Tag Archives: nutrition

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Community Gardeners

I’ve noticed
since early years on the family farm
with large matriarchally planted and harvested gardens,
that food,
for moms,
is a natural,
and yet also spiritual,
communion relationship.

Nutrition evolves from and for communal relatives
of which we are ourselves made
and nurtured into healthy interdependent maturity.

By remarkably disappointing contrast,
food, for the agribusiness farmer,
is a commodity,
owned,
to be used,
sold for cash profit.

Food,
on this patriarchal side of the ball and chain,
is a product
with market valued nutritional properties.

On the matriarchal side,
a cooperative relationship born of Mother Earth,
mutually nurturing characteristics,
functions primally interdependent
within a (0)Sum Commons
heart of our multiculturally shared food chain.

And, so it also seems
a Left and Right Brain nutritional inter-relationship
prevails between matriarchal cooperative habitats,
nests,
hives,
homes,
neighborhoods,
villages,
polyculturally incarnating within patriarchal competing properties
with commodified values and disvalues
on the real estate buy low and sell high market,
as often as possible,
to accumulate as much wealth as possible,
in defense of starving drought-induced wilting future commodities.

For a multigenerational family farmer,
selling one’s own nutrition-invested history
could only be a once in a defeated lifetime event;
invested too richly
beyond competitive commodity market values
for realtime property
even with unusual nutritional properties.

Buy low and sell high
for agri/bio-business
is more of an annual plant and birth
and harvest and butcher
process in the commodities market,
while farmhouse with garden real estate values and disvalues are,
well…
you gotta live somewhere,
right?
Why not where you work,
and have plenty of room
for the little wife’s gardens?

Vegetable and flower,
feeding the kids
and nourishing the colorful fragrant neighborhood,
while dad competes with distant grey-scale agribusiness buyers
and seed sellers
bar charting and coding how best to buy low
and sell RealTime Highs.

My own dad didn’t actually do very well with that monopoly game.
While mom’s cooperative gardens flourished,
regardless of which commodities were up in spring
and predictably down again at harvest and preserving time.

Joanna Macy refers to matriarchal ecofeminist gardeners,
nutritional economists,
as “the greening of the self,”
reconnecting our LeftBrain dominant egocentered Yang
with our Sacred EarthNurturing RightBrain,
more recessively eco-logical Yintegrity,
eco-systemic nature-spirit co-empathic gardeners,
feeding well-nurtured kids and neighborhoods
greening multiculturing communities
and polyculturing bioregions
and Blue-Green States,
while boring Business As Usual commodity markets
continue wondering why
it’s always those damned irrepressible cooperative democracies,
with their interdependent WinWin planting investments
and harvesting re-investment polypathic properties
that continue riding out
angry RedBare Markets and FearMongering Political States
buying the cheapest fighting mad politicians
yet wondering why these provide such poor nutritional returns
when it comes time to harvest
EarthRights Peace and Justice.

Our LeftBrain ego-personal
is also our RightBrain eco-political communal,
just as LeftBrain Yang love nature
is also RightBrain Yin sacred healing nurture,
just as LeftBrain’s competitive political empowerment
is RightBrain’s cooperative ecological health relationships,
Sacred Economics,
just as LeftBrain’s healthy patriarchy
is also RightBrain’s wealthiest matriarchy,
on back to original ego-personal constitutions
born of matriarchal interior wombs
and exterior extended family gardens.

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Cooperative Health and Climate Care

Toby Hemenway,
in The Permaculture City,
defines four prime health development principles,
adapted as follows:

Highest Use
orders health maintenance tasks,
ecological activities,
and growth/decomposition processes
in time and space
so the first activity in a spiraling sequence
leaves as many possible health yields
and subsequent reiterative uses
as harmonically possible.
Highest and deepest use
creates balanced wu-wei relationships
among health design elements
and wealth building processes
in and through ecologically rhythmic time
and place.

Needs As Potential Resources Analysis
identifies necessary health inputs
and wealth outputs
of many nutritional kinds,
products,
behaviors,
characteristics
spatial quantities and temporal qualities
of each subsystem in an eco/bio-system,
including humane-natural/spiritual systems,
and connects needs of one element
with outputs of another.
We thereby design harmonic relationships
of WinWin balance
among design elements themselves,
ourselves.

Zones
organize design systems
by how often they are used and need cooperative maintenance.
The most used systems
are placed most vulnerably nearest in spacetime
to the ZeroZone user
or center of identified activity.
Zones build health and organize wealth relationships
between a system
and the user of identified zero-center.

