Luna's Baublebilities

So it's 10:30 on a Sunday morning and I should be in Church, coaching my son on how to be be reverent and avoid the "naughty room" during Sacrament meeting, but I'm simply not up to it. Bryan and Molly are off with Jonathan on a canoe/hiking trip up to Big Eddy and the Seward range. They left on Friday and I'm already exhausted. Turns out, both the dog and Maxx are more anxious than I am about their absence so Ziggy keeps waking me up during the night with his anxious prowling and Maxx clambers out of bed fairly early, full of his special brand of tense energy. Not a good prescription for beginning the Sabbath Marathon, so I've elected to stay home and maybe visit my brother later today. He has lots of crab apples he wants me to take away from his tree.

Since I'm sitting around the house with a really good Sabbath excuse to avoid "Luna" work, I took some time to browse around Sharon B's In a Minute Ago blog. I've really missed having the time to read her blog and explore the amazing links she provides. I've also missed participating in the Take It Further challenge. June and July were a total wash for me, which is too bad. I really liked the color scheme in June. The color scheme this month is here. It is quite nice.














Her blog took me to some interesting places, this morning. The latest edition of CQ Magazine (online) is really interesting. It has a short but well illustrated article about painting a quilt block prior to adding embroidery embellishment. It is a very nice effect. Maybe someday I'll have time to try it.

Then there was a reprint of an article from the World Ark Magazine published by Heifer International about sericulture, the raising of silkworms and production of silk. I have been feeling really unhappy about working with silk because virtually all of the silk I use comes from China and I have been wondering how my support of the textile industry in China affects the many human rights abuses and vast environmental degradation sponsored by the Chinese government. This article made me feel much better about working in silk. Turns out that real human beings with families benefit from the production of silk and that there are cooperatives and NGOs that are using sericulture as a means of eliminating poverty in China. So I can lay aside my guilt and just continue to purchase my supplies from companies who buy from and support cooperatives and businesses that treat their workers fairly.

That article led me to the Heifer International website where I read an article about the Carbon Hoofprint. Please go read the article and, if you haven't already, take a look at my blog entries about agricultural environmental contamination and our attempts to clean our water. I continue to look for ways to change my Family's consumption habits so that I do support these industries as little as possible. We really need to get a cow.

But that will have to wait until I find some balance, which brings me back to the Take It Further Challenge. The theme for this month is Balance. Sharon asks us to consider the following statement, "In my chaotic and hectic life I often admire people who are able to maintain balance in their lives. What is balance to you? Do you maintain a balanced life? How do you balance aspects of your life? That is the challenge this month - balance."

I'll tell you , I have had no balance this summer. It all started at a retirement party for Bry's uncle where Maxx hit me in the back of the head with a big, heavy, green playground ball while I was siting and chatting with family. My neck and shoulders immediately seized up and a friend spent several minutes working on those tight muscles and I iced and rested for several days and thought I was going to be O.K. But I soon developed a tightly knotted rope running down the right side of my spine, headaches, insomnia and exhaustion. I finally broke down and went to see the chiropractor when I began developing intermittent dizziness and an inability to focus my eyes. (I know, I should have gone sooner.) He immediately diagnosed whiplash and spent several weeks straightening me out again.

The lack of energy and range of motion really set me back again, which seems to be a recurring theme in my life with Maxx. He is so much bigger and stronger and physically demanding than Molly was at 4 and he is sick every two or three weeks with viruses that he passes on to me. (I'm not sure where he gets these viruses, I believe he manufactures them himself. He is a walking biological weapons factory. I understand this is common with preemies.) Bry recently remarked that I am never well anymore, I am either incapacitated with feminine issues, injured as a result of Maxx tackling me or throwing something at me from behind or I'm sick with a virus that Maxx mixed up just for me. I'm gaining more weight and beginning to feel very much older than I should. The house has been a total pit all summer because Bry has been too busy and I've been too unwell to really clean. All of the wonderful inventory I was going to produce over summer vacation sits undyed, unassembled and jumbled together in my studio. The garden, with its wonderful French Intensive, double dug beds, has produced an admirable crop of pigweed and nettle. It is a very frustrating situation.

