Permanent Residency, Sojourn, and (Passover Friendly) Energy Bars for David and Terry, HAWMC #7

I'm such a frugal dork! I'd been recycling the .png from HAWMC on my posts every day, and finally realized that they're day sensitive, so the image on all my posts hitherto says "Day 1." Here's an attempt to show I can do it right:

Today is "free day," which means we get to choose our own prompt. I had a post all ready to go (in my head) and a recipe to share, but then I got some wonderful news yesterday, which takes today's post in a whole different direction. I'll still share the recipe in just a moment...

...but first, I should share that I received a nondescript letter in the mail confirming that the conditions on my Green Card have now been removed, and I am now a "permanent" Permanent Resident, within just three years of eligibility for US Citizenship! Since 9/11, marriage-based Green Cards have carried a two-year probation period, after which you have to apply all over again, with the same exhaustive set of documentation, letters from people who know you, etc, to prove the bona fides of the marriage. A long, slow process, and they asked for yet more evidence even after I sent them so much, but all is well now. My sincerest thanks to all our friends who wrote letters on my behalf.


A change in status from "pending" to "confirmed" is a small transformation of sorts, and it fits with something I've been writing obsessively about recently: the whole concept of crossing from one side to another, of having one's perceptions altered by which side of the glass one stands on, of living a life in many parallel worlds.


One of the most important ways this plays out is in the parallel worlds of wellness and sickness. Of course, I'm not the first to call wellness and sickness parallel worlds--Susan Sontag and Virginia Woolf both do so. But it's interesting to me that at times in the past decade I have resisted getting medical help because of fear that my status as a sojourner in the world of the sick might make me less attractive as an "American," might somehow jeopardize my presence in the country. Ironically, looking back, as long as I flew under the medical radar, I was also somehow under the radar in terms of full-fledged participation in mainstream society, although my volunteerism has always been exemplary.


At this point, as I become sanctioned as a permanent resident, I'd say I'm contributing fully, if unconventionally, to the mainstream society. I teach college, and do other freelance work. I'm in an MFA program. I'm active in my local writing community and other communities. And in order to be able to imagine doing any of this, I see a Naturopath and a therapist, I take medications, I admit to some scary diagnoses. In order to have both my feet in the world of mainstream American society, I have to acknowledge that I have one foot in the world of the well and one foot in the world of the sick.


Given the "good orderly direction" with which this Permanent Residency has been accepted, I have to accept that I'm grateful--for all of it, even the sick parts.


OK, here's the RECIPE--you can stop scrolling now!
I make energy bars for Phil on a regular basis. He loves this one recipe that consists of peanut butter and honey boiled together, with oats, protein powder, nuts and dried fruit stirred in, and many of his friends are hooked on it too. But I love variety, so occasionally I try out a different recipe. This one I adapted from the Beyond the Peel blog. I made changes so that Phil would love it better. But creature of habit that he is, Phil didn't love them, and both he and a friend of his who love the bars I usually make said that these tasted more decadent and so they couldn't eat as many. The truth is, these are much "healthier" than the regular bars, so perhaps they're more satiating! However, two other friends, Terry (who's visiting for the weekend) and David, adored these bars.


I'm sharing my version of Beyond the Peel's beautiful Chocolate Banana Power Bars for Terry and David. These bars are gluten and grain free with no leavening, perfect for Passover (although I'm the only Jew around here!) They can easily be vegan and dairy free too.


Ingredients
1/2 cup hazelnuts, processed to a meal in food processor, set aside
1/2 cup prunes, pitted
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 ripe banana
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup chocolate flavored protein powder of choice
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
1/4 cup honey (or coconut nectar, agave, maple)

3 T chia meal (or flax meal)

100g dark chocolate + 1 T palm shortening (or other non-hydrogenated shortening--keeps the chocolate shiny), melted


How-to
Preheat oven to 350, grease a 9x9 pan.
Whiz prunes, pb, banana in the food processor until well incorporated.
Add the flours and protein powder, process; add the honey or syrup and melted coconut oil, process; add the chia meal, process
The texture will be thick and sticky.
Scoop the batter into your prepared pan, and smooth it down flat with your hand or a spatula, making it level.


Bake for around 20 minutes--this is just to firm them up, so the timing is not sensitive.
Let the bars cool in the fridge or freezer before covering with the melted chocolate.
I find it helpful to slice into sixteen bars before the chocolate firms up.
Aren't they pretty?

Happy Holidays! I'll be back with a conversational post tomorrow.