Sectors and Species
are influences from outside;
influences that cannot be altered from within the spacetime system in question.
They can be Yang competing physical influences,
such as wind and fire,
or Yin-cooperative intangible influences,
enculturing,
creolizing,
such as zoning,
care giving and receiving customs,
LeftBrain polypathic power,
and RightBrain emotional polyphonic triggers.
We place design elements
in relation to species and sectors to feed or bleed energies,
or let them pass through
with no decompositional effect.
Sectors and Species
create regenerative relationships
between parts of an eco-bio system
and Yang forces
and Yin-influences
shaping enculturation,
acclimation outside toward inside
each ZeroZone system.

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My Democratic Town Committee

In my New England town
our local Democratic Party runs everything.

Some would argue these local celebrities
and self-promoting treasures
to posterity
rather over-run everything,
and surely we could find some truth
in this way of seeing,
but we are learning a spirit of generosity
invites more healthy pollinators,
honey bees
rather than swarms of angry hornets
nesting on the sidelines.

This Town Democratic Committee
decided to invest in a planning retreat
and were looking for a Permaculture Designer
to facilitate,
preferably someone local,
and not too obnoxious
and holier than thou
about ecological wisdom
raging against short-term economic realities
of elective politics.

Which is where I came in
to this local municipality
as Zero through Regional Four Zone frame.

Looking back,
it was fortunate I knew no one
of these Committee stalwarts
or we would never have arrived even as far as the initial client interview.

You see,
in Permaculture Design,
the initial screening interviews
work in both directions.

First,
the Committee’s Secretary emailed me
to ask if I would be interested
and even remotely qualified,
and, if so, how much
and could I possibly cut whatever that is
in half
and be flexible on scheduling,
especially scheduling of payments
for services rendered.

Second,
if all that goes reasonably bloodless,
the Permaculture Designer interviews the client.

So I told the Secretary,
and thereby everyone who was anyone in town,
that I had recently completed a Client interview
for the White House,
or at least started one,
thinking this might suggest qualifying experience,
but she was unimpressed,
possibly even depressed,
probably repressed
and feeling suppressed
about that particular client,
and recommended taking the White House out
of future resumes.

Anyway,
long polycultural outcomes story short,
we did get to a Client Interview
which began and largely ended their planning retreat.

As always,
I begin with what purposes they have in mind
for the property in question.
If a real estate agent
or maybe a sharky developer,
were also Permaculture Design Certified
this would be the highest and best interdependent uses question.

The multi-sectoral responses
are all about healthy nutrients.
One committee member thinks a healthier, more robust, educational system
is today’s magic button.
Another thinks a healthier employment market.
Especially a Farmer’s Market, adds another,
with a wink to subtly let me now
she and I are kindred cooperative organic spirits.

Their wish list leaves little to not wish for
except for fewer homeless and hungry people
bumming cigarettes in front of the downtown real estate office
and over in the Chamber of Commerce’s newly paved
and extremely well-lit parking lot.

We want healthy, but cheaper, water
and more robust waste disposal systems
and more energy and heat and gasoline for less cash
and of course lower taxes are healthier taxes
and vibrant police and fire and medical emergency services
and, yes, even healthier food
in the cafeterias,
again with a wink
from the same, now creepy, committee member.

I summarize
It sounds like you all agree
we need more integrated robust systems
growing health for all residents of Zones Zero through Four.

Except maybe not roosters
within town limits.

They gratefully agree
with obvious relief
as it is nearly time for Happy Hour,
which becomes something of an understatement
unless Happy Hours are, by definition,
timeless.

We never did get to the second question
about what are our unhappy waste streams.
Nor the third,
about how these might shrink
to swell more inclusive Happy Hours
for Zones Zero through Four.

But, as I recall,
I never got that far with the White House either.

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Precocious Liturgies

I’m going through my morning routine
still at least half asleep,
pondering what was I pondering?
while preparing morning meds
and showering my daughter,
helping her dress,
filling her snack pail
for her long school bus ride,
changing my son’s overnight diaper,
lotioning ashy skin,
tying shoe laces,
hers, mine, ours,
feet walking onto the bus,
hooking all four corners of her safety harness
and walking back toward our house
thinking
I’ve been up for an hour
and now I’m ready to begin my day.

What was that first hour?
Its quality of dream
heading toward future investments
in life as more full consciousness.
Consciousness of a different dream?
A different sense of identity?
A different quality of life fullness
in contrast to dreamy half-consciousness,
on back to less than half,
and then the alarm clock
too quickly buzzing louder
to interrupt
whatever it was that had felt so ponderous
pondering what I had been pondering
before I drifted back into sleep.

Self awareness,
self and sometimes also other consciousness,
has this liquid flowing quality
of investment in life
and disinvestment through dreaming,
loss of self-embodied awareness.