Here are the positives: We did get the beets wed at the right time, and have proven that these double dug, intensive beds will do their trick if we can maintain weed-free status until the vegetables are big enough to shade out the bad guys. Mint spreads relentlessly and now I can have all the peppermint tea I want for the rest of my life. I have discovered that summer squash will grow even in the midst of six foot high clumps of stinging nettle if they are planted at the edge of the nettle patch. And finally, I am developing a really good horse stance for when I hear Maxx running at me from across the room. He hasn't actually knocked me over yet, but the bulk of his weight (head and upper torso) is right at pelvis level for me. Did I mention the the chiropractor has to adjust my lower back, as well?

So balance is an issue for me, both literally and figuratively. How can I stay well, how can I become stronger and healthier? How can I get all my work done? How should I prioritize all of my responsibilities?

Those are the questions that nag me every day. Sometimes I think that having a full time job where I go away every day to priorities set in place by someone else and a regular paycheck to validate my efficiency would be easier. Or maybe I should just become a bee? they have pretty simple lives - collect nectar, make honey, feed the grubs, vibrate to keep the hive warm. . . . . maybe it's not so simple.























Anybody have any wisdom to share here about balance?

We got our test results Wednesday afternoon and our water is clean! Looks like the ceramic filter is going to do the trick. We will test it again in another few weeks just to be sure that it wasn't just the process of shocking the system that cleaned things up. Maybe I can get some dyeing done today.

Sharon's theme for the month of March is ironically pertinent to my current living situation! Here's what she wrote for the challenge: "Do you ever notice the little things, the small moments, the details in life? This month's challenge is to do just that, pay attention to the tiny details. Sometimes the small things become emblematic for something larger."

Boy, Have I been paying attention to the tiny details! Details like, what is living in my water? And these small things really are emblematic of something larger. Our tiny neighborhood is currently suffering the consequences of American Agricultural choices. We are dealing with the fallout of an enormous industry that most people don't even pause to think about. I mean, what's so dangerous about a bunch of cows? Milk is supposed to be good for you, right? How many people actually know where their milk comes from, what conditions the cows exist under, where their waste goes and how they are fed? For most people the answers to those questions are: Milk comes from from cows raised in a CAFO. The cows are crammed in a barn all day, every day of their lives. Their waste goes onto the ground in the form of liquid manure, which can be smelled for dozens of miles in every direction when it is stirred or spread and from there it may possibly go into the local aquifer and fresh water rivers, lakes and streams. The cows are fed special dairy cow feed and lots of drugs which may include dead cows, antibiotics, Bovine Growth Hormone, genetically modified grains and/or mystery compounds from China.

Details, details, details. Did you know that the milk and eggs from CAFO raised cows and hens are higher in bad cholesterol and lower in nutrition and Omega 3-6-9 fatty acids than milk and eggs from grass fed, free ranging animals? Man. It's time to go buy a cow.

I feel that this is a good illustration of how small details, added together can become something worth a great deal of consideration.

For my challenge entry this month, I chose to make a beaded bead - a small object filled with tiny details. I anticipated making a whole series of them and even had a kit put together so that I could work on my beads anywhere my water disaster happened to take me. Needless to say, keeping the family fed and clean and entertained at other people's houses all month long really made it difficult to keep up with my project. I got one bead done. Here are the colors I used:

I used size 11 rose gold AB beads and metallic gold beads to form the main bead shape and then embellished with some Myuki size 15 taupe, gunmetal and metallic green AB beads. The pattern is a modification of Wonder Beads as taught by Sue Jackson and Wendy Hubick of Hummingbeads in the April 2001 issue of Bead and Button magazine. If you like the idea of beaded beads, Beadwork put out a teeny book of Beaded Beads in 2003. I got mine through a special offer for Beading daily subscribers, you may also be able to get it through Amazon, I know I've seen it there. The book has lots of different styles of beaded beads, many of which I wanted to try this month. Guess they will have to go on my growing to do list!