HAWMC #6 Health-Related Haiku Day

Not surprisingly,

this prompt annoyed me slightly.

Haiku's so much more

than five, seven, five,

repeat ad lib, any theme,

counting syllables.

OK, now I've gotten that off my chest, let's see if I can play nice! The five-seven-five syllabic structure is not an obsessive rule in traditional haiku. What's more important is that there should be some sense of grounding in a specific season, including a specific "kigo" word that symbolizes or represents a season. 

Yesterday, I enjoyed using ekphrasis to muse about health, although I'd never done so before. Since health is closely tied to seasons for many of us--since, in fact, many of our health conditions feel like seasonal fluctuations manifesting in our bodies and psyches, let's see how much fun we can have with haiku!

The other symbolic piece I want to weave in today is the concept of persistence and resurrection in dirt. I recently repotted this aloe plant with dirt Phil grubbed up from under the house where it wasn't quite so frozen. In the warmth of the cabin, from that dirt sprouted a horsetail! You can see it to the left of the pot in the photo.

This plant, equisetum arvensis, renowned in superfoods circles as a great source of silica, is a grass from the age of the dinosaurs and is the most pernicious weed for gardeners in this area. It's a plant-fungus symbiote, with underground networks that can spread 30 feet in a year. You can break it into pieces and every node will grow. It feels like it's made of toughened glass.

Let Spring warm your dirt.

Plan your chosen cultivations.

See what weeds grow.

Seeds brood inert ~(in earth)

What might I allow to sprout

When I declare Spring?

Life--from dust to dust

Year--journey from seed to seed

Each death, a new life.

If my body fails

Let it fall and mix with earth

live on in new form.

If my mind should fail

Let it fall into my body

ground from which to rise.

I'm going to leave it there for today and see if I can get my work done, prepare for a weekend guest and continue to avoid succumbing to Phil's 'flu! I'm so grateful not to be worse afflicted, but I am working at about half my usual speed, which is difficult for me... Back tomorrow with at least one recipe.

YOUR health haikus?? I'd love to hear them.

HAWMC--Ekphrasis; Inspiration from Steve Almond, Connecting Joanna, and A Recipe

For today's HAWMC prompt, we're asked to go to http://www.flickr.com/explore, which displays a random image, and to write about that image, connecting it with our health focus. As a student of literature, especially ancient and medieval literature, I've thought a lot about the concept of ekphrasis, which is creative writing in response to works of art. I've written papers comparing passages from epic poems of different eras that do so, and even written some ekphrases myself. However, I haven't thought about ekphrasis in the connection of health writing before, so this should be interesting.


Before I get to that, I want to say two sentences about an inspiring craft talk in town last night, and relay a message for a friend. And after the ekphrasis talk, a recipe!


Steve Almond gave an inspiring talk at the college last night, titled "Funny is the New Deep,"in which he showed that the comic impulse is a deep-seated survival mechanism allowing us to deal with all that is humiliating, painful, tragic, or unbearable in life. He had some very important things to say about dragging your audience with you into your "dark corner" rather than "trying to be funny" in order to please the audience and flatter yourself, and drew a crucial distinction between writing and merely masturbating--yes, profane language was part of the toolkit! That was two sentences. One more thing: I appreciated that he had standardly published books, but also a selection of little self-published books, with the intent of returning to the model of personal connection between author and recipient. Awesome.


My friend Joanna Steven recently moved to Portland and is looking for likeminded people, especially parents of young children, with whom to connect. Here's what she wants you to know:

Raw Food Potluck & Playgroup in SW Portland (Oregon)!

Do you believe in the higher nutritional content of raw, unheated, unpasteurized foods, as well as sprouted foods? Do you enjoy eating sprouted seeds and nuts, sea vegetables, fruits, vegetables, and for some of us raw dairy? Do you get excited at the idea of juicing, blending green smoothies, and more? And most importantly, do you long to connect with like-minded families so our children can play together while enjoying nutritious raw snacks?

If so, this group is for you! Please join us in SW Portland so our children (from very small ones to 3 years of age) can play together in the backyard and parks when the weather allows it, or indoors. And we can chat together about our new health related findings, or anything we feel like talking about, make flax crackers, green smoothies, eat raw cakes and other goodies.

