1996-97 was a good year

I had forgotten about the Primitive Radio Gods until Last.fm reminded me to like them. Remembering to like their song, Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in my Hand, reminded me to like Pepper by the Butthole Surfers and Brimful of Asha by Cornershop. It's good to remember to like what you like.

We Are Not Vacant

"Just because we have vacant lots and abandoned houses in our neighborhood doesn't mean we live in a vacant and abandoned neighborhood."

-Barbara Anderson speaking at a Neighborhood Connections holiday party


Need proof? Check out the Re-imagining Cleveland's Ideas to Action Resource Book.

Local Food in Early March

Eating locally in early March means eating from the pantry and the "cellar". We don't have a cellar, but we do have a poorly heated front hallway that works pretty well. Tonight's dinner is soup made from:

• Canned vegetable stock (carrot, onion, garlic and celery from late summer)
  
• Canned Green Beans (From July)
  
• Frozen Kale (From Sept)
  
• Frozen Kohlrabi (From August)
  
• Frozen Zucchini (from July)
  
• City Fresh Garlic (stored from Dec)
  
• City Fresh Cabbage (stored from Dec)
• Dried Adzuki Beans (pantry)

Giddy with the Prospect of Spring

Cleveland Crocus Emerges!

Reducing the Noise

I just spent about an hour unsubscribing to 20 -newsletters and retail email lists that clutter up my email inbox. I also un-joined 3 underused ning sites.

I retained a subscription with the 4 e-newsletters I actually read; feeling light and free about this.

Context is Everything & the Near Future

If you hold your leg in a room full of twenty people, it's not the same as holding it when you are alone by the sea.

The body enjoys participating in the possible which becomes narrowed down to the probable, which fast becomes the actual or what we call the present. . . Perceiving the "probable future" transform into the present invites us to be there right then. There is no point in being only in the present because the body lives and breathes the future. We may live in the present, but we breathe the future.

-Julyen Hamilton
(from an interview in Contact Quarterly by Nancy Stark Smith

The video below (with Hamilton, Stark Smith and someone else) is better with the sound off.

R&R

R&R
Originally uploaded by Jenita McGowan.

Every day on Public Square.

How we remember

At my grandmother, Jeane Morrison's, funeral this past weekend I met a first cousin twice removed who keeps and updates a family tree on my grandfather’s side of the family. I learned some new information about my great-great-grandparents (my cousin’s great- grandparents) that I didn’t know before. I also learned that my 93-year old grandfather has 4 living first cousins who are all about his age.

My newly discovered cousin lives next door to the “Old Morrison Farm” where my great-great-grandparents lived and my great-grandfather grew up. He also said he has a civil-war era diary written by my great-great-uncle. My cousin is going to send me the genealogy charts and maybe some scanned family photos including one of my great-grandparents wedding.

At the Woodland Cemetery in Ironton, most of my grandmother’s family is buried, the Murdocks, Johnstons, Fishers and now Morrisons . I believe my grandparents will be the last of our family to be buried in the family plot in Ironton. No one lives there anymore and we are all so scattered. Things are just different now. Instead of visiting the cemetery to remember relatives, we’ll use software to download our family trees.