The Heart of the Home

The kitchen is the heart of my home. It’s the hub of the domestic wheel. Since it’s where the woodstove is, this time of year, it’s where everyone gathers. And, everything of any importance takes place there: meals get prepared, recipes shared, bills paid, horse grains mixed, tinctures made, messages exchanged; kombucha brewed, coffee sipped and books read.


Sometimes I take for granted that the kitchen is the living heart of my home. That is, until someone reminds me. And, invariably, that reminder comes in the form of them telling me how “old fashioned” or “cozy” it is.

I’ve got generations of memories of the kitchen being the command post of the home. My grandmother’s kitchen was alive with conversation, cookie baking and ironing. We did our homework in the kitchen while she stirred the soup kettle over the woodstove. There were knitting projects by the rocking chair in the corner and grandpa read his book at the kitchen table while dunking cookies in coffee.

It’s not much different at my place. And, I forget that this is “old fashioned” or “cozy.” To me, it’s normal.

Every now or then, a well intentioned friend tries to bring me up to speed by reminding me that most modern homes center around the TV or home entertainment center. Folks in these households gathers around the television to eat (if you can call the consumption of processed junk-foods eating), nap, and veg out. This sounds de-vitalizing to me. I get an impression of people who are eviscerated and socially alienated.

My kitchen is vitalizing. People are animated and active. And, they are socially engaged with one another through lively conversation and shared projects. Things get done and company gets kept. Quality time isn’t scheduled — it just happens naturally.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics LS American Time Use Survey (A.C. Nielsen Co.), American households spent 5 hours and eleven minutes per day watching TV. Compare that to the 0.55 minutes that, according to the same survey, people spend in their kitchens per day. That’s right. Americans spend less than one hour a day in the heart of their home: the place where food — the nutritional foundation of human fuel — is prepared.

Americans spend more time engaged in passive distraction than active self-nourishment.

My kitchen is where we cook and eat; stack firewood; hang culinary herbs to dry; make floral elixirs; grind flour; dry wool socks and mittens; grow sprouts; and visit. It’s the first place people head when they come in the house. And, it’s a commercial-and-propaganda-free-zone: nobody is extolling the virtues of sugary breakfast cereals, weight loss programs, or celebrity trivialities.

I cleaned a horse bridle by the kitchen woodstove today. And, when I got it done, I hung it from the lamp so that everyone could look it over. I did yoga in the kitchen today—early in the morning before the press of activity took over. I read for a while in the kitchen this afternoon—after I had meditated by the woodstove while re-kindling a dwindling late-day fire.

Maybe it’s because I don’t have a TV. Or, maybe it’s because my kitchen opens into all of the surrounding rooms. Or, maybe it’s because my kitchen is huge — like a healthy, fit heart that pumps vitality into the whole rest of the body.

Whatever the reason, I want it stay this way. I want the kitchen to remain the living nerve-center of my life. I want it to remain the domestic command post, the hub of the household wheel. It feels right that the really important things in life — good food, good friends and good times — all take place there.

I don’t want to come up to speed and be “modern.” I don’t want to lay on the couch and watch TV. I want to stir a soup kettle and make real, living memories.

Stuffing the Stockings with Less Stuff

It is easy to get caught up in holiday consumerism. It's not unusual for people to find themselves spending money on decorations, or rushing through thrift-stores searching for something, anything!, to get for friends and family. We like holidays because they offer us ritual, connection with people, and something to celebrate. But, even when the ritual involves buying unnecessary, excessive presents, we can find ourselves participating in that ritual—and it may not necessarily be a ritual we would have consciously chosen.


So how does one celebrate the holidays without breaking the bank, or giving in to the rituals of consumerism? Simple. Develop new rituals. This year, you don’t have to rack up credit card debt or get swept up in the season’s commercialism. Instead, consider creating holidays that instill more meaning into the season and encourage more sharing, laughter, creativity, and personal renewal.

According to the National Retail Federation, shoppers spent a total of $441.97 billion during the 2008 holiday season. 40% of Americans start their holiday shopping before Halloween. According to the Nilson Report, Americans’ credit card debt, by the end of 2008, reached $972.73 billion, up 1.12% from 2007, with the average credit card debt per household totaling $8,329. These numbers point to the urgency of our revisioning consumer habits. What if—instead of buying “stuff” for holiday gifts—we gave gifts of time, gifts of experience and gifts of charity?

