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Community Dinner, February 1, 2017: Fun, Frolic, Joy!

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Let’s face it. We’re all here for the kids. The kids infuse new lifeblood into our human family; they present the good news of ongoing beautiful innocence. Last night’s gathering, 18 neighbors and friends, included four dogs and four kids! Not just Juakim and Asiri (neighbor regulars, with their mom Mariella), but Arvid and Fatima (with their folks, Enabah and Adam, who live just up the street). Arvid is four, Juakim five, so he can play big brother.

The meal itself was the usual scrumptuous affair, ending with pears soaked in mead made by Dan, and served with ice cream.

 

I have a feeling that Juakim and Asiri headed straight for the ice cream . . .

Meanwhile, the big event of the evening was the song and dance fest ignited by Logan on his guitar and singing. Soon Arvid and Fatima joined in, with Juakim videotaping! He actually managed to capture the spirit of that hilarity. (See the very end of this post.)

Joyous songster Logan, by the way, is the very same person who also makes collages straight from the disturbed collective unconscious, two of which I featured in yesterday’s post on exopermaculture.com. Collages that I both love and hate. As does he. Logan tells me that it’s when he’s feeling most furious about the horrendous state of the larger world that he makes his collages, and by the time he’s done with one, the emotion that was driving him is spent. YES! Let us transmute our difficult feelings into creativity, rather than unconsciously project them out onto one another.

Speaking of creativity, here’s the latest repurposing by Rebecca: notice her pockets? they are the shoulder pads from a shirt that she got a Goodwill. YES!

My housemates Brie and Dan on duty. Dan affecting a suave, cunning look.

Okay, finally, here’s the promised homemade video, by Juakim, capturing Fatima’s interaction with Logan.

I’m still laughing.

 

 

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Village life, late January 2017: cups, leaves, dinner, music

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Two days ago, I was in the kitchen with housemate Dan. We were remarking on the variety of cups in the cupboard, their various messages, each one a seeming contradiction to the others. Just goes to show the various influences that flow like currents into and through our little village. I decided to line them up. (BTW, that’s housemate Brie’s art in the background.)

I no longer remember where I volunteered for “Citizen’s Corps.” “Mathematical Reviews” is where my deceased mathematician husband Jeff Joel used to work as editor in Ann Arbor. “Gettysburg” reflects the southern roots of Dan’s hometown of Booneville Indiana. And the classical composers cup is also, most likely, from Jeff. There are lots of others, of course, and I bet anybody who looks in their kitchen cabinet will also discover a juxtaposition of influences.

The day before yesterday I looked outside and noticed a bunch of leaf bags lining the fence that were not there the day before. What’s that about? I asked housemate Dan. “Oh that!” He exclaimed: “Last night at midnight, an old guy named Steve [“about 80, says Dan] who some of us have met before (he haunts music venues downtown in his overalls) came rolling down the street about 15 miles an hour with an overloaded truck. Said he’d been raking leaves since 2 p.m.!”

They were for us.

Oh boy! Yesterday housemate Brie managed to unload six bags as mulch on garden beds.

Last night our weekly Community Dinner featured the GANG garden’s huge bounty of squash from 2016, made into an enormous pot of squash soup. So much that people took squash soup home with them in quart jars afterwards.

It was as usual, a fun time, and graced with two kids, Celeste who is eight or nine, and Ramayah, four months.

Ramayah’s Mom Raylin also sported a new tattoo (which everybody around here calls a “tat;” get with the program, Ann!). And her Dad Jeremiah also showed off one of his, he calls it “a USA map with a fly eating maggots” or something like that. Geez! Raylin says she wants to get another piercing, can’t remember where.

Of course I don’t understand at all just what this business of seemingly permanent alteration of the surface of the body is all about, thus showing my age (74). (On the other hand, at a Crones Counsel several years ago, I was amazed to talk with a woman who had tattooed enormous beautiful leaves on her shoulder and upper arm. Said she did it for her 70th birthday.)

Forest showed up with his guitar; he and Aaron played guitar and banjo deep into the night, so I hear. (I left at 8:30, after giving a scratchy, soulful rendition of House of the Rising Sun, fueled by wine, googled lyrics, and those two musicians who egged me on.)

 

Then, the astonishment: this morning, when I looked outside . . . What! More leaves! Gobs more! More than before!

Okay, Dan. What happened this time? “Steve, the old guy, showed up at 10:30 last night with more leaves. This time we were able to entice him inside, where he agreed to a bowl of soup, but refused the offer of a quart jar to take home.”

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