Category Archives: Women

For women living life on the edge

American Politics

Talk about a new frontier!  America (and the world) is there.

If you are a woman reading this, all I have to say is stay awake and alert to the changes that are likely to come at you, from attitudes to new laws. Gather together with others and get busy.

As Robert Reich says, “There is no cruising altitude anymore.”

The time is now.  Take action. Democracy is not a spectator sport.

 

Gardening Gifts Set – 1 Pr Women’s Bamboo Gardening Gloves, 1 Kneeling Pad & 1 Essential Tips Growing Vegetables Booklet

Protection, comfortable gardening and success in growing vegetables is the 3-item goal of this excellent quality gardening gift set for women. The gloves, made from spun bamboo fiber, are naturally silky soft, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial and odor-inhibiting because they actually wick away moisture. The glove’s palms are coated with natural foam latex that provides extra grip. The gloves come in VERY stretchy medium size, equivalent to a Size 7 or 8 women’s glove. The foam garden kneeling pad is firm but offers comfortable support and excellent protection for your knees, where cushioning really matters! This pad is larger than standard. It is lightweight, water resistant, is designed with a built-in foam handle. It will protect your knees from gravel, concrete, sod and other hard surfaces. The final item in this bundle is a 72-page, detailed and colorfully illustrated booklet chock full of useful, easy-to-read information on garden techniques that insure your success as a gardener. It includes info on garden site preparation, inter-planting, succession planting, tool choice, cultivation, freezing, drying, curing and more; and how-to tips for growing over 42 common vegetables, annual and perennial herbs. Comes shrink wrapped as one unit and is a terrific gift for anyone interested in gardening.

Bamboo Yarn for Knitted Knockers

I love bamboo as a textile. I have bamboo sheets that are soft, silky, warm, cool, antibacterial and wear like iron.  I’m also a knitter and have begun knitting with bamboo yarn…a newcomer on the textile scene.

Here’s a picture of a yarn called Universal Yarn Bamboo Pop Cream. Click on the pic and it’ll take you to Amazon and the description page.

bamboo yarn 

Universal Yarn Pop Cream

Have you ever heard of Knitted Knockers? It’s a group of knitters who knit breast prostheses for women who’ve had mastectomies and don’t want silicon implants. Since bamboo is antibacterial and so durable, it’d be a great yarn to use if you’re inclined to be part of this amazing group.  You can Google them and get the full story on how to get involved.

Find Out What It’s All About

In the 60’s, Ina Gaskin significantly influenced the reclamation of the birth process. Many were fed up with hospitals and doctors taking the birth process away from mothers, and it was time to bring back the midwives, the personal, the intimate nature of something as profound as bringing new life into the world.

The same is happening now with the death process. The funeral industry is just that…an industry. Huge. Corporate. And although many independently owned funeral homes and funeral directors intend a sense of intimacy, ultimately, a corporate agenda is a corporate agenda.

There’s no need to give your loved one, grieving process and confusion over to those who charge big bucks and produce ‘canned’ funerals. There is a movement afoot that is changing all that, domestically as well as internationally.

Find out what it’s all about by vising my friend Kateyanne Unullisi’s website.

Firewood

14 trees have been taken down on the property I inhabit.  All of them dead, but still full of moisture.  We’ve been cutting and stacking and splitting, then covering with black plastic weighted down with empty 2 liter (?) soda bottles filled with water and hung by ropes across the stack.

When those trees hit the ground, the earth shook. They must’ve been 80 – 100 ft tall. Making firewood sounds like a bland, benign event.  It is an all encompassing, vital engagement with Nature.

Sugar Scrub

My aestheticism gave me a great recipe for a home made facial…baker’s sugar and olive oil.  Rub very gently into a clean face and then sponge off with a warm washcloth.  Makes your face feel like velvet and gets rid of old skin cells.  But definitely be gentle because the sugar has the capacity to leave your face red and raw if you get too vigorous.

The Stories We Tell

“Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to the dreamland, that lead to love and learning, that lead us back to our own real lives as knowing wildish women.”~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I don’t know many people these days whose inner life isn’t fraught with anxiety of some sort.  This quote really reminded me that I have the freedom…indeed the response-ability…to tell myself a different story when I find myself responding fiercely to a story I’ve stumbled into while not paying attention.  If it’s not of my creation, it’s not my story.