Delicious Happenings

[Amazing Southeast Asian Food]

The night before last we were more blessed than usual with a delicious dinner mostly from the garden. (and that's saying something!) Harlan spent the day creating a Southeast Asian feast. The flavors were fresh and amazing, and the visual presentation with nasturtium flowers and pickled carrots made it pop on the plate. Thanks, Harlan!



[Rada Dada visual display]

One of the visitors right now is an artist who travels around the country creating Dada inspired visual displays for museums and performing arts centers. He gave us a little taste of his show after tea yesterday morning. I think the slogan on the back of his van sums it up pretty well: "unexceptional tricks". That's Dada!



[The storm looked fiercer than it was]

Yesterday afternoon I ran around making sure everything was safely stored for rain. The temperature has dropped significantly in the last few days and some scary roiling clouds filled the sky. It turned out to be all bark and no bite. Those terrifying clouds dropped about five minutes of sprinkles and then graced us with a dinnertime rainbow.

In between all of this, I'm sitting on a milking stool inside my loom carefully tying hundreds of knots. They should be done today with samples woven tomorrow. On Wednesday we leave for Renaissance Faire setup.

Meetings, Trailer Enhancements and Loom Setup

Today was a big, long day of meetings. It started with another training session with the two alternate bookkeepers. They're getting the hang of it. Next, they'll do the work as I walk them through it, then they'll do it themselves while I watch.

After that, the Caretakers had a meeting to figure out how we wanted to perform our first round of visitor checkins. Then, we spent a chunk of the afternoon doing them. I stepped away for a quick one-on-one with the CFO, but we missed our connection. Then I went back for more visitor checkin time before pulling away to work on weaving for a while.

Before dinner we had a pow-wow with the three of us who will be working the booth in California to work out some trip logistics. After dinner we had one last conference call with the organizers of a gathering that starts next week.



[Parts to build a roof, back doors and clothing racks. Thanks, TJ!]

It's coming down to the wire for this big show. We leave in a few days to set up the booth, then come back and get ready to pick up the inventory and head down. I've realized that I don't have the time to modify my trailer before the show, so I've hired TJ to do it for me. He's got great ideas about how to make it waterproof and solidly locking so I can safely store the inventory in it during the show. And yesterday he bought all the parts he'll need. Yay!



[Lots of knots]



[From my perspective: simply tie the 1200 threads on the left to the 1200 on the right, in order.]

In the meantime, I'm tying on the next warp so I can weave a sample to bring to setup. This will help Annie to make decisions about which weft colors to use.

I've finally gotten permission to train Wispr, my apprentice, to weave Annie's cloth. It's going to be a lot of work to get him trained well enough to identify and solve problems on his own, but I think we can do it before I leave. In the worst case, he'll work until the first big problem and have to stop until I get home. I kind of doubt it, though. He's pretty smart and took to rug weaving like he'd been doing it for years.

Stargazing Thwarted By Forest Fires

For the last week, the days have been ridiculously hot and dry. There's baking sun all day and almost no breeze. It's the height of fire season. Luckily, the nights have been very cold. This allows us to open up the cabins at night and trap the cold air. With a sleeping bag to insulate the door, my cabin stays 20-30 degrees cooler than the meadow all day, allowing me to do my weaving work. It's impossible for me to operate a machine that basically amounts to a treadmill when the temperature inside the studio gets above 85.



[Orange light with smoke shadow]




[Smoke in the sky]

Tonight after dinner I exected to sit at the top of the meadow and bid my last farewell to Venus and Spica for the season. The Sun is about to overtake them until November, when it will have passed and allowed them to show up at dawn.

These plans were scrapped when I came out of the house this afternoon to find the sky full of smoke. There's a fire about ten miles away in Glendale. During dinner we noticed things falling from the sky. They were leaves, burnt to white ash, looking a lot like snowflakes.

We're very lucky that it isn't closer to us. We spend much of our energy on fire preparedness because it's a serious threat up here.




[What I expected to see: the last glimpse of Venus, Mars and Spica as the sun set.]

The funny thing about stargazing at Wolf Creek is the effect of the hills. When I look at sky maps and astronomy programs, I have to remember that we can't see the lowest 20-30 degrees of the sky. Things rise almost two hours later and set almost two hours earlier than in other places. All told, our days are about 3 1/2 hours shorter than flat places at the same latitude. We have much longer twilight time instead.

This means that the full moon rises at 8:00 in other places, but we don't see it until 9:45. It also means that most people will see Venus in the evening until late September and again in the morning starting around Halloween this year, but we will miss her from late August until late November. It gives me more appreciation to know that the objects in the sky move quickly and won't always be around very long. I can't procrastinate if I want to spend time with them.

The Storm Has Lifted

Holy cow, that cold kicked my butt! It was three days of really weird malaise. Stuffy head, fever, body aches, nausea, fatigue, yuck! Every few hours the symptoms changed. At one point I sat inside on a beautiful day and watched a movie just to stay awake. You know I'm sick when that's what I want to do!

Yesterday it lifted and I felt AMAZING! It's funny that after a couple days of sickness it's hard to remember what it's like to feel normal. I started to think that I felt OK, but I was just too lazy to work. And then, when it did lift I remembered what it's like to have energy and enthusiasm.

The weather is funny right now, too. One day will be 95, the next day 70. The nights are getting consistently colder and beginning the fall color show.



[The little maple is always first to change]

I'm a little sad that I'll be away at a show during my favorite time of year here. The fall colors and the transition to Winter are a spectacular event here on the land.



[More candle flowers]

The visioning for this community and for the monastery of my dreams is going beautifully. Yesterday we had an impromptu discussion about responsibility, followthrough, investment, and how to encourage them. It seems like changing people's habits is too large a task. Instead, we could focus on encouraging the perseverance of people who already have these traits and wait for those who don't to toddle off.

In the foundation of a new place, we can teach these skills and make them a requirement for long term participation, but it seems like Wolf Creek has been too juvenile for too long to embrace this idea. I mean, we get skewered for asking unstable and disruptive people to leave. Imagine what it would be like if we started dealing frankly with people who simply don't contribute to the community.