The Chatelaine's Keys

Sharon January 12th, 2012

Day 5: Take all four kids to the doctor, and finally, by the end of the day, to reunite with Grandpa, who is taking them home to another state.  Pack from stash four days worth of clothing, diapers, formula, baby food, toys and games for children to take on 30 hour bus ride.  Repeatedly bless all the people friends, family and some blog readres who have helped me build said stash because, frankly, if I’d had to take eight kids shopping for clothes I’d be locked in the loony bin right now .

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Sharon May 31st, 2011

So I know I’ve been pretty slack here on the blog in the last couple of weeks – the combination of flooding, spring, foster parent prep, spring, garden work, plant sales, Goat Camp at my house, spring and a few other things have meant that my online work has gotten the proverbial lick and promise. And now I’m about to go off and be a total slacker on y’all.

You see, one of my oldest college friends is getting married this weekend. This is something of an event in a whole lot of ways. First there’s the fact that we’re pretty heavily excited for Jesse. Jesse is one of those people everyone loves – he’s the godfather of my oldest son – and about 17 other children He’s been part of every event in my life from college on. And for the last few years before he met Rachel, he was lonely. So much so that I offered (threatened?) to take over the search for a suitable partner for him if he didn’t get it together. Fortunately, Rachel came along before that extreme was necessary – and we’re really happy. So we’re off for a busy week of partying in celebration!

More importantly, Jesse played extensive pranks at my wedding to Eric, at my first wedding, and at *at least* one wedding of each of our friends involved in the wedding. These included things like hiding alarm clocks set to go off every hour on the hour during the wedding night and changing the music we walked into to something err..inappropriate. Now I don’t hold a grudge – I believe strongly in no quarter asked or given in this sort of friendship. Indeed, I cheerfully helped him with other wedding pranks on people we both love – painting the getaway car with “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” (in the english and the original, thanks), filling a car with popcorn through the sunroof, etc…

However, quite a lot of us owe Jesse a little err…attention. Moreover, I feel personally that since I became a farmer with livestock, my potential pranking options have dramatically increased. Chickens, for example, belong at every wedding ceremony! Now Rachel, his future bride, is an innocent here. We bear her no ill will, and have promised we will be just as careful to protect her from collateral damage as our own government is in protecting civilian casualties. I can’t think why she isn’t reassured.

So I hate to say this, but I just won’t have much time to blog between now and Sunday – between wishing Jesse and Rachel well and wishing them well…umm…. I’ll be busy. I realize this makes me a bad, bad blogiste, and apologize for leaving you in the hands of the rest of the internet. I know that they will provide you with plenty of blonde jokes, information about 2012 and fashion news, however – or you could read some of the nice folks on my sidebar or at Scienceblogs.

If, however, you are in or around the North Shore of Boston, I will be giving a talk on Local Food Resilience and What to Eat in the Future in Newbury, MA onThursday at 7pm. I hope to meet some of you there.. Otherwise, I have to go pack my chickens for the wedding!

Sharon

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admin April 25th, 2011

A while back I ran a post-apocalyptic novel book club, which was a lot of fun although it tends to peter out (my fault, of course). It allowed us to get our doom on at low stakes. Now I’m not, strictly speaking, a hard doomer. I suspect most of the likely scenarios involve gradual declines in resource availability and increasing poverty. In some ways this is more depressing than the grand and more dramatic scenarios that writers love to create – you can win against the zombies, but it is tough to win against the enemy “crushing national debt and gradually increasing world temperatures.”

I think most apocalyptic novels are fun thought experiments, but they go for big and shiny when what we are facing is dull and slow. But I retain the right, as your Apocalyptic Blogiste, to occasionally amuse myself with “when the zombies come” scenarios like those commonly found in novels. “When the Zombies come” on this blog basically means “when the really bad-ass stuff hits.” It covers meteors, war, collapse, ice age and reversion to mammoth hunting and, of course, the undead. I find it extremely useful, given that rather dreary nature of the real disaster going on, to get my zombie on once in a while.

What I’ve been thinking about lately is what the ideal zombie scenario would be. I mean, sure, it would be awful and all, but most post-apocalyptic novels work on the premise that Our Heroes are 1. super and 2. extremely lucky. That is, they get all the good stuff mostly going their way – they weren’t standing under the meteor. They had a genius astrophysicist on hand to fend off disaster by figuring out something no one else could have. They are smart enough to respond immediately – they never think “well what if the power goes back on and we’re embarrassed that we went straight to cannibalism?”  They are always right. Unlike the myriad of red shirt characters invented to die horribly, they get to live, and usually there’s some kind of happy ending – that is, in the end, they get to Zombietopia.