Please note: Open-mindedness is required to belong to this group. I don't expect every family to feed their children a diet identical to another family's diet. Still, we must have a few things in common! We believe that:
- Some of the most nutrient dense foods are raw and unheated
- We try our best to feed our children nutrient dense foods.
- If a food is not nutrient dense and is fed to the child, this dramatically lowers the child's chances of getting enough nutrition that day because the stomach is filled up with non nutritious foods.
- We try our best to eat organic, sustainable foods.

If you are interested in joining us, please go to our Meetup page. We hope to see you! 


Good luck, Joanna, and here's to many good connections.


Now, for the picture I'm going to write about:

This photo is titled Blossom Expectation and the photographer is Vangelis Bagiatis--a Greek, so I feel closer already! Right now, I'm taking all the apotropaics I can think of to avoid succumbing to the 'flu that prostrated Phil for two weeks (he's just now starting to get up, eat, etc, again), and I'm on my third day of sore throat/runny nose/sneezes. So right now, these expectant blossoms remind me of nothing so much as the expectant accumulation in my nasal passages building up to a sneeze. I hold my breath, pant a little--soon, soon--and am rewarded with the blossom of a sneeze. But of course, they also make me think of Anais Nin, and her eternal lines "And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk to blossom." There's something joyful about coming into bloom, about the exuberant return of green to the northern landscape after a hard winter, about becoming functional again after sojourning in the world of the sick for a while. 
However, it's also scary. The inertia of winter and sickness becomes part of an identity--will the expectant blossom, furled tight, recognize itself with the winds blowing on it and the bees tugging at its petals? Will a recovering person be able to go out in the world again and knock elbows with all the people out there who have no idea of what she's been through and will treat her just as they treat anyone they encounter? Auden was skeptical that there's anything volitional about the process of coming into blossom--"perhaps the roses really want to grow," he says, a little sarcastically. But when we take the metaphor and apply it to people--such an apt metaphor as it is--not all people want to grow all the time. It takes courage. It takes willingness to look to the future. And sometimes, it takes a little push from the "beyond," to which we're more open when we pay attention to metaphor.


Recipe Time--Artichoke-kissed Quinoa
Every Wednesday evening, we have dinner with Phil's daughter. I usually make a salad, some sort of veggie, and a gluten free dessert for her. I'm not much for dinner or dessert, so I usually make the dessert gf but not vegan so that I don't have to eat it. Last night, I didn't go to the dinner because I was at Steve Almond's talk, but I did make some goodies worth sharing. I appreciate these evening writing events as a nice opportunity simply to skip dinner, and I have some tricks to make that even easier that I might share sometime.


The salad was super-simple and beautiful, featuring green-leaf lettuce from Full Circle Farm, tomatoes, avocado, and half a red grapefruit also from Full Circle Farm. Some minced dill. A drizzle of balsamic vinegar over it--light and lovely!

I also decided to make a quinoa dish. We love to use all parts of whatever food we buy, and when my friend Jeanie made a quinoa dish one time using the liquid from a jar of artichoke hearts, and Phil, who's not usually a quinoa fan, loved it, I knew that I'd have to do that at some point! Since I wasn't going to be there last night, and I'm not a fan of the artichoke hearts or the liquid, it seemed a perfect opportunity.

The quinoa was cooked in the artichoke liquid (with a few artichoke tendrils remaining also) and gently sauteed Full Circle Farm veggies went in there too. This is a very simple, adaptable recipe, and comes together quickly.

1 cup quinoa, well rinsed
2 1/2 cups artichoke liquid (if there isn't enough in the jar, rinse the jar with water and use the rinse water) NB--veggie broth or plain water would work fine here too
1 teaspoon coconut oil (optional)
1/4 medium onion, chopped
1 small carrot, chopped
1 small zucchini, cut into half moons
4 medium mushrooms, chopped
1/3 cup slivered almonds
salt and pepper to taste


Cook the quinoa in the artichoke liquid. Keep the lid on for the first 20 minutes and then remove it to let excess water evaporate. 
Around the time you remove the lid, saute the onions and carrots in the coconut oil (or in a drop of water). 
Set aside, then saute the zucchini, and then the mushrooms. You could probably do these all together, but I had a tiny pan to work with, hence the serial processing!
When the excess liquid has evaporated, gently stir the veggies into the quinoa, together with the slivered almonds (save a few for topping, if you like). 
Test for taste and add salt and pepper as needed. The artichoke liquid is pretty flavorful and has herbs and spices too, so the mix should be pretty well seasoned from the get-go.


This was well enjoyed. It would be good with any combination of veggies--try bell peppers and corn, or broccoli and peas--or whatever your favorite veggies are!


