Mountaindance's Weblog

I’m not sure how 11 months slipped by since my last post, but oh well.  Life is a five ring circus and someone has hit the fast forward button.  It’s fun and hectic.   As far as I can tell most people are feeling the same way, just with a slightly different cast of characters.  At my house the cast includes two somewhat neurotic dogs, two surly cats, three adults (including two parents who have been sleep deprived for four years) and two very wonderful and amazing little people, Leo and Sonya.

Leo will be four in July and since I have been here has morphed from a toddler into a little boy.  He loves  dinosaurs, monster trucks, books, and playing in the dirt.   Sonya  will be one  in July.  She is mastering the art of walking while dodging  the moose-like creatures who charge down the hallway when the doorbell rings, a precarious feat really.

a Leo video :

a Sonya video:

I feel very lucky to be part of the magic that is life with small children (and can say that easily because I am not the person up with them at 3 AM).  There are funny sayings (like Leo’s introducing the circus with, “Ladies and Junglemen”),  observations (If you meet a T. Rex you should bring a lot of meat with you so he will be your friend) and interpretations of the world (“Don’t touch the burning bush because it’s probably very hot.”)   It is fun  hanging out with Sonya as she learns to talk, trying out all kinds of sounds. Some, like her aboriginal clicking sounds,  aren’t even used in English!

Denver  feels like home. I love the sunshine and I love the mountains.  Please don’t throw things at me, but when I drive to work in the morning and I see the downtown Denver Buildings sparkling in the sunshine with the mountains behind them,  it looks like the Emerald City!

Life is not perfect of course. I still have two jobs, but I hope to remedy that soon. As much as I love both things that I am doing, it makes me a little weary running from one to the other.  I am helping develop a peer training curriculum and also doing evaluation for the gathering place, a day shelter for women and children.  One thing I love about both jobs is that they provide tools and support for people to transform their lives.  That’s a pretty cool thing!

My usual hangouts in addition to various coffee shops are the library (five stories of books, books and more books) and the  Botanic Gardens www.botanicgardens.org .  My intention was to volunteer at the Gardens when I first arrived , but other than a few times with one program taking plants out to senior citizens, I have been too swamped. Still, I am at the Gardens frequently….it’s very close to our house.      Like the Peninsula in Erie, I like the Gardens best in fall, winter, and spring when the fair-weather people have disappeared and it’s peaceful walking on the paths.  But I guess it would be hard to pay the overhead on a place like that if no one came, so the tons of summer visitors are a necessity and the gardens are quite beautiful in the summer!

The climate here is a strange mix which is confusing to both plants and gardeners. The very hot and dry summer days make the plants think they are somewhere warm (Arizona perhaps), but nights can get very chilly and then the peppers and eggplants are totally perplexed (“Do we grow?  Do we hunker down and do nothing? Do we go to seed? What’s a plant to do?”)  The  growing season is very short because of the altitude  so plants that take their good old time growing are shocked when an early frost comes (and their gardener is very sad). Add in the weird storms that blow in over the mountains with high winds and hail, and it can make gardening interesting and challenging, but lots of people are doing it.

Urban agriculture seems to be happening everywhere here. There are people raising chickens in the city, cultivating vegetable gardens in front yards, and keeping bees for honey. There are garden plots in city parks tended by volunteers who give the produce to the food bank or other non-profits.  I don’t have a big garden like I had in Erie, however I get to help with two different gardens for now, the rooftop garden where I work and my son’s backyard garden, which I am hoping you can see if the you tube link works….you’ll also see Dyna in this video  :  

A few months ago I hesitantly  joined Facebook so that I could see pictures of my niece Tara during her pregnancy, and I have found that I like it (for the most part).  In addition to learning Tara was in labor over Facebook, I now get to see pictures of  Tara and her little darling Annie.   I get interesting updates from people I love (and miss) and websites I care about……I learned (among other things) that the vegetarian restaurant in Erie came and went, but the Honey House Bakery is open for business, that some crazy woman drove her SUV into the restaurant Rose works at in Virginia,  and  that my brother was taking Marianne to Hawaii for her birthday (oh, no, I mean just a baseball game).    Plus Melody and I have found one more way to connect with each other!!      Lest you think that electronics are replacing my letter writing, I want to assure you that  if you write me a letter (and send it through the mail)I will  send one back!  I love getting real mail that I can sit down and read with a cup of coffee.  My family and I are doing our part to keep the post office in business. I write letters weekly and am now getting the occasional delightful letter from both Daniel (age 7) and Amanda(age 6).  I am looking forward to seeing them both in Erie very soon!

And now onto the book reviews:

The Woman Who Can’t Forget, Jill Price – a very strange and true read.  Mel and I both read this book, but we don’t recommend that you do because Price really needed an editor. It is a fascinating story, but you can read most of it on  Wikipedia. She literally remembers every detail of her life from about age 11 on.  By her twenties, it was becoming pretty immobilizing.  She didn’t really understand how different she was until she contacted a brain researcher who she heard talking on the radio.  There are some interesting questions posed by the book: Researchers know that we make choices about what we remember, so why do we remember the things we do?   The things we remember help shape the “story” of who we are, so once we have a “story line” going, do we choose what we remember so that it fits “our story”?

Bakers Creek Seed Catalog – okay, it’s not really a book, but this is one beautifully illustrated catalog and it will make  you ooh and ahh over pictures of vegetables (well, maybe you have to be a gardener to do that, but it seems to me if you were not a gardener you’d want to become one after reading this catalog.)  It’s mostly heirlooms (pictures you will want to cut out and frame) and information on organic gardening.

DMT, The Spirit Molecule, A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, Rick Strassman, MD.  This book was hard to get through and it may be another synopsis you want to check out on Wikipedia, but the idea is that humans actually have a molecule in our brains that helps us connect to alternate realities. Very interesting!

The Spectrum, by Dean Ornish, MD,  – thank you to Mike L. for pointing me in this direction.  There is a wealth of information on healthy eating and other healthy practices, but the best part of the book is the research  that shows pretty conclusively that our genes are not destiny and we can  “turn off” bad genes through healthy choices.

Chants of a Lifetime, by Krishna Das.  I saw Krishna Das in concert in April (wow was that wonderful!!) and found out that he had just written this book.  He is a down-to-earth and from-the-heart story teller.  Even if you are not into chanting, his personal story  and his reminders about spiritual practice (just keep planting the seeds, one seed at a time) speak to everyone.

Please keep in touch!