If I believed in fate or god, I would perhaps have thought that the presence of the book in the store was intentional. While searching for a Coke Zero, my one caffeinated beverage that I allow myself each day, to quench my thirst, I walked through a short isle of books that the little stand in the airport sold. A bread book mentioned on one of the blogs that I read stood out, and I picked it up in delighted fascination that I should trip over such a thing in such a random way. I flipped through it, but put it back down knowing that I wouldn't try even a tenth of the recipes. However as I placed the book in its place another book jumped out at me. It's called A People's Ecology by Gregory Cajete. A book on sustainable agriculture, my newfound interest! This was definitely one for the taking. I purchased my Coke and the book and began reading as soon as I had to cut my computer off to get on my plane.

Generally, as I flip through books I tend to dog ear pages that have words of wisdom, or points that I want to recall. By the hundredth page I must have almost a dozen such earmarks. Incredible similarities with the story of Taker culture as described in by Quinn in his novels jumped out in the story of how these Indigenous populations were put under plow and then later turned into wage slaves. Jumping out was my belief that an integrated life, food and nature process is the right way to achieve balance, not by trying to recreate physical exertion, proper diet and work/life balance through segmentation of ones life. In fact, to combat the degradation in health among these people who have adopted the western lifestyle of highly processed foods and cognitive dissonance, programs are created to encourage exercise, healthy eating but not address the cognitive dissonance directly. Ironically, in their original cultural state there was no need for such programs. Exercise and healthy eating weren't something that need to be ingrained artificially, it was completely integrated into their culture; a culture that was systemically destroyed and forgotten in the name of progress.

Sad to say, this will be a short post (getting too late over here!) but I HAVE to share this with someone.

All right -- I posted the White Road a while back and I've been considering a legend of 4 groups of people set off in four different directions. I know it's a metaphor (probably) but it gives me a way to break down the world and re-arrange it into different patterns. And then I come upon this in the recesses of my brain (yea brain!).

On September 9th my daughers and I went to a Pow Wow held in Lincoln. Unfortunatly, we weren't able to attend until the very end. When we arrived, an elder was acknowleging all of the people who participated in the event. Iris, being as social as she is, immediatly made friends with a boy her age and they ran around playing tag and such running in and out to tipis.