I wonder if life could feel richer
if cash followed this same investment in conscious flow preference
over disinvesting in interest paid for over-dreaming
together in WinLose (0)Sum assuming societies,
Eden economies of Paradise Lost,
Bodhisattva Warriors
tying each other’s shoes
as necessary co-investment
and physically possible
and ecologically optimal
to get to that part of our conscious warrior day
we can re-invest in deeper consciousness
loving together,
investing in our cooperatively-held healthy water,
and nurturing air for the grandkids
and the back yard chorus of birds
and their grandkids
to breathe,
and fire for cooking and heating, but not hating,
and retelling family and tribal recreation stories,
Earth’s continuing liturgical investments
in self with other nutritional flowing consciousness.

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When Life Feels More Right Than Wrong

How could education about Earth sciences and arts,
much less humanities
of both Yang truth
and Yin beauty,
not also remain consistent
with what is cooperative health v. competitive pathological,
root systemic?

That would be teaching Yang strength of function
without mentoring Yin-flow of temporal forms.

And,
that would be like trying to imagine 4D spiraling space
without perceivable bilateral time for revolving change
stretching Yang forward strong, convexly
and Yin sacred flowing Elder back, concavely
through dualdark co-gravitating InForMating Time
double-bound exegetical through eternal CoPresent Interdependent Space
evolving revolving times.

Like no Left and Right space
without proportionally symmetrical revolving spiral time
unfolding Yang forms
and enfolding YinYin bilateral fold functions
(0)-Core ecopolitical balance,
both secularLeft and sacredRight
collateral values
of quantitative Yang strength
with qualitative YinYin Ego/EcoCational BiLateral Flow,
WinWin Root Systemic
polypathic ego/eco-intelligence.

And certainly we could not tolerate
such cognitive-affective chronic stress
any longer than creolizing revolutionary necessary
to achieve and delineate WinWin
economic and political
and psychological
and ecological, etc.
mythic math and wisdom science reweaving nature-nurture outcomes.

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Three Sisters CoOp

The CoOp featured Women and Families
and their Matriarchal Allies,
often LGB and/or T,
and even some curiously queerer,
but not meaner
in appropriate demeanor
regardless of habitat
and camouflage
and costume,
ready for a folksy ball,
come as you neighborhood are
at Three Sisters CoOp.

The Corn Sisters
first brought their good news gospel,
Christian straight through bisexual,
standing Yangish tall.

To conjoin the Bean Brothers and Sisters,
enslaved in wombs a bit too much longer
than their corny deep green sisters,
yet rich brown and red
and forest green ready
to sprout and reforest spiral,
devouring,
yet digesting appropriately just right,
what Corn could carry and bear,
before producing their Bean creolizing
jazzy song and dance performers;
sultry street reformers
resting on a corny stalk of Yang.

Pumpkin spreading shade Earth Allies
grow across the CoOp’s neighborhood,
incorporating spiritual
and natural nutritions
to feed a hungry matriarchal-patriarchal world,
rich with integrative nutritional potential,
deep with CoOp integrity
to reweave,
reforest,
Three Sister CoOps,
wherever humanity blooms,
not bleeds so much,
as and where planted,
in and out,
up and down,
back and forth
TaoTime reweaving.

A Great Transitional bean-brother
and sister
stood to take the lunch microphone
first opened up this day
to say:

If you look at a flat picture of a three-sprout braid,
it looks like oppositional Yang and Yin
are bilaterally weaving in and out
in Hypostatic Union
universally alone.

Yet that same three-dimensional braid
when felt and looked at
from at least all three-sides,
unveils a secret wu-wei Trinity
of TaoTime,
a braid for Sacred Corn
as FatherSun,
a braid for Natural Beans
as Holonic Cooperative Flowing-Spiral Spirit,
a braid for MotherEarth
Squashed Down Folks and Species
spreading lovely shade and reforesting projects
and cooperative programs,
economically and politically discouraging competing weeds
while splattering growing psychologically complex rain
where it best absorbent falls.

But, which nutritional strand is which
depends on you,
the ecopolitical view you listen to most Yang-Yin deeply,
as written in sweetgrass braids
of each Three Sisters CoOp.

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The 2020 Coop

The People’s Coop
is a warm inviting place,
for some
a reading and meditation
and arts practice and performance space,
for others
a place to ride sleek bicycles
with self-and-other improvement book racks
while peddling energy into the cooperative Grid,
sheltered by solar panel roof
and natural wood graffiti walls
spun and sung
with Mohammad’s Sufi Wind Turbinators.

