Dear December 2011  --

I’m just coming off a week-long staycation and the peace it brought to my life is yet another reminder of the joy found in simple rest. I’m thankful for the opportunity you brought to dawdle a bit with family and friends, to ponder endings and beginnings.

With ThinkMan on staycation too, our little family made art, read books, lounged, watched movies, talked, went out to eat, took a day trip to the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge, a wildly beautiful place, and in general did what we wanted when we wanted. Callie and I stayed up late every night and slept late every day and got our days and nights completely turned around. It was heavenly.

Now, it’s back to reality, a reality that after our tranquil pause seems to have fewer edges, a reality that turns my mind to the meaning of work, a reality that finds me thinking on being 55, closing in on 56 and the years to come.

It’s 2012 now; in 2016 I will be 60; in 2018, 62 and eligible for early retirement, unless that too changes in this constantly shifting world. I remember thinking when I was in my 20s how any year after 2000 sounded so far away, so futuristic, so beyond imagining, and here I am, my oh my, living the future, contemplating what retirement might be like.

Post-50 life evolves differently mentally, physically, spiritually, and in our society it is not a particularly easy process. We are forced to compete for a living with energetic, lively, saavy 20- and 30-somethings at the start of their careers. They are beautiful in their enthusiasm and zest, and in some work environments, the integration of generations is smooth and gracious. In others, well, let’s just say the situation is one that does no generation any favors.

If the experience and wisdom that comes with working for 30+ years were indeed valued or honored in our society, the paradigm for the less-than-ideal situations might be different, but increasingly such is not the case. Well-documented deleterious effects of ageism are sadly alive and well in the job marketplace, leaving many in the 50+ crowd scrambling for jobs or out of work, and vast swaths of younger adults reinventing the wheel, sailing into storms without the benefit of sage guidance. Profit, celebrity and image reign as monarchs, experience and wisdom are deemed unfashionable, dowdy, and too expensive – and indeed the overall message is post-50, you best get out of the way. 

The question then becomes, get out of the way where? For unless one is a white-middle-aged or older male CEO, in which case your worth is hundreds of times that of the common person – the job prospects and the pay for those post-50 is on the decrease, at times astronomically. I’ve seen it happen over and over with family and friends and I’ve experienced it first-hand. It’s an achingly brutal and cruel process for a so-called civilized society, but then there are dark niches and corners aplenty in these modern times that are not gracious.

All the more reason, December, why I am grateful for you – you bring a flow and pattern to our lives, a language I understand more clearly with each passing year, a ceremonial and metaphorical housecleaning in a world we have not one iota of control over. You break down the reality of things – it’s like seeing the forest bold and tall, tree trunks darkly outlined against the sky, all their leaves gone. You bring serenity and clarity, the wisdom to know what might still be changed, and what must be accepted, and just as the trees let go of their leaves year after year, I’ve come to realize, during your visits, this is part of what I too will do the rest of my life – let go.

Time marches faster and faster, often whizzing by at a dizzying pace. I realize there are some things on my bucket list that I will probably never do. I realize I cannot save the world. I realize I am insignificant, not in a demeaning way, but in a natural way that always has been and always will be.

In making peace with this, and with my aging body and mind, I gasp from time to time. This is not an easy process, and yet I realize it is the same process every animal, human and non-human, faces in one way or another.

Can I do it gracefully, with meaning, with graciousness? I ask myself this often; I am sure I am not always successful at it. I prioritize the things that are most important: Family and friends; laughter and joy; days spent in the garden feeling the essence of life in the dark earth crumbling between my fingers, days in the sun, rain, snow; and days of listening to the world around me. I say goodbye to those things (or try to) that are not important, that are not necessary or that do not fulfill.

Success looks and feels different. It is often tiny, magical, intimate, anonymous. It is doing meaningful things with whatever time I have left -- or doing nothing at all but enjoying a winter’s day -- the thousands of hues of browns, maroons and greys in a landscape, the thin pale blue of sky, the slight yellow of sun filtering through bare trees warming my skin.

