Two Years Later - Gone But Not Forgotten

Tommorrow is the two-year anniversary of my brother's death. It still makes me incredibly sad, and still angry at a universe with rules I do not understand. 47 is too damn young.

I have found Warren Zevon's song "Keep Me In Your Heart For Awhile" tremendously comforting. If feels like an anthem, a sacrament; something my brother would have written to the four fabulous women in his life if he had only had the chance.

He still remains in the hearts of many.

Doxycyline, or, Alline Opens a Big Can o' Whup Ass

Update: I do NOT have Lyme's disease. Score one for the Californian. However, I do most likely have Ehrlichiosis, another tick-born disease. The very cool thing is that I found the bull's eye within a couple of days and was able to get treatment immediately.

My initial freak-out was from years ago, when doctors didn't quite know what to do with Lyme's and other tick diseases, and the little buggers were allowed to run their course, resulting in debilitating arthritis and other maladies.

Now, with an immediate course (in my case, 21 days) of antibiotics, the bacteria is simply wiped out. I have my own army of little Terminators running through my veins, hunting out and destroying the erlichiae bacteria. Semper fi, dude.

So, a word to the wise: if you are traveling in tick country (see the map, here) dress appropriately when walking in tall grass/weeds. And if you get the following symptoms, consider that you might have more than a simple virus:

"The early clinical presentations of ehrlichiosis may resemble nonspecific signs and symptoms of various other infectious and non-infectious diseases. It is unclear if all persons infected with ehrlichiae become ill. It is possible that many infected persons develop an illness so mild they do not seek medical attention or perhaps have no symptoms at all.

Patients with ehrlichiosis generally visit a physician in their first week of illness, following an incubation period of about 5-10 days after the tick bite. Initial symptoms generally include fever, headache, malaise, and muscle aches. Other signs and symptoms may include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, cough, joint pains, confusion, and occasionally rash."

I do hope that this will not dissuade people from visiting Dancing Rabbit, or the Milkweed Mercantile. I've been here for ten years and not had any problems - I just got lazy, and went picking black raspberries in a dress and sandals. Normally, when hunting for morel mushrooms or violets in the spring I am careful to wear long pants, tuck them into my socks, and take a shower immediately after. Ticks are what we get in exchange for fireflies, prairie wildflowers, native songbirds and stupendous thunder storms. I think it's worth the trade offs.

House Wrens - a lot of bird in a little package

Last fall when Kurt nailed his worn-out work boots to oak trees adjacent to our strawbale house I thought he had finally gone ‘round the bend. However, he assured me that come spring those boots would be very popular. With a wink and a smile, he wandered off to work on the Mercantile building.

You can imagine my surprise when this spring I noticed a flurry of activity around the boots. Before too long, they became the best show in town.

House wrens, tiny little birds with a big, beautiful song, had moved in. Unlike robins, which will build a nest just about anywhere, house wrens have a very complicated mating ritual. First the male picks out several possible nest sites (because house wrens are build their nests in cavities our boots were perfect candidates). Then, he builds nests in several of these spots. Then, and only then, he brings the female around. She looks at all of the nests he has built, and chooses one. The first thing she does? Redecorate! She takes all of the twigs he has so carefully placed and tosses them out the door. Then they rebuild.

Two baby house wrens in their nest inside an old work boot that has been nailed to a tree.

The photos are not very good – for that I apologize. But the boot was nailed to the east side of a great big shady tree. I think you can still get an idea of how much fun we had watching the entire process.

For more on house wrens and other songbirds, please click here http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/House_Wren_dtl.html

NOTE: the Cornell website says that the house wren “takes over all the birdhouses in its general vicinity, keeping all other species from using them.” This has not been our experience – we are fortunate to have many, many species of birds nesting nearby. The only birds we actively discourage are house sparrows and starlings, which were introduced to the US in the 1800’s. They are both aggressive and predatory, and wreak havoc on native songbird species.

Dancing Rabbit Nature Moment, or, Grackles are Weird

Photo by Tony Tanoury on Flickr (he has some fantastic bird photos!)

Our home here at Dancing Rabbit is situated right across the path from some woods which are, as Robert Frost would say, "are lovely, dark and deep." They continue about 80 yards to the smaller swimming pond, giving us a buffer, at least on one side of our house, from the bustling humanity that is often DR. In the ten years since we arrived, the trees have grown taller and more lush, and provide more and more shade, and more and more entertainment.



