I’m just learning to use a site called Storify.com… if you see this on the homepage of my site, click through to read it… Read the rest >>>

We’re supposed to get snow in a couple of days, so we went walking nearby today, warm and sunny. Click on the image to see my photocollage larger… I’m so grateful to live in an incredibly beautiful place! Simple living to me always means focusing on the world around us!

A couple of years ago or so, I muttered to myself, “I gotta lose weight!” So in typical writerly style, I registered that as a website domain name: gottaloseweight.com.

But I didn’t do a thing about it. Now, finally, I am losing weight and I am also working on the site. Writing is how I learn things.

This ties in with simple living and green living–and that is part of what motivated me to finally get going on a weight loss project. Read the rest >>>

The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers–With information on building soil fertility, replacing purchased feed, and working with poultry in the garden by Harvey Ussery, is the most comprehensive book I’ve ever read on chickens. You might guess that from the title! I’ve had chickens twice and we are planning to get them again next year, so I’ve been reading up on chickens. This book, by long-time flockster (that’s a word he invented) and homesteader Ussery, is full of all kinds of ideas and information for other flocksters and wannabes. You could read it  and know plenty to get started with chickens or to take your chicken raising to new levels. At over 400 pages, with countless color illustrations, the book is a treasure.

The Small Scale Poultry Flock is divided into seven sections. In Part One, Getting Started, the first chapter is called “Why Bother?” and it proceeds to give a full answer, Read the rest >>>

This weekend the town where I live in Colorado had its 13th annual music festival. Going to the festival is one of my favorite ways to visit with people in the community that I may not see much of. When I first got to the festival on Saturday morning, I had a nice long chat with a man I know, about how happy he and his wife are to be raising their two young daughters in our peaceful small-town atmosphere, even though making a living here isn’t easy. Later, a woman I had met when we first came here in 1996 remembered me, and we caught up on things. Then I saw the people who bought our house when we left here for Mexico in 2005. Then a friend who is usually a self-described hermit and then… well, you get the idea.

And the music! Read the rest >>>

Second graders in a primary school in Sierra Leone, rebuilt after the civil war. Image via Wikipedia

When I was in college, I spent a summer on a work camp in Moyamba, Sierra Leone. It was through a program called Crossroads Africa. About a dozen American and Canadian college students joined forces with young Africans to start construction on a high school.

As we worked together, we shared stories of our lives. I remember how joyous the young Africans were. I loved dancing on the weekends, at large get-togethers with everyone from toddlers to grandparents dancing together.

As a result of that experience, I went to graduate school in applied anthropology, hoping to make a difference in development in third world countries. Life took different turns, though, and I never returned to Sierra Leone. I stayed in touch with one of my African friends, Isa Johnston of Freetown, and even got together with her a few years later Read the rest >>>