Now most of the novels focus, on some level on Zombietopia and its ideal principles (not dead yet, reanimating society), and what struck me, when I was thinking about my own vision of Zombietopia involved some of the same major miracles (not being under the meteor or on top of the volcano, having my own private astrophysicist).  Still,  I’m much more concerned than the characters in novels with very small quality of life issues, which IMHO, can make the difference between leading a mostly happy and plucky band of survivors in your silver lame suit and saying “fuck it, I’m joining the cannibals and getting a prion disease.”

It seems clear to me that the characters in novels are much more high minded than I am. They are thinking of much more important things in their utopias than laundry. So what are the requirements for my own, personal zombietopia, the very best case scenario for me and mine (the rest of you have to get your own zombietopia, but I’ve no objection if they exist simultaneously )?

1. The zombies have to come ashore somewhere else, ideally somewhere inhabited only by the only grizzled old seaman to have actually known zombies before, who then recognizes them for what they are, and raises the alarm. This will give me time to get my zombie-preps ready. This is particularly important if they come in the middle of the night, since I’m not a fast waker. I need a few minutes and a cup of tea so that I’m not completely betwattled.

2. My child needs to stop bed wetting and I need to be caught up on laundry, so that I don’t immediately have to face the pile of hand washing that will inevitably result from this grid going down.

3. I want there to be a 12 hour period where we know the disaster is occurring, but most people don’t, where the power is still on and the merchants are still taking credit cards that will never be paid off (assuming, of course, that the collection agents aren’t already zombies). Then I can get one of those “shopping for the end of the world” scenes that pervades every single apocalyptic novel. These scenes are like porn for doomy girls, and hey, I want one. In the books, miraculously, no one ever declines your credit card and you’ve always been able to get out plenty of cash, or perhaps the grocer is just extraordinarily noble.

4. When I have to go out on night zombie hunts, I’d really rather not be partnered with my neighbor who will explain to me at some length how this is all Obama’s fault.

5. I don’t actually want to wear silver lame.

6. I would like to discover a secret talent for ninja fighting that I never knew I had. And Scrabble.

7. I want to develop the secret knowledge that all book characters have. The moment the grid crashes or whatever, they know. They know that it will never come back, and act accordingly, unlike all the rest of the stupid fools who hang around waiting to see if this is doom or just a power outage. Moreover, I want this knowledge to be absolute and certain, so that I never accidentally begin leading my plucky band across a smoking landscape, only to see the lights come back on and everyone go about their normal work.

8. I also want the special gift for meeting exactly the right people. It must just happen that wandering down my rural street is an expert in zombie demolitions, or a doctor who has previously treated the zombie plague. It seems much more likely that on my street, we’d run into a couple of construction guys who had read World War Z and maybe a hairdresser who definitely saw Night of the Comet, but if the novels get the Navy Seals and the master-archers, I want them.

9. My neighbors and I will instantly pull together and form a noble group of pure-hearted allies who always do what’s right. What is right will instantly be clear, and if someone occasionally points out that it would be easier to do the wrong things, whoever is leading us will always speak for the, the truth and the goodness. We will never get into stupid debates about whether Josie’s ex was an asshole or not, who is in charge or who broke the scythe blade. More importantly, it will not be me who broke the scythe blade.

10. My children will recognize that this is a heroic and important moment, and rise nobly to the cause, behaving gracefully under pressure. They will not whine, pick their noses at meetings or distract us from zombie fighting by fighting with each other.

11. We will find the secret stash of goods that we really, really needed. Whether taken from a recent museum exhibit or found in an old attic, we will never be without the pre-modern tools needed in this new age.

12. Bruce Springsteen will not be killed by the zombies, but will live and write awesome songs about the heroic resistance. Leonard Cohen, who writes awesome songs but already looks kind of undead will rise again to write (but not sing) the zombie’s soundtrack lyrics.

13. In my Zombietopia, all the women of middlish age will not have to bring coffee to the hot warrior chicks and guys in their 20s, the way they do in all the books. Indeed, it turns out that middle aged geeks with agrarian tendencies will somehow be just what is needed.

14. That which does not kill us will make us stronger. I’m hoping that that which doesn’t kill me also makes me thinner, more organized, less irritable and more heroic.