Kurt's office window faces onto the woods, and so he spends a lot of time gazing out the window. In the last few days we've had torrential rain, and there is always something going on in the resulting puddles. This morning he said "the grackles keep flying up to the puddle and dropping white things in it." Wondering what these white things were, I speculated flowers, but that didn't really make much sense. I would have been content sitting inside on my butt, drinking coffee and speculating into eternity, but Kurt is a man of action. He went outside, scooped up a "white thing," and brought it in to show me. It was about the size of a quarter, white, gelatinous, and pretty gross. After a brief internet search, I found the following on the Mass Audubon site:

In late spring and summer, owners of swimming pools are surprised to observe large black birds repeatedly dropping small white sacs into their pools. The birds, Common Grackles, are dropping "fecal sacs" that have been removed from the nest. Young grackles excrete waste encased in these gelatinous sacs, an adaptation that promotes a clean nest.

Euwww. I hope Kurt washed his hands before eating breakfast!

Food Sleuth: A Visitor's View of Dancing Rabbit

While doing a search on Dancing Rabbit and food to see what I'd come up with (OK, what I should REALLY say is "while wasting time, following my nose on the web instead of doing, oh, taxes and budgets...") I came across one of the best descriptions of Dancing Rabbit I've read (you can read it below).

The article was written by Melinda Hemmelgarn M.S., R.D. , who I learned is a clinical dietitian, advocate for sustainable food systems and 2004-2006 Food and Society Policy Fellow. She is also a newspaper columnist, and freelance writer and speaker. She has written her trademarked weekly "Food Sleuth" column for the Columbia Daily Tribune since 1989, and it now appears in a variety of publications nationwide. The "Food Sleuth" mission is to "digest" nutrition research, expose diet fraud and help consumers think beyond their plates.

You can read many of her other excellent articles here on her IATP Food and Society Page.

Food Sleuth: ‘Rabbits’ Live Simple, Sustainable Life
By Melinda Hemmelgarn
Columbia Daily Tribune
April 12, 2006


"My daughter, Hannah, gave me a choice on how I wanted to spend her sorority’s mom’s weekend at Truman State University. I could play Bunco with the other visiting mothers or tour the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage with her “Expanding Environmental Consciousness” class. Without blinking an eye, I chose the latter.

Forty minutes after rolling out of Kirksville, we arrived in Rutledge, a rural community in northeast Missouri. Under a gray sky and cool April chill, our tour guide, Ted, explained the mission of Dancing Rabbit: To create a sustainable, socially just society that would influence the global community through education, research and example. The community strives to live efficiently, using only its fair share of Earth’s resources.

What might be described by some as a “hippie commune,” the Dancing Rabbit “bioregion” consists of 280 acres of predominantly prairie and former farmland. To re-establish native grasses and provide for a close-knit community, only 80 acres are designated for dense settlement, including homes, common areas, fruit trees and more than 15,000 square feet of organic gardens. The 25 or so inhabitants of Dancing Rabbit grow, eat and preserve local, seasonal and organic food. Many are vegetarian for ethical and environmental reasons, but it’s not mandatory.

The “Rabbits” also live “off the electrical grid.” In other words, all of their power is generated by wind and solar sources. They’re keenly aware of energy use and practice conservation and resourcefulness religiously.

Make no mistake, though: Dancing Rabbit is not a cult. Rather, it’s a community where inhabitants intentionally choose to live cooperatively and leave less of an ecological footprint than the average American.

For example, the source of all power used at Dancing Rabbit comes from renewable and sustainable sources. No fossil fuels are used for powering vehicles, heating and refrigeration. Homes are constructed with reclaimed and recycled lumber. Members give up their personal motorized vehicles and instead share three cars fueled with biodeisel and recycled vegetable oil. Rain collection provides drinking water, and wastewater is treated in constructed wetlands. Speaking of waste, Dancing Rabbit’s waste disposal systems are designed to reclaim organic matter. In other words, they make “hu-manure.”

It was after my toilet experience that I concluded Dancing Rabbit would not be for me, at least not for the long run. Much like a camping vacation, it could be fun for awhile. I decided I’d learn what I could on the tour, help with some gardening as planned and look forward to dinner back in Kirksville.

But as morning turned to afternoon, the sun broke through the clouds, and I began to better understand the appeal. Ted walked us through the village, touring warm and cozy homes, explaining how their community provided both personal space and rich human interaction. At noon, Ted’s partner Sara prepared a delicious, health-fortifying lunch of lentils, rice, soup and salad, made with a variety of just-harvested greens.