Gifts of time include things like babysitting, car washing, a month of taking out the garbage, doing the dishes, shoveling the snow, cleaning the cat box, dog walking or pet sitting, or a hiking trip. When I was a young mother, my best friend always gave me one day of child-care a week. Oh, how I looked forward to that day each week when I could have “my own” time!—a respite from the demands of parenting two active toddlers.

Gifts of experience include things like an offer to teach a skill such as canning, ballroom dancing, knitting, or swimming. I often give my horsy friends a gift certificate for a dressage lesson. Or, I gift them with an afternoon of hiking and wildcrafting in the backcountry.

Gifts of charity might include a donation to a cause in the name of a family member. Some families make gifts to charities and then present family members with a coupon or card indicating the gift was made in their name. Or, you could support a homeless shelter or protect an acre of rainforest. You could designate an amount of money to donate to charity and let your children pick which causes will receive it. Older children can research organizations that match your family’s values.

And, of course, there is the option of homemade gifts. Homemade salsa, jam and baked goods all taste much better than their commercial counter-parts. Include, of course, the recipe. Or, you can mix tins of dried, wildcrafted teas such as lavender, mint or rose hips. Include a mesh tea strainer. One of my favorites is a mix of lavender, rose petals and clover.

Being creative and keeping your mind focused on the real meaning of gift-giving will help you keep the culture's "buy more" influence at bay. Keep in mind, too, that the efforts you make to curb your holiday spending now will free up more cash for the coming year. And that's the best holiday gift you can give yourself and your family.

Unplugging from The Man, Part 1

In the words of T.S. Elliot, “so how should I presume” to draw a line in the sand? There are, actually, as many ways as there are grains of sand, but the way that seems most accessible to me is Unplugging from The Man. Scott Nearing put it succinctly when he wrote that he “must reduce wants and even needs to a minimum; wherever possible, serve myself, raise and prepare my own food, wash my own clothing, do my own building and repairing, maintain the best of health to avoid the heavy costs involved in sickness, keep down such fixed costs as rent, interest and taxes; never borrow and take on interest slavery, but always pay cash; build up a capital reserve sufficient to cover a full year of unemployment, and be prepared for emergencies.” (The Making of a Radical, p. 44) Nearing was a strong advocate of Unplugging from The Man, which he referred to as The Establishment.

People can unplug, or not, according to their individual comfort levels. There are dozens of ways to pull the plug. We can all do it differently and still make a collective impact. And, we can do it incrementally and progressively as we get more comfortable with new lifestyle behaviors. There's no point in expecting The Man to change. It's not going to happen. The corrupt system works for him. He's getting richer and fatter. So, we have to find a way to wave goodbye to The Man who has never paid more than lip service to any one of our attempts to "pursue life, liberty and happiness." This is secession in its rawest, most potent form.

This blogpost is the first in a series (hence, the Pt. 1 notation) about Unplugging from the Man. Throughout the series, I am going to write both theoretically and practically--very, very practically--about how to systematically Unplug from The Man. I began unplugging in 1974 and am still discovering deeper, more wide-spectrum ways to pull the plug. The more I unplug, the more I find myself, in the words of Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, Coming Back to Life. I don’t feel as if I have given anything up. I feel, conversely, as if I am liberated from things that I really never needed in the first place.

Let's start with some of the theoretical considerations. Heidegger’s big idea was that most people get so lost in das Man (The Man) that they never engage in real discourse, being content, instead, with idle chatter—groundless, buzzing pop-talk that focuses on reaching a superficial consensus instead of exploring anything new. They never really examine their lives and, consequently, they don't know themselves. Totally exteriorized, they are easy to enculturate, to condition and to propagandize. It's easy for The Man to keep them subdued in the golden handcuffs of convenience, comfort and consumer goods.

But, one day the handcuffs start to feel tight. They might even chafe their wrists. Their bubble-priced home is suddenly under-water, the warranty wears off their new SUV, their paycheck can't keep pace with rising food and fuel prices, they get furloughed and their kids can't afford college. Most wonder if this is The American Dream? A few realize that they've been lied to while The Man has laughed all the way to the bank.

Jean Gebser’s seminal work, Ever-Present Origin, posits a map of psycho-history in theorizing that we are currently in a period that Gebser calls the Mental-Rational Period. It is a period that represents the culmination of the development of the human ego. Gebser further theorizes that, used in its negative sense (ie, acquisition, superficiality and separateness), the ego will lead to complete collapse of civilization. The only way that humanity, in his view, can move forward from Empire to Earth Community (to borrow David Korten’s words) is through reaching back into earlier structures of consciousness-- which Gebser calls the Magical and Mythic--and reintegrating their practices and lifestyle patterns. I agree. Because those very practices and lifestyle patterns offer us a tried and true blueprint for Unplugging from The Man! Let's get started!

