A Good Year for Frogs

It's been raining, raining, raining. The other night we got 3 inches. And still it kept coming. Yesterday was the annual Dancing Rabbit Open House. Scotland County was under a flood watch, and highways A, MM and 15 were closed. We had six (count 'em, SIX!) intrepid guests. We spent most of the afternoon sitting on the Mercantile porch with a revolving group of Rabbits, watching the kids race through the mud puddles.

Eleven years ago today Kurt and I were married in our garden in Berkeley. Saying "yes" on Valentine's Day 1997 when he got down on one knee in a restaurant was probably the smartest decision I've ever made. At dinner tonight we were talking about how much we love our lives. He made me laugh when he said "you know, living in community can be a great big pain in the ass, with consensus, and neighbors, and getting along. But all in all it is just great. The two of us get to spend almost every day together (instead of the few hours after a long day of work when we lived in the city) and every day with you feels like a celebration." Yep. I love that man.

That's it for now. I think I'll go kiss him on the top of his bald little head.

So register to vote already (and get your friends registered, too!)

Loved this post on Sludgie about the oh-so-terrifying Sarah Palin (aka evil spawn of the devil). I felt much better when I read this quote by Former Republican John Cole on Daily Kos:

"Sarah Palin is the distilled essence of wingnut.

She has it all.

She is dishonest.

She is a religious nut.

She is incurious.

She is anti-science.

She is inexperienced.

She abuses her authority.

She hides behind executive privilege.

She is a big spender.

She works from the gut and places a greater value on instinct than knowledge.
And most dangerous of all, she is supremely self-confident to the point of

not recognizing how ill-equipped she is to lead the country."

I also enjoyed reading this column by Roger Ebert and received this email from a friend today.

And then I just got this:
"I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....(hope I'm not offending anyone)
* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
* If you grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, you're a quintessential American story.
* If your name is Barack, you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* If you name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.
* If you graduate from Harvard law School, you are unstable.
* If you attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.
* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system, while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.
* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
* If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
OK, *much* clearer now. "

I hope that it means that McCain/Palin will be soundly defeated in November. What are you doing to help? Are you registered to vote? Are your friends? Family? We've got serious work to do here. Make a donation, and get to work. And thanks!

It's raining cats and dogs - don't step in a Poodle!

Yesterday was a sunny, perfect day. In the evening Kurt and I sat outside under the sunflowers, chatting while the steaks sizzled on the grill (he's experimenting with using soft maple wood scraps instead of charcoal briquettes). Baloo wandered around, occasionally trying to persuade us to throw a slimy hedge apple. We could hear Aurelia pulling her red wagon around the village. We had been on Clean Team (everyone here at DR is divided into 4 teams and we take turns cleaning the Common House each Sunday) and so had washed all of the commie towels in preparation for the Visitor Period beginning today. They were all drying happily in the sun.

So this morning I got up, and went to find Annie and Sparky, who were headed to Rutledge. I heard a rumbling in the gray sky, but thought to myself (in an antihistimine stupor) "oh, it's so quiet here - that must be a truck going down highway M." Ha!

No sooner had we stepped inside of Zimmerman's when the skies opened. That was two hours ago and it is STILL pouring. In honor of the rain I am passing on today's poem from Writer's Almanac. It's pretty perfect:

Black Umbrellas
By Rick Agran

On a rainy day in Seattle stumble into any coffee shop

and look wounded by the rain.

Say Last time I was in I left my black umbrella here.

A waitress in a blue beret will pull a black umbrella

from behind the counter and surrender it to you

like a sword at your knighting.

Unlike New Englanders, she'll never ask you

to describe it, never ask what day you came in,

she's intimate with rain and its appointments.

Look positively reunited with this black umbrella

and proceed to Belltown and Pike Place.

Sip cappuccino at the Cowgirl Luncheonette on First Ave.

Visit Buster selling tin salmon silhouettes

undulant in the wind, nosing ever into the oncoming,

meandering watery worlds, like you and the black umbrella,

the one you will lose on purpose at the day's end

so you can go the way you came

into the world, wet looking.

"Black Umbrellas" by Rick Agran from Crow Milk. © Oyster River Press, 1997.

Here's our new patch. I LOVE it! We're putting it on organic cotton hats, and also selling it by itself. It also comes in blue. $1 from each sale goes to Dancing Rabbit.

Also, the Press Release for the Mercantile is supposed to go out today. It's been quite an education, learning about SEO, imbedded URLs, etc. My head is spinning, and I'm still not sure I got it all right. But it is certainly fun! And I'm also going to present myself with an MBA someday soon. I'll post the Press Release as soon as I'm sure it's correct.

Building a Village with thoughts of Abundance, Prosperity and Doo Doo

Oh, how I love Sunday mornings, even without a big fat Sunday paper. At the ripe old age of 51 I've figured out how to make really good pancakes. I don't know why this simple task has been so challenging - I can make Tarte Tatin, and a kick-ass clay pot chicken. But pancakes eluded me until yesterday when I added more flour and less liquid to the pancake recipe from the Farm Cookbook. It was pretty amazing. So we had them again today.