The “Rabbits” live a simple yet labor-intensive lifestyle, with pioneering energy largely devoted to survival and community building. However, members also have access to the Internet, postal service and phone. They volunteer in their wider surrounding community, too. Ted and Sara visit family on the East Coast twice a year. But they’re anxious to return home, to a sense of security, safety and place. That connection to our local environment seems missing from too many modern-day communities, Ted says.

“When you visit a different place, you should know it’s different.” He adds: “I’ve always felt safest when I’ve been sustainable.”

Back in Kirksville, dinner began with a plate of wilted pale lettuce, drenched in dressing, followed by greasy, overcooked pasta. I wondered how far the food had traveled. Hannah and I exchanged glances. We had tasted a more health-sustaining alternative, and we knew at once we wanted more."

Thanks Melinda!

Humanure, Composting Toilets, and the Big Rock Candy Mountain

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage has been getting a lot of press lately. Journalists usually start circling a week before Earth Day, looking for an angle that hasn't been played.

This year we've accommodated them by making our composting waste system public - and all the media have turned into 6-year-olds telling poo poo jokes.

It all started with a very well-done segment called Kids Off the Grid on Nickelodeon - Linda Ellerbee's Nick News Show. As it was a show about kids living ecological lives, and is really pretty cool. DR is at the very beginning.

Boys being boys, and teenagers being teenagers, Morgan could not resist discussing our composting toilet system, and Nick News could not help repeating it.

Then, of course, Jon Stewart picked up the most, um, "colorful" segment, and ran this

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Kids' Earth Day
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

Defecating in our drinking water is perhaps one of our culture's most curious, but least talked about, habits. Some of the reasons for composting, rather than flushing our waste are:
1. to prevent water pollution (almost 4 trillion gallons of sewage effluent are dumped into our coastal waterways each year);
2. to fertilize the soil (rich in soil nutrients, humanure can be safely recycled by thermophilic composting);
3. to protect our dwindling drinking water supplies (nearly 1/3 of all household drinking water is used to flush toilets); and
4. to enhance our health. Fertile soil not only grows great veggies, but nourishes our health and community's well-being.

Before coming to Dancing Rabbit, the only time I spent talking or even thinking about defecation was when I went backpacking in my beloved Sierra Nevada Mountains. However, even 20 years ago How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art was required reading for participants on the backpacking trips I led, because it explained how to utilize the woods without endangering the water and wildlife systems. This is simply the next step, to be used in one's day-to-day life instead of just two weeks a year while on vacation.

We've all become so inured to NOT talking about our waste (it's simply not polite!) that we are ruining our drinking water and the planet with our wasteful, thoughtless ways. It's time to get over the "icky" factor and find out what is really going on.

To learn more about composting waste, I highly recommend two books.



First, The Toilets Papers, Recycling Waste and Conserving Water by Sym Van Der Ryn. It is an informative, inspiring, and irreverent look at how people have dealt with their wastes through the centuries. In a historical survey, Van der Ryn provides the basic facts concerning human wastes, and describes safe designs for toilets that reduce water consumption and avert the necessity for expensive and unreliable treatment systems. The Toilet Papers provides do-it-yourself plans for a basic compost privy and a variety of graywater systems.

The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure by Joe Jenkins is the book than many of the Dancing Rabbit systems are based upon. It provides detailed scientific information on how humanure can be hygienically recycled, without fancy technological do-dads, a large bank account, toxic chemicals, or environmental pollution. This unique handbook provides information on composting, soil fertility and microorganisms, alternative graywater systems and much more. It also gives detailed instructions on how you can build your own sawdust toilet and compost bins for only a few dollars.

So there you go. More poop than you ever expected to find here. Let me know if you have any questions!

Cob Rocket Stove, or, The Secret Life of Ziggy

Kurt and I see Ziggy a lot through our windows during the day. We never really know where he's going (unless he stops in at our house, and we know that he's there...) or what he's up to. And he's always up to something.

The other day we saw him go by with a long pink scarf wrapped jauntily around his neck. This being Dancing Rabbit, we're used to all sorts of sartorial splendor, but found it a bit unusual for Ziggy. Red union suit? Certainly. But we'd never seen any scarf action.

Checking out his photos on Flickr today, it all became clear. Ziggy's building his rocket stove.

It looks like Mark of Red Earth Farms is helping out, and I imagine that he is the one who took the photo, above. But DO check out the Ziggy's pictures - his whole house is a lovely dream crafted out of straw, clay and sand.