When someone laughs, I know in the deepest marrow of my bones that these fragments of joy are what life is all about – that the modern world we live in is not black or white or good or bad -- it just is – a distraction -- and it too, with all of its luxuries, amenities, and cruel indignities - shall pass. When it does, whatever humanity lives on may yet learn again what life is all about – may return to that ancient way of knowing -- of just being.

December, you are always welcome at my hearth. I’m looking forward to being with you again in a few months. I know you’ll be here before we know it.

With gratitude --

ThinkLady

I don’t mind that you have a virtual Raccoon Highway along the southern fence line of our tiny backyard. I don’t mind that you have a raccoon toilet along the highway behind the brick wall under the cedar tree. Everyone needs a rest stop and since it’s under the tree, hidden, doesn’t smell, to each to his own I say.

I don’t mind that you occasionally climb and nap in the cedar trees.

Don’t care that you use the trees as your own private jungle gym, or that you snuffle through my yard, digging in the monkey grass beds for grubs. Nice of you to keep the soil aerated.

But I draw the line at the garden beds. After last night’s apparent bacchanalia in my newly planted veggie bed (please see above photo), you're lucky I'm not Annie Oakley. Raccoon stew is sounding mighty good right now.

So here’s the deal … I’m putting up the raccoon fencing … again … which as we know after last fall and winter, is inconvenient and annoying to us both. Last year I watched you try, with your tiny hands, to get through that netting. I watched one of you get a hand stuck in the netting and squeal and elocute to the high heavens before managing to escape.

Wow. Not only are you guys prehensile but you’re really pretty whiny about that netting. Glad I don’t understand raccoon-speak as I assumed – based on your comrade’s tone – that you can be quite naughty with words.

Anyway, the fencing goes up and if you leave the fence in tact, I promise not to go all Annie Oakley on you and I'll skip the raccoon stew. I’d have to do a bunch of Google research on how to skin and butcher, it’d take a lot of time, be messy, etc., etc., and really … between you and me … I don’t much have the stomach for that sort of stuff. Not that I couldn’t in a pinch … I’m just really not a Woman v. Food kind of gal.

Bottom line – ramble along on the Raccoon Highway, play and sleep in my trees, use your toilet -- but the stay hell out of my veggie beds and you’ll live.

Not so warmly yours,

ThinkLady

Meet last spring’s Early Wonder beets – a voluptuous veggie – sweet, crunchy, beautiful, delicious. Plotting the fall/winter/spring garden now and silly me – admit to being giddy with anticipation.

Dear August -

The sound of your name can be so evocative and lyrical -- which I’m sure is one of the reasons Tracy Letts evokes you in that famous play of his. Alas, as much as we love your name, your time with us this year was a bit worrisome. Speaking more frankly – it was a real downer -- and we’re hoping that perhaps a little post-visit communiqué might pave the way for a more gracious you in 2012.

Searing is the primary word that comes to mind when we think of you raging across the landscape like a banshee, finishing the job your sister July started of crisping and reducing our little corner of the world into swaths of crunchy, desiccated brown. If this behavior of yours was vengeance for a lack of proper recognition of your station in the grand scheme of the calendar, we do humbly and genuinely apologize.

Most of us puny humans now understand just how illustrious you are and that by failing to acknowledge your magnificence, we totally and completely screwed up. As the eighth glorious month of the year, you are uniquely situated on the calendar, a powerful and dare we say it … terrible denouement like no other.

How on earth we missed your brilliance previously … well, let’s just say you can chalk this one up … again … to the vagaries of human nature, i.e. stupidity. It appears our inherent narcissism, blathering on and on about ourselves, self-aggrandizing of our microscopic lives, our naïve belief in our “brilliance” and ability to outfox your mom -- Mother Earth -- is also our Achilles' heel. We do seem to be discovering that we have a rather humongous heel and alas no shoes will cover it.

Please know dear August, that we have fond memories of you when you were more agreeable and less temperamental. Most of us have learned our lesson and do solemnly promise to never underestimate or overlook you again.

Now that you’re gone, if there’s any intelligence or humbleness left in our wanton species, we’ll be planning way ahead for your return in 2012. We ask in return that you consider sparing us from any disagreeable moodiness and return to us more tolerant of character, less scathing, more loveably mischievous, less tyrannical. We’d love to frolic with the gentler August again, the one that allows for a cool, flirty breeze every now and then and nighttime lows below boiling.