The people of the Magical period were nomadic. They ‘got their groceries off the ground’ through gathering. We can reintegrate this practice through WILDCRAFTING. One of the most disturbing and extraordinary aspects of life in the US is the persistence of hunger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that food insecurity was accelerating even prior to the recession: the number of people reported in 2008 was more than double the number in 2000.

As the recession has deepened, there are too many families surviving predominantly on refined carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, and macaroni because these products are less expensive, as a result of being subsidized by the government. In 2005, the government spent $17 billion subsidizing grain farmers. Rather than focusing on the production of fruits and vegetables, more than half of US subsidies go to grain farmers.

And yet we know that fruits and vegetables—especially leafy greens—are nutritional powerhouses. Dark green leafy vegetables are, calorie for calorie, perhaps the most concentrated source of nutrition of any food. It was common for our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors to eat up to six pounds of leaves per day. Imagine them walking along from one place to another, just picking and eating greens as they went—a veritable bonanza of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients.

Contemporary wildcrafting offers us the same opportunity. Wildcrafting is the practice of harvesting edible plants from their natural, or "wild" habitats. It means, literally, discovering that the woods and fields are a table always spread. It’s seeing the world as a garden. I will be wildcrafting by mid-April and, as the days grow longer and warmer, I will be able to harvest up to 15 types of wild green edibles each afternoon in my own backyard. While waiting for the cultivated greens in my garden to mature, I will already have been making huge, dark green salads from my wildcrafted veggies.

America’s hunger problem could be reduced if people were taught the ancient art of wildcrafting. Families could find food—and lots of it--right in their backyards! Further, if municipalities were encouraged to stop using chemically toxic sprays on parks and roadsides, wild foods could also be harvested there. And, we could pull the plug on The Man. We wouldn’t need to buy commercially produced (often by huge multi-national corporations) leafy greens that have been transported thousands of miles.

It is anomalous. We are in the midst of one of the worst recessions in American history. Literally millions of people don’t have access to secure food supplies. State and local governments are reeling in debt. Yet, instead of encouraging wildcrafting, we continue to spend millions of tax dollars spraying toxic chemicals on precious wild edibles.

Dandelion, for example, has diuretic properties, which means that it can help the body eliminate extra water. Along with these properties, dandelion is very good at supporting the liver by increasing bile production. I juice the leaves, use them in salads and make a lip-smacking-good dandelion jelly out of the blossoms.

Humans have been eating chickweed and using it medicinally throughout history. Chickweed is very nutritious and can be eaten raw or cooked. The younger leaves are great in salads and older parts of the plant can be cooked like spinach (without the risk of e coli infections from CAFO run-offs).

During Fall foliage season, wild fruits abound, as do berries and nuts. There is really nothing finer than cracking wild walnuts by a cozy Autumn woodfire, while feasting on a wild apple pie—unless, of course, it’s a bowl of wild plums! Unplugging from The Man does not result in austerity. It results in simple prosperity. It is personal freedom. To become unplugged is to become free. Each thing that we can do to cut ties with The Man and its established order creates more freedom. This really is secession in its rawest and most potent form.

Note: This blogpost is the first in a series about Unplugging from the Man. Stay tuned for subsequent posts which will offer more suggestions and practical ideas about achieving personal freedom through Unplugging.

Review of The Good Life by Wanda Shapiro

This is a great book and it's an important book. By defining so succinctly The Good Life, Sherry Ackerman blazes a trail through a very dense forest. She weaves history, philosophy, and her own life story into a narrative that feels effortless despite the gravity of the subject matter. Every chapter is packed with both inspiration and education and at the end of each chapter Ackerman provides a list of practical suggestions which ground the reader in the reality of their own choices. Without malice or arrogance, she characterizes the status quo, explains how we got here, and posits a future well within any individual's grasp.

Rich with references that both educate and illuminate, The Good Life includes a bibliography that will keep curious readers busy for years and from an academic perspective this work is a masterpiece. You would think Ackerman would need more than 190 pages to explain how to create a sustainable and fulfilling lifestyle but she manages that and so much more.

Thankfully for all of us there are people like Sherry Ackerman who have always been ahead of their time. And considering the dire state of affairs at hand, we should all thank her for sharing her Good Life.