Visiting friends in Guanajuato, I experience what a different relationship these people have with water, at least from us in California— and United States, for that matter. Respecting water is so much more immediate and personal. If water is short, it is turned off by the city. You are left with what is in your tinaco, or roof… Read more »
Dowsing and Evolution of Consciousness
My father taught all of us kids to dowse. He was a quiet man, farming all his life, probably an introverted feeling type, but it is hard for a daughter to tell! In the early spring he could hardly wait until the fields were thawed and dry enough to plow, disk, harrow, and plant. Winter… Read more »
Time For Activism— and to Sober Up!
Activism has become an outgrowth of my work as a Jungian psychoanalyst and as a biodynamic farmer. Perhaps it is the way that I keep my sanity! Yes, there is the inner work that is so important, both in work with the psyche and with the earth, but there is also the work with the… Read more »
March 22: World Water Day: California’s Crisis
Today, March 22, 2015, is World Water Day, a day designated by the United Nations in 1993 to celebrate Water. Being in our fourth year of drought, there never has been a time that Californians are more aware of water. Many of us may be joining the 780 million people of the world who do not have access… Read more »
Thank the Goddess for the Love of Napa Valley NIMBYS!
Many of us are reluctant of being characterized as NIMBYs when we object to projects in our “backyards” such as event center wineries or vineyard incursions into our hillsides and watersheds. Such a designation often implies a narcissism. The American Dictionary defines NIMBY (Not-In-My-Back-Yard) as “a person who objects to the siting of something perceived… Read more »
Physical Labor and Multidimensional Consciousness
My spiritual teacher Norma T. ( I write about my time with her in Farming Soul) once told me that it is easiest to develop spiritual tools to access multidimensional consciousness when we have direct contact with nature. I instinctively knew this to be true, familiar with the state of mind that comes when I… Read more »
Life’s Issues … and a Writing Retreat
Life’s issues have their way of meeting us everywhere, even a writing retreat! We six women meet once a month in this place outside of time. Castlekeep, as we have come to call it, is a large, usually unoccupied house surrounded by blackberry brambles and jonquils who’ve lost memory of flower beds. The ranch house was… Read more »
Liminality… and Hope
Liminality is a word that people ask me to repeat twice when I say it, as if they didn’t hear it quite right the first time. As a Jungian analyst, I recognize the liminal state as that of many entering treatment. The old way no longer works, but the new hasn’t materialized. Our Western-European culture… Read more »
On Ecological Sustainability: Judith Parrish, Plant Ecologist
My first interview on ecological sustainability is with my sister Judy Damery Parrish, Chair of the Biology Department at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois. She is a passionate teacher who loves the earth with fierceness, reflected in here. What is your background and how did you come to ecology? I grew up on a farm and spent many… Read more »
Russian River: All Rivers
The Russian River is a great, lazy serpent in the summer. Her lovely green body curves through redwoods and vineyards, through open meadows and old tourist resorts, on her way to Jenner and the Pacific. I raised my sons well into their elementary years on that river. We learned her many moods: her rushing insistence in the… Read more »
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