Oh, and for dessert I made my version of Lori's version of Bodyrocked Banana Bread, which is very popular with Amy! Thanks again, Lori!

Signing off here--what would YOU say about that photo?

HAWMC #4: Why I Write About Health; Dichotic Listening

Today's prompt is to free write for fifteen minutes on why I write about health.
First of all, I want you to try an experiment. This is something I'm having my Linguistics class do next week as part of our Psycholinguistics unit. Bear with me--I'll explain why this is relevant in a moment, and it's really interesting.
Go to this site: http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schuh/lx001/Dichotic/dichotic.html and get yourself a pair of stereo headphones. Click to play the test. Ten pairs of words will be played, one word into each ear. For each, you should type in the numbered box what word you hear. When you've done all ten, you can click through to see what the pairs of words were. Why are you doing this? Because our brain/body wiring is contralateral, which means that stimuli on the left side of the body (including the head and ears) get processed on the right side of the brain, and vice versa. For most people, the areas responsible for language processing are located in the left hemisphere of the brain, so most people will hear the word played into their right ear, because stimuli to the right ear are processed directly in the left hemisphere, whereas stimuli to the left ear will go to the right hemisphere, and then need to be sent to the language areas in the left hemisphere for processing--slower than the right ear's direct path.


That's the theory. Now, why am I talking about this and what does it have to do with writing about health? Well, as I shared a month or two ago, I'm left-handed, but have some hearing loss in my left ear. I can never tell where a sound is coming from: it always sounds like it's on the right! So I thought that I wouldn't be a good tester for brain hemispheres because inevitably I'd only hear the word in the right ear. Well, I took the test. It turned out I slightly misheard some words, but that every single word I wrote down was (sometimes a slightly misheard version of) the input to the left ear! In other words, even with a hearing impairment, I still process linguistic input more quickly from the left side than from the right, which indicates that unlike 90% of the population, my language centers are in the Right hemisphere of my brain!


This is why I write about health. Not because my left brain (that everyone needs to get out of, supposedly) is actually my right brain, but because of the unexpected pieces we learn about ourselves, about how our bodies and brains work, if we're constantly engaged and interested in understanding it better. The fact that even a hearing-impaired ear still hears language and sends it to the brain gives me hope that no matter how damaged we are, we can still find ways to make the most important connections.


A dear friend recently said to me that creating art from pain is one of the noblest things a person can do. I love this, as there's definitely a debate within creative writing about how much the writer's personal experience should impinge upon the art of their work. The best art shouldn't be just therapeutic catharsis or woe-is-me breast-beating: it should integrate into the world in a way others can relate to. I have my secrets, like anyone, but I tend to be a very open person--throughout my adult life, various friends have commented that I'm sort of childlike in my willingness to discuss anything and everything.


When it comes to serious health challenges and diagnoses that carry potential stigma, I've been more cautious about "revealing all." However, many of my poems of late have dealt with those issues, including the poem that recently won a prize. The fact that poem had success validates for me that writing about health and health challenges in an artistic way can be a valuable form of art to make. The fact that poem may have inspired someone else in my writers' group to write about her mother's similar issues is even more important. I'm also working on an essay that's more directly dealing with specifics of health challenges, stigma-bearing diagnoses, and the process of coming to terms with them. I've found myself shy of reading the more "personal" aspects at my writers' groups, and yet I am compelled to write the essay, so at some point I'll have to read it aloud too. 


I am compelled to write it, in part, because I have some hope that it may help someone else at some point. I should also acknowledge my dad (whose birthday it is today) for a role in why I write about health. When I was almost dead, at my lowest weight, I went back and stayed with my parents for a few weeks. He said to me at one point, "If you survive this, you will have so much experience and wisdom with which to help other people." I don't know about the "wisdom" part, but I definitely have experience! And the best way I know of to help other people is through my writing.

Why do YOU write about health?

What? You're Saying I DON'T Have a Superpower? Prompt 3, Three Ways

Today's HAWMC prompt asks, "If you had a superpower, what would it be, and how would you use it?" 
Ooh, that's a ticklish one for me! You see, I believe I do have a superpower. On the other hand, not everyone agrees with me that I have it, and one of my DSM-IV "marks-of-the-beast" is a tendency to grandiose thinking. So, today I'll share the superpower I believe I do have, a different superpower about which I've been working on in a poem, and an ideal superpower that I wish I might have.


