Lisa Zahn

Matriarchy (her blog name) put up an excellent post on her blog, Ramping Up The Garden , yesterday regarding the schools in her area of Reading, Pennsylvania. Her place sounds a lot like ours here in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Both are small-ish, diverse cities. What she has to say could be eye-opening to a lot of people! Here's the link to that post: http://rampingup.blogspot.com/2008/11/rant-key-communicator.html

I dried every load of laundry in the dryer this past week. Every one! My excuse? It was a busy, stressful week and just throwing those clothes in the dryer and letting the machine do the work felt like such a relief. Like a rebellious act, for someone who's been very conscientious about this for the last year or so. And the rebellious part is the thing, because honestly it takes maybe five minutes more to hang my laundry on the clothes racks next to the washer than it does to throw it in the dryer. And the laundry on the racks is already sort of "pre-sorted" so hanging it shortens the folding time, so in a way the time amount is kind of a wash (pun intended). But once in a while, even the best of us gotta rebel, eh? The reason I was so busy and stressed last week was because I've been doing herbal consults. I saw a total of 6 clients last week, and hey that's six more than usual. Because only one or two came each day, the house had to be in a constant state...

When she was around two years old, Rose had an elevated level of lead in her blood. This was due, most likely, to our former home which we renovated and which had some lead paint around the windows. Luckily, she did not have much lead and we were able to manage it (and home renovations were finished). The doctor prescribed iron supplementation as the way to chelate the blood and remove the lead. One way we got iron into her, since it's such a difficult mineral to absorb with a supplement alone, was with blackstrap molasses. She was happy to eat these cookies which have quite a bit of molasses in them and taste great! Oatmeal Molasses Cookies 1-1/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup oil 6 Tablespoons molasses 1 whole egg and 1 egg white (I used two small eggs whole and the cookies were just a little runnier) 1-3/4 cups flour 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 cups old fashioned rolled oats 1/2 cup chopped nuts 1 cup raisins 1 cup chocolate chips Preheat oven to 400 degre...

Since my last post (before the brief egg one) was a bit gloomy, I thought it would be best to point out I really don't have that gloomy an outlook on the future. I mean, I think things are changing but I don't know that the library is going to close due to lack of everything, or that the schools will close and George will lose his job, or that we'll be lucky to have a pencil to write with in the future. Those are, obviously, thoughts I was entertaining in the middle of one restless night, but I tend to have a much more positive view of the future. It is true, however, that our generation has a huge and serious dilemma to face. Well, besides Peak Oil and the possible restructuring or loss of everything that has to due with oil. We also face the dilemma that our lifestyle here in America is completely unsustainable. Even the so-called "green" products, if they are based on shipping and constant economic growth (read: purchasing), are not sustainable. Many, many of u...

We got our first egg today! George saw Lucy sitting in the egg box earlier this afternoon. He came in all excited and told me about it. I went to the grocery store anyway. Well when I got back, an egg in a little pot greeted me at the kitchen table. It is like your child taking its first steps. Now, to divide that egg by four people...