, I said I would visit her on my way back north from Anamosa. Ah, but how to get there!! I had come down by one way rental car, and left my bike and trailer in St. Paul. Bus transportation in remote farming communities is sparse at best. So I decided to see if there were any Couchsurfers http://www.couchsurfing.com/ living in Fairfield. There were 18 of them, much to my surprise! I contacted several, asking if anyone was traveling from Iowa City (which I could get to from Anamosa) to Fairfield. One person knew of a band playing a gig at the Java House in Iowa City, and knew they would be heading back to Fairfield afterward, so she asked for me, and I got a ride with the band, called The Starlings http://forum.starlingsmusic.com/home.html.



They are on a US tour (they are based in Seattle), and next year will be heading to Europe for their first international tour. At the Java House in Iowa City, the Starlings were broadcast live on Iowa Public Radio. I enjoyed their music and the ride to Fairfield, and suggested they join Couchsurfing to get some great European connections for their tour next year.

Fairfield proved to be an intense, amazing experience. My new friend Joyce (from the Nonviolent Communication workshop) moved to Fairfield to be a meditator, and lived on campus for 6 years meditating. She has very interesting friends and connections. Her sister Jeri was visiting her the same time I was, and the three of us did lots of work on Joyce's home and landscape over the weekend.

Joyce introduced me to the poet Bill Godfrey. Bill used to own Joyce's house, and pointed out many design elements he incorporated into the house and landscape 20 or so years earlier. When we told Bill how Joyce and I met, he sang for us a beautiful rendition of "See Me Beautiful", a classic nonviolent communication song. Only in Fairfield! Bill mentioned that he might be in jail soon, because his extensive front yard garden was considered an eyesore by the neighbours. I offered to spend a couple of hours at his garden during my weekend in Fairfield to assist in tidying it up. When I went over to Bill's house, we planted sweet peas and he read some of his poetry to me. What an afternoon! I meet the most interesting people on this journey! Someday I hope to have a copy of one or two of Bill's poems to share.

I always find it interesting to see the differences in house prices between the big cities and the small towns as I travel. Fairfield, Iowa is decidedly affordable. This house is up for sale for $59,500 US. With the drop in the value of the US dollar, it wouldn't be a bad place to live to ride out the coming economic winter.

As I was riding Joyce's bicycle through town, I couldn't help but notice the copper roofed geodesic dome house down a side street. I stopped and chatted with one of the owners, who was out working on the landscape. Fascinating! The roofing is copper coloured aluminium.

Joyce also introduced me to Lynne and Hap Mulleneaux. Lynne works with Joyce in massage therapy. Lynne and Hap are in the process of building their own cob home . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cob_(building) Cob means "lump" in Irish, and the homes look like lumps of clay.

They are building next to Fairfield's Abundance Ecovillage, http://www.abundance-ecovillage.com/home.html . I spent a couple of hours with them, seeing what they were building, and enjoying their progress. Hap and Lynne strongly recommended this book, The Hand Sculpted House, by Ianto Evans, as a guide to building a cob house. It is available for $21 from Amazon. They also recommended the web site www.cobcottage.com and Michael Smith. Here is another interesting link I located in my research: http://www.naturalbuildingnetwork.org/members.htm

Here is the base for the cob house. The wooden frame above is a temporary frame to hold plastic to keep the cob from getting wet as it is setting.

On the north (cold) side of the house the stone is two layers thick, to provide more insulation.



















Inside their temporary living quarters, a campervan, was the smallest wood burning stove I had ever seen. It is the Wilderness Ice Shanty stove.

Hap said it gets very very hot. I found a source for it and other tiny wood stoves here: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000666.php, if you are interested.

Hap's mother and stepfather were also participating in this new lifestyle. They have sold their condo and are now sleeping in a lean-to in the lot next door to Hap and Lynne. They are delighted to be living out of doors. They don't even have any mosquito nets! What a fascinating family! Hap's mum said she is having the time of her life. What an inspiration!

Before leaving Fairfield, I wanted to meet Lauryn, who had arranged my bus transportation to Fairfield. When I went to their house, they had just finished clearing out the chopped up grass from their first ever vegetable garden plot. They had a trunk full of plants and seeds, and weren't sure what to do next, and were a bit overwhelmed. So I showed them how to stake and string the rows for seeds, and explained how critical it was for the seeds to be planted at the right depth, and they were away. This made 3 gardens I worked on in Fairfield. It was time to leave. I slept for the first time in a bus terminal in order to make it back to the Twin Cities by bus. I gave away quite a few vegetable seed packets that night - quite a few tomato packets to a Mexican woman heading down to Mexico. It felt good.