Original coop founders
had been mural painters
and finger and toenail designers,
hair braiders
and community garden canners
and preservers,
soup and smoothie makers
and child-care cooperative providers
and home school teachers,
as well as the original upstairs apartment residents,
and those living next door,
working in the kitchen,
serving organic soup and bread
in winter,
juice smoothies
and fair-trade mocha freezes
to readers and talkers with listeners
during warmer sun-drenched months
relaxing on teak chairs
surrounding umbrella tables
in our outdoor street cafe.

The guy with a hot dog and bagel cart
joined The Coop
and invested each lunch hour
outside
then went inside to offer yoga
and chi gong classes
in the reading and quiet arts room.

Meanwhile,
more robust and rhythmic,
the kitchen and juice bar
shares open space
with a performance stage
bearing diverse drums,
a grand piano,
an accordion,
rather strangely popular,
and a karaoke machine,
lights and sound,
open mic days and nights
for comedy
and poetry,
story-telling
and rapping,
tapping and beating
and full gospel choir singing,
depending on who shows cooperatively up
to turn out
rather than in
over on the quiet side
of the all bells, but no disdaining whistles, Coop.

Coop peak periods
include rainy and cold afternoons
when street performers
come inside,
finish their soup,
put out their hats
and share a set,
then join juice and coffee and tea bar tables
and sometimes even take a turn
on hooked-up bikes and rowing machines
to operate the lights and mics
and blenders,
but not the mud and straw pizza oven out back,
fired with cedar and mesquite
producing organic vege and goat cheese
on whole wheat crust
for a light supper,
or multigrain scones with herbal high tea,
depending on where you came from
before you found The Coop.

If you remember
the incense and hope of 1960s Head Shops,
the heady roar and multi-racing of 1920s historic stops,
then you may come to see
The Coop is a further evolution
co-founded with 2020 PolyCultural ReVision,
exclusively of and for
those who are gay and straight
and especially everyone in-between
dead and new-born friendly,
cooperatively owning and organizing allies
for renewable multigenerational futures.

The Coop coinvestors
of and for reforesting
each coop business and community
as organically WinWin county and province solidarity
for healthy game strategics
and nutritional performance
and cooperative outcome producing places
where poverty of spirit
and vulnerability of nature’s self-organizing politics
is The Coop’s greatest strength of faith,
gratitude for Earth’s multiculturally abundant
natural-spiritual nondual
healthy
grace
place
space,
faces of polypathic
Planet Earth Cooperative.

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I’m Not Sure

I’m not sure
if nature’s spiritual voices,
if Earth’s cultural songs and dances,
are merely subjectively interesting
nutritional creolizing metaphors,
or if all ecological analogies
are necessarily and objectively interesting,
or perhaps even both,
sacred-secular co-arising.

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Uniting Republics of Domesticity

It took us too long,
but eventually
we noticed Republican women
and Democrats both women and men
often preferred to spend about twice as much on domestic education
and defensively proactive mutual health care assurance
as compared to international defensive co-investment,
too often reduced to the militaristic over-industrialized budget.

And, of that international relations budget,
about two-thirds for growing cultures of healthy peace warriors
and maybe up to one-third on policing criminal offense
with cooperative co-investment intent.

So,
the domestic and educational security matriarchs
formed cooperative ecopolitical networks
for governing inside these fifty States,
while the more WinWin patriarchs
tried to mutually dominate
a more Left-Right Brain and Mind and Incarnate Body
of harmonic global co-investment networks.

Both internal and external cooperatives
rooted in Lovelock and Margulis double-binding
chemistry as also synergetic microbiology
producing Gaia Hypotheses of CoRevolution,
flowering in Golden Rules Revised:

Do not not ecopolitically flex and do
as you would have your great grandchildren remember like you,
with kindness,
contentment,
grace of awesome love,
continued abundant co-investment
in regenerational strings of polypathic mutual promise,
positively imagined in our retrospective matriarchal-patriarchal future,
multicultures of health-balancing wealth.

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I Like Money

I like money.
But, I like it like soul food and jazz,
not like worshiping an omnipotent Patriarchal God.

I like money
because I like investing
in myself and others I trust
to return to Earth
nutritional investments of gratitude
for Her grace,
which is not the same thing as abundant capital
for playing WinLose Games
but might be the same as cooperative capital investments
in WinWin co-opportuning
ecological economic-political Gaming PersonShip,
returning grace from Goddess Gaia,
our shared Holonic BiLateral Spirit
of EarthJustice WuWei Revolutions
for climates and cultures of health.

I like cooperatively investing money
because that is one capitalistic way
to give back
and pay-value-forward,
trusting abundant nutrition will follow,
beans with cornbread
and Ella
and Billy
and even Stranger Fruit.

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