For any magnanimity you care to show us, we’ll be eternally grateful -- 31 days of hell proved to be more than enough.

With great reverence --

The Human Race

The daily pounding of sun, drought, and record-setting heat on the Great Plains is a searing reminder of nature’s cycles and of a changing climate. In western Oklahoma grasslands and pastures give way to sand, farm ponds and creeks are dry or going dry, water wells are low, and ranchers -- no longer able to feed cattle on pasture -- are selling them off at auctions that go long into the night. As the drought monitor above shows, in central Oklahoma things are literally only a shade better and all of Oklahoma is now in some level of drought.

Oklahoma has always been a place with weather extremes. Climatologists tell us that not only can we expect this to continue but that we will see even more variability and extremes as the climate continues to change.

This raises questions: Are there ways to better manage increasingly precious resources such as water, to retain soil moisture, to retrofit and redesign human communities that are resilient and perhaps even abundant in the face of all kinds of weather, and to do all these things so that we manage, maintain and preserve the natural systems that give us life in a sustainable way?

Permaculture design offers an approach to designing human settlements modeled on the relationships found in nature. Central to permaculture are three ethics: care for the earth, care for people and fair share. These three ethics, along with 12 principles, form the foundation for permaculture design and are also found in most traditional societies. Many ecologists, scientists and environmental advocates see permaculture as offering one of the most comprehensive and holistic means for addressing the critical state of our planet and its species.

For Oklahomans, learning about permaculture has, up until now, required travelling out of state, and paying hefty tuition fees in addition to traveling and lodging expenses since permaculture courses are not yet routinely offered here. That’s changed this summer with the advent of Oklahoma’s first full-scale, certificate-level Permaculture Design Course organized by Transition OKC and taught by internationally renowned permaculturist, Scott Pittman of the Permaculture Institute, Santa Fe, N.M. The course starts in less than two weeks on August 4, and I admit to being terribly excited about it.

Two of my Oklahoma City colleagues and friends have taken the Permaculture Design Course and are much more articulate than I am about describing permaculture’s promise for Oklahoma and the talents of Pittman as a teacher. Randy Marks, principal, Groundwork: Applied Design says this:

“Scott Pittman is one of the most gifted teachers I have encountered. He has a long history of putting permaculture into practice and he knows how to convey what he has learned. Additionally, he is a great storyteller and has tales of his worldwide travels as a teacher and practitioner. He has a huge heart and is altogether a wonderful human being.

I took the design course with Scott when I was trying to figure out a new direction for my career and life. The course was fun, provocative and challenging. In itself, it didn't change my life, but it gave me a framework to begin changing my life and my understanding of nature and culture. I have thought of that course and what I learned there virtually every day since, and believe now more than ever that permaculture can help us forge a human culture in tune with the natural world.”

Oklahoma’s own practicing permaculturist, Bob Waldrop, founder of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative and Prairie Rose Permaculture, and one of the teachers for the upcoming Oklahoma PDC, sees permaculture as an essential investment in an age of uncertainty.

“Permaculture, with its focus on caring for people, caring for the planet, and having a care for the future, has helped me design adaptations to my house that make it possible for us to be comfortable, at low cost, even as the weather seems to be becoming more extreme – heat and drought in the summer, cold and ice in the winter. The money I am spending on those renovations is certainly the best financial investment I have ever made, since it has reduced my monthly energy bills. 

Like many in the baby boom generation, I am concerned about retirement in an age of great economic uncertainty. A significant component of my retirement plan is a debt-free house with very low operating costs. By spending money now on these permaculture design renovations, while I have a job and income, I am reducing my cost of living, not only in the present, but also later on, when I retire and my income is much lower. Every dollar I don’t have to spend during retirement is probably a hundred dollars I don’t have to save, so the advantages of permaculture design for anyone approaching retirement are very clear and compelling.”

Deadline for enrolling in the course is Tues., Aug. 2. Full details on registering for the course, payment, dates, times, location, syllabus and other pertinent details can be found online here.