It has been three weeks since our water became unsuitable for consumption, cooking , bathing and washing. The only thing we have been able to do with our water is use it to flush the toilet! I cannot begin to tell you how frustrating it is to have a potty training toddler in a house with toxic water for 3 weeks. (This is a photo of the water that was coming out of our tap. Believe it or not, it smells worse than it looks! Our initial water test showed positive for eColi and coliform.) My kitchen is full of laundry, empty water bottles and dirty dishes. It has been a very frustrating month! At least 5 other families on our street have been affected by this particular event. The wells affected range in depth from 40 -200 feet deep. The DEC and Public Health sent some investigators/engineers out to assess the situation. The engineers agree that the liquid manure is somehow getting into the aquifer here but they cannot determine the point of contamination and therefore can't assign responsibility for the contamination to any one person or event. (Rolling my eyes.) Our neighborhood is pushing for more studies. The farmer is co-operating with investigations but refuses to accept any blame as he has been spreading in compliance with his CAFO regs. He is working with the Health Department engineers to review his CAFO regulations to try and prevent a similar contamination from happening.

While I was very angry at the beginning of this ordeal, I have cooled off quite a bit. Lots of people have told me that our neighborhood should seek a class-action or civil lawsuit but I do not think that is a true solution. (Neither do I think that any of us can afford to seek legal action - we are a very low income neighborhood in a very depressed county. Most of the homes on our street that have been affected by this event value at under $80,000. Nor would it be good for our tax base to start putting legal pressures on these large agri-businesses.) This farmer did not write the laws that require large farms to lagoon their manure and he probably does not have time or money to seek out other disposal or processing solutions. Our country at large needs to re-think our approach to agriculture and small farming communities like ours need to be part of the large picture as new regulations are being made. We also need more funding for green energy & fertilizer, including grants (not loans) for equipment for alternative processing of manure. (Like methane power plants and drying beds for manure)

It did quickly become obvious that there are no laws in place the protect a rural homeowner's water supply. No one but me is responsible for cleaning up the water in my well. In fact, there aren't even any funds available at our local Public Health Dept. or from our town government to help defray the cost of monthly water testing that DOH recommends. They say that lack of these monthly testing records is the main reason that they cannot assign responsibility for the contamination. If we all had a few years' worth of water quality records certified by the state, proving clean water up until the day of the big, sloppy thaw, they would have better evidence that manure spread on that particular field under the right conditions can lead directly to contamination of the aquifer here. Home testing kits and anecdotal evidence based on individual observations (no one has been sick, no one's water was stinky, etc....) does not cut it as far as the DEC and DOH are concerned. That does burn me. None of our neighbors can afford an extra 45 bucks a month for the coliform/eColi and Nitrate testing they want us all to do. But our wells are contaminated and we all have to spend hundreds of dollars trying to make them safe again without any support from the government agencies that our tax dollars go to support..

So, having discovered a complete lack of financial support from the public service sector, I did a great deal of research about filtration systems, including calling a local water quality company, to find out what our options were. NYS has only certified chlorination and UV light systems for use in public facilities or where food is prepared for sale, therefore those are the only systems that they can recommend to homeowners. Both are expensive and involve using lots of chemicals and electricity. (The UV system is only guaranteed to work if the water is filtered and softened before it passes through the UV unit.) They are both quite pricey and involve substantial upkeep costs and labor - lugging bags of chemicals and salt down the cellar stairs, changing out huge charcoal canisters. We received quotes ranging from $1,500 to $7,000 for these types of systems. Ozone was recommended by a friend who works in a water treatment plant and we looked into that but it was also pricey and required electricity. We ended up choosing a ceramic filter manufactured by Doulton that is supposed to remove all dangerous beasties in your water. It is basically the same technology used by campers and outdoorsmen who need to get clean water from a stream or a swampy area. We purchased a pre-filter to remove sediment before our water goes through the ceramic candles. We got everything from a company called Pure-Earth who seemed to have the most options at the most affordable prices. They shipped everything very quickly and my husband worked all weekend getting everything installed. We took our first showers at home in 3 weeks during the wee hours of Easter morning! We'll be dropping off a sample for testing to make sure that everything is clean and good for drinking tomorrow. If it works, we will have solved our problem for about $350.00 with an upkeep cost of approximately $250-300 annually.