My Superpower--I barely need fuel!
My superpower is that I can survive and thrive on a fraction the amount of food most people need. This has pretty much always been true of me. Last year, as I shared on here, I was on various "eat more" diet kicks in an attempt to boot my thyroid into normal range, and there's one other time in my life I've done something similar. It made me feel icky and put a few extra pounds on me. When my thyroid had to be increased back in November, I said "Hell with that," and went back to eating only what felt necessary. At some point, I totaled up what I was eating, and let's just say it was less than half what's considered normal--and felt like a lot to me. I felt better in my tummy, and started to recognize myself in the mirror again.


Being allergic to lots of things, it's really handy not to need to eat much--it means that if a tired lettuce salad is really all that's available when I'm eating out, I'm fine with it, and if I go to someone's home and they're not able to provide something I can eat, it's no big deal, and I don't feel like I have to inconvenience them.


As a plant-based eater and former locavore, I often worry about food supply and abundance, in fellowship with the kneeling moose, my fellow herbivores, who've had such a hard winter here. I'm so grateful that we're able to import food up here, but I have fear about supplies running out. If I need only a minimum, then if it came down to only wild forage being available, I'd be ok!


Superpower fueled by superfoods--there's not a whole lot of calories in a spirulina-snow smoothie, even with an apple on the side. Keeps me going all afternoon, spirulina is awesome! 

For the last few weeks, I've cut what I was eating in (less than) half, just to see if my superpower extended to that level of minimalism. At this point, the jury's out. Most of the time, I feel great, but I've let go of quite a few pounds--too many, in some people's opinion, and on days when I'm more active than my 45 minutes/day exercise baseline I've felt a bit underpowered.  So, that's my bona fide superpower.


Superpower in a Poem
I've been working fairly intensively lately on a poem I had been slowly working on for months--a big poem, a sonnet crown. It's about being a chef who has the ability to discern exactly what every diner loves to eat, and to make it for them, and who can also make "a dish dissolving difference"--accommodate many differing palates around a single table. People from my last year's RWW residency workshop will recognize the germ of that.


If I Could Choose a Superpower--Words and Herbs
The chef poem is somewhat metaphorical, of course, and it points at a superpower that I would love to have. I would love to be able to produce the right poem, the right words, for every person, every occasion, every group of people--to have the discernment and "in the moment-ness" to know exactly what every situation and person needs in terms of word-nourishment. I'd also love to have the same intuition around herbs and which one is apt for whom. I feel lucky with my cicada-esque appetite and small needs--that's a superpower gift. But this superpower, of knowing how to heal the world with poetry, is one I aspire to, and will do everything I can to work toward. 

What superpowers do you have, or wish you had?

HAWMC #2: Words that Inspire

Here's our front yard this morning--a light dusting of overnight snow after all that melting!

It tuns out that's a perfect image for my chosen quotation for day 2 of the Health Activist Writers' Month Challenge. We're asked to find a quote that inspires, either positively or negatively, and to write about it. There will be no surprise when I say that inspirational writing is a cornerstone of my life as a poet and writer. I read words that inspire in some way on a daily basis; I aspire to write such words and juxtapositions of words. I put inspiring words in my time capsule yesterday. So, how to choose just one quotation? (I dislike the truncation "quote," btw, which is why I use the trisyllabic form.) I decided to choose a quotation with which I have some history--something that has inspired me for many years. This final tercet from Rumi's "The Sunrise Ruby" (translated by Coleman Barks) was my email signature ten years ago:

"Keep knocking, and the joy inside

will eventually open a window

and look out to see who's there."

I'll start with why I love these three lines so much, and then put them in the context of what goes before. These three lines are so inspiring to me because they take the concept of persistency in goal-setting and in working toward a goal, and link it with the joy inside--of ourselves! Many goal-setting strategies and exercises focus on effort and even pain, and focus on the idea of attaining something that is outside of ourselves at this time. Even strategies like "imagine yourself at your goal weight," "picture yourself in your dream house," etc, that prompt your subconscious to actualize your goal's realization, are predicated on the assumption that your goal is not a current fact. This quotation emphasizes persistence--discipline, even, as we'll see when we look at it in context. But whether we interpret "inside" as meaning "inside of ourselves" or as meaning "on the other side of the door on which we're knocking that is separate from us," the focus is on joy--intrinsic, internal, welcoming joy.


Our ground glazed with fresh snow this morning is the perfect image for this quotation, as spring "keeps knocking;" there's another late snowfall, and gradually, gradually, the green starts to emerge, persistent and inexorable.