Over pancakes Kurt was telling me his latest adventures playing Civilization 4. It is, apparently, a game where one has the opportunity to create civilization, raise armies, raze cities, plunder or be diplomatic. Once a week he's been playing with Morgan (age 13) and Duncan (age 10). After a few weeks Duncan (aka Napoleon) got bored, and quit. However, his cities still remain. The cities are charmingly named Moo, Moo 2 and Doo Doo. Kurt says they always crack up when they get an announcment from The Citizens of Doo Doo, wanting a larger military presence in their town. Perhaps we should consider renaming Dancing Rabbit.

It's time for Sunday clean, our chance to scour the scum and detrius of a week of heavy living out of the Common House. Not my favorite task, but we have the best team on the farm and get that sucker cleaned in record time. More later!

Cow Scapes, Mercantile Colors and That Coagulating Air

Rachel Sudlow Cow Scape

Rachel Sudlow Cow Scape

Rachel Sudlow Cow Scape

Just popped over to Mother Earth's blog where there are some very cute photos of her dog. They reminded me of some fantastic Cow Scapes done by an artist named Rachel Sudlow.
I'm hoping, once the Mercantile is built and we actually have walls, to get a few of these up. She also has beautiful jewelry. But for me, for now, the cows are where it's at! They are just the COOLEST!

In other news, the paint is going on the Mercantile! Yay! Scott the painter is applying it RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE. We're using two shades of green and a dark indigo. We're hoping it's not too weird. I think I'll go take a pic for you. Be right back.

Two of the three colors

When I am not reading business books, writing web copy, researching potential vendors, pretending to do accounting, photographing product outside in the sunshine, rearranging boxes of products from one side of our bedroom to the other, I get to read a book for FUN. I need to clarify that I'm only reading "not hard on the brain" books right now. I just finished Bush Falls by Jonathan Tropper (I really enjoyed his How to Talk to a Widower). Bush Falls was about a 6. I liked this paragraph a lot:

I return to my room and walk over to the double windows that overlook the front yard, absently fingering the white plastic grille. My father had installed the grille because the pigeons kept mistaking the large window for open air and crashing into it. I can vividly recall the nauseating sound of those bone-jarring collisions jolting me out of my sleep in the early-morning hours. I would creep hesitantly to the window and look down to see the bird on our front stairs, dazed and shivering from the sudden, inexplicable crash. Usually they recovered after a few minutes and took to the air again on an erratic flight path, shaken and none the wiser for their bruising experience, left only with the vague and uncomfortable notion that the air will occasionally coagulate without warning and knock them out of the sky.

Coagulating air. WHAT A CONCEPT! Sometimes I have that same problem - I mistake open air for air that is really coagulated - I trip, and slip, and fall, and there's nothing there but flat surface. Nice to finally know what the real reason is.

Last but certainly not least, that Dumb ol' John McCain. Picked a WOMAN for his VP. He must know that while I'll never, ever vote for him (very scary conservative Republican crazy man), a WOMAN makes it tempting. Not tempting enough, mind you, but damn!

A Good Year for Sunflowers OR Stop Men from Peeing on the Floor

OK. So I'm working VERY diligently on the Mercantile Resource page, where readers can go for all sorts of information - everything from why Fair Trade is a good thing to options for menstrual products. One of my favorite categories is "Who Can You Trust." As I was making my list of magazines I like a lot I went to Good Magazine and stumbled upon this article:

Tricking People into Doing the Right Thing
Hey! I thought. I would LOVE to trick people into doing the right thing (or, at least, what I consider is the right thing). I did not find much useful information, but should you ever need to stop men from peeing on the floor, here is what you need to know:

"Authorities at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam have etched the image of a black housefly into each urinal. It seems that men usually do not pay much attention to where they aim, which can create a bit of a mess. But if you give them a target, they can’t help but try to hit it. Similar designs have been implemented in urinals around the world, including mini soccer goals, bulls-eyes, and urine video games (seriously). Do they work? Since the bugs were etched into the airport urinals, spillage has decreased by 80 percent."


In other non-urinary news, it has been a dismal year for tomatoes (at least in the Milkweed garden) but an EXCELLENT year for sunflowers. These two, right in my tomato bed (did not have the heart to pull them up) are at least 15 feet tall. Yowsa!

PS That's the back of the Mercantile in the background. More tomorrow, I promise!

Ready, Set, Wait!

The Mercantile online store is open for buisiness! Yay! Hooray!

Here's a YouTube link that we put in our first newsletter expressing how we really feel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xos2MnVxe-c

There is still so much to do. There were, of course, errors in the newsletter (ack!). Be we've learned good lessons, and are adding fabulous merchandise every day. I'm working on a press release. It is scary but fun. I don't know how artists do it - here is my heart and soul - love it or stomp on it, as you will.

today was DR land Clean Day. We're having our annual Open House September 13th, and are getting ready. Things are looking pretty good around here!

I keep mooching books from Bookmooch even though I have about 20 minutes to read each night (before I fall asleep and dream of Mercantile products and descriptions). The stack is getting higher and higher, and even falls over occasionally. What fun! (the book part, not the falling over part).

That's all for now. Gotta go do math and figure out percentages of markup. Some things about running a business are much more fun than others. Percentages? Guess what category THAT falls under? Here's a hint: I flunked algebra twice in high school, and later went to art school.