15. My zombietopia will bring people together – while the zombies can be DWMs if they like, the side of good is always multi-ethnic, non-heterosexist and culturally diverse. My little rural town will be the nexus at which the Rebel Amish, the Agrarian Radical Faerie Zombie Hunters, the Asian-American Neo-Pagan Society for the Destruction of the Undead and even a few members of the Republican party come together in a new era of understanding and common interest. After the undead are defeated, they will create a new Utopia, based on the cultivation of turnips and love of their fellow men.

16. Publishing will reanimate in time for me to write a kick-ass memoir of my days as a zombie fighter. Zombie-Oprah, kept around for sentimentality’s sake will have me on her show.

That’s my fantasy – what’s yours?

Sharon

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Sharon December 27th, 2009

Even though I love my farm in many ways, I have some worries about it.  The biggest one is that I’m fairly far away from many of our “centerpoints” in life – my family (Eric’s is more spread out, while mine is clustered in one area), our religious community and closest friends from synagogue and a few other things.  We have a great community in our neighborhood and region, and hope eventually to find good housemates, but I sometimes wonder whether we shouldn’t move closer to others, even if it meant giving up some of the land, privacy and natural beauty we have out here.  I’ve never come to any useful conclusion on this, but there’s a part of me that thinks that if the right arrangement could be constructed, we’d consider moving, trying to recreate what we have on a smaller scale in the city or the ‘burbs. 

Well, one of my ongoing jokes (and I’m not sure I’m joking, but I think everyone else is) with some close friends from synagogue is that we ought to form a kibbutz near our shul, buying a decent-sized piece of property in suburbia with a couple of houses or a potential duplex and moving in together to share childcare, land and garden, religious life and food.  We were talking about this after skating on Christmas morning, and I was again, half-jokingly, selling the case for starting our own commune (with private abodes, I’m not insane ).

Joe could see the case for it – for more hands and more spouses (doesn’t everyone need a wife ?), but without actual partner-swapping, which besides being not our thing seems like a lot of work.  Plus, he pointed out, there the ducks.  See Joe’s father was chinese and Joe is big on duck.  Kosher duck is almost impossible to come by, and while I’ll raise it, the cost of getting a schochet (ritual slaughterer) out to my farm raises the cost of the duck into the astronomical range.  There have been mutterings about teaching someone to slaughter, but there are ritual complexities (I was shown how once and do our own, but only for our consumption).  Ducks, Joe declared, would probably seal the deal for him (again, we’re joking – there are  other complexities).

Well, after a morning of ice skating and a lovely brunch of cranberry bread, coffee cake and waffles (starch and sugar heaven!) we were ready to head home to spend the rest of the day relaxing.  We waved goodbye to our friends and drove home.  We were just getting the woodstove running when Eric came and said “there are ducks out there.”  I thought he meant wild ducks, but no, Eric meant six large, white Pekin ducks, all waddling in unison through my yard, quacking enthusiastically, and checking out the turkeys.

The ducks stayed all afternoon, and then disappeared again.  They were friendly and took corn from the children’s hands.  I don’t know where they came form, although several more distant neighbors have ponds.   

Now if I were of a pre-scientific mindset, I’d be inclined to suggest this was an omen, but being a modern sort I haven’t exactly placed my house on the market .  If Christmas were my holiday I could probably sell a pretty cute story to some magazine about the miracle of the ducks.  As it is, all I can say is that the world is a strange place, and sometimes you get what you expect, and sometimes, you get ducks.

Happy Holidays, Folks!

Sharon

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Sharon October 29th, 2009

Also known as “your out of town blogiste again turns to The Onion as a substitute for actually writing something herself.”  Still, unlike all that silly 2012 stuff, this might be a nightmare that is actually coming true – it is kind of hard to argue:

“Added Riordan, “It is scientifically impossible for civilization to sink any lower than it will this Friday.”

The panel said the upcoming nadir will be precipitated by a string of smaller devastating events.

At 9 p.m. Wednesday the ABC sitcom Modern Family will premiere, marking the least-inspired creative endeavor ever attempted by modern man. This will reportedly be followed at 12:52 p.m. Thursday by the release of a new energy drink marketed exclusively to U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Experts predict that the penultimate catastrophe will occur at approximately 7:15 p.m. Thursday night, when the social networking tool Twitter will be used to communicate a series of ideas so banal they will instantaneously negate the three centuries of the Renaissance.”

We’re doomed!  Doomed, I say. 

Sharon

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