If I'm asked what I believe, I'll say I believe love makes the world go round and bliss is our natural state. But if you look at my behaviors, I realize that very often they don't bear out those beliefs. I work hard--and derive fulfillment from it, but in a taut state. I find it hard to unplug or "do nothing." I'm not sensual, except when I write poetry. My enjoyment in physical areas like touch/sex and taste is all transmuted into giving pleasure rather than experiencing it directly. 


However, I believe that work and joy need not be incompatible. I never agreed with friends who "got a job they hated so they could do everything else they wanted to do:" I sincerely believe that there's a job for everyone that uses their skills for the best and gives them the most pleasure. So, here are the two tercets preceding the one I quoted:

Work. Keep digging your well.

Don't think about getting off from work.

Water is there somewhere.

Submit to a daily practice.

Your loyalty to that 

is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside

will eventually open a window

and look out to see who's there.

He's not saying it's easy! He is saying that not only must your desire be absolute; you must instantiate that desire on a daily basis in your life, and it is linked to joy. I don't need life to be easy, but if I believe bliss is our natural state and love makes the world go round, how might I incorporate that into my daily life? It's a good question to ponder.  "Submit to a daily practice," as an expression of intention toward joy, is also a good reminder for me as I struggle to be compliant on taking medications that allow me to be my best. 


How do YOU respond to this quotation?

HAWMC #1: The Time Capsule

Welcome to April--the only fools around here are the March (snowshoe) hares still sporting their winter coats as the snow rapidly recedes.


Welcome to day one of 30 Days of Posts as part of the Health Activist Writer's Month Challenge. Each day, a new prompt. I'll respond to it, and I'd love to hear your responses in the comments too.

Day 1: What represents health and consciousness of wellbeing to you? If you were to prepare a time capsule epitomizing the answer, to be opened in a hundred years from now, what would you put in it?


#1 A bag of seeds and roots of medicinal plants. The seeds would most likely still be viable a century from now, and would bring abundance to whatever will be there. I would include nettles, mint, holy basil, rhodiola, turmeric, aloe vera, parsley, goldenseal, echinacea...
I love our little indoor garden--aloe, mint, and that magical turmeric root still going great guns...and I would want to share that potential with whomever opened my time capsule

#2 Books! Of course, books. I would include poetry that's uplifting to the soul, by poets like Rumi, Hafiz, Tagore, William Blake, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jane Hirshfield, William Stafford.
I would also include both the DSM-IV and the Merck Manual, and the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine. Why? Because my recent experience has been that accurate diagnosis can be a very important step in understanding how to manage oneself, and because I believe that the kinds of diseases exhibited in each time period, and the ways that we talk about them, are very telling of the values and conditions of the broader culture.
I'd also put in a good book on Permaculture, and several books on identifying edible or medicinal plants and seaweeds.


#3 Exercise and exploration--If I could fit my beloved rebounder in a time capsule, I'd put it in--a wonderful friend for anyone. But failing that, I'd put in a jump rope--hey, rope is always useful! And a compass and a magnifying glass, and perhaps some maps--incitements to hit the trail. It's not just that exercise is beneficial; it's also a way of getting grounded. As our snow recedes, we're getting ever-closer to the ground--look how our bluff-edge raised bed got revealed just in the past day or so that had a foot of snow on it last week!

#4 Reflection and connection--If our focus is on health and healing, we need to be able to see ourselves. In order to see ourselves, we need reflection from others too. So, I'd include a mirror, but on the back of the mirror would be a reminder that no self is separate from others. As well as a mirror, I'd include several crystals or rocks that encourage deeper reflection as you look into their semi-opaque surfaces. I'd also include a candle and some matches, and a reminder to look at the sun through lidded eyes, or stare at the candle flame. I would brainstorm other ways to emphasize the point that none of us are separate too--more quotes, perhaps a two-person saw or other piece of equipment requiring collaboration.


#5 Recipes and preparations--I'd include many recipes, both for foods and for medicinal preparations, that I've found to be healing or tonic. I'd also cram my Vita-Mix in there, and a couple good sharp knives and a sharpener. And a starter bundle of my favorites spices and superfoods, including spirulina, maca, turmeric powder.

#6 Writing--I'd include several blank journals and pens, as well as a carefully produced book of prompts to get whomever opens the capsule started.


Well, that's my time capsule, although there's no guarantee I won't come back and add more!

What would YOU put in a health-oriented time capsule?