Autism Spectrum Disorder and Our Way of Life

We can do better for our children

We’ve all heard the new statistics about autism. 

One in 50 now, and there are no signs of 
improvement on the horizon. But there are things we can do, more than staying away from vaccines. Is it just vaccines that have caused this problem? No, I have to say emphatically, no.

Let me explain why I say this. Our bodies are made up of organisms and systems and cells and chemicals that all must find a way to work together to be healthy. Up until a few decades ago, this wasn’t a big deal. But life gets in the way, sometimes. Think about the last thing you did that you shouldn’t have. Yes, that’s the one. Now think about how your parents or grandparents dealt with that thing you shouldn’t have done. 


What was the straw that broke the camel’s back? With all the puzzle pieces, maybe it will make sense. Maybe you can see the big picture. If your child has ASD, it may be that it was that last straw that caused him to stop communicating. Maybe it was the vaccine, maybe it was the food, the chemicals, the air, the plastics, the mercury in the fish you ate. These are things with which you and your children should not have to deal. But our lifestyles are not the idyllic picture we like to imagine. What caused that last straw? Can you identify it? 

Was it fast food? Grandparents didn’t have that option, or at least not in the way we got it. It’s ubiquitous now, and not just one or two places – you can find 5 or 6 places on the same 4 block area, and even in hospitals (CHILDREN’S HOSPITALS!) you will find fast food outlets. How many calories, sugar, and hydrogenated oils in that fancy coffee? Cut it out. Now. Don’t feed it to your kids. They will thank you. How many generations does it take to get sick? Two or three, if you’re eating poorly. How long to get better? Seven generations. OK, that was for cats, but you get the idea. It is a lot easier to eat well and stay well than burden your offspring. They’re supposed to be around to care for us!

Was it poor sleep? Um hm. I see. Just wanted to finish that movie, or that book, or checking Facebook one more time. Watching that last YouTube video, because that dog was just too cute and you had to share! Or maybe you’re bringing work home from the office, or sewing the button on that shirt that lost one. But when you miss sleep, you have other ways you’re affected that you might not be seeing. For instance, what happens when you wake up tired? Yeah, the cup of coffee at 3pm that you shouldn’t have had that will keep you up late again. Or the candy bar you ate to get you through that meeting. People that scrimp on sleep end up gaining weight. Moms that have kids know that one. Sure, kids need sleep to grow, to keep their bones healthy, to keep their immune systems in good shape. If you don’t ensure they have enough sleep, you may have a piece of the puzzle. 

Was it having that last drink? So there are good things and bad things about alcohol. One of the bad things is that it turns into sugar in the body. The bad kind of sugar. When you have sugar in your body, you grow yeast. When you have yeast in your body, it craves sugar. You see the problem. Don’t do it too often. It’s not just alcohol. Sugar consumed by college students depressed their immune systems for 4 hours after they ate it. If there’s a bug going around, do you really want to be eating sugar? And sugary cough drops when you’re sick? No, don’t think so! So keep that sugar away, especially from your kids. No, it’s not a special treat when they eat it. It’s bad for them, and we need to stop thinking of sugar as a reward. Maybe this is another piece of the puzzle. 

Was it eating poorly? Processed food or restaurant, our food choices are getting us into more trouble than we can handle. I see people every day that can’t handle wheat anymore. It’s so common, I’m surprised there is bread on the shelves at grocery stores anymore. I am not surprised when people tell me how many people in the middle of (and increasingly, across) this country are obese. ‘Fat bombs’ is what one friend calls them. They hit 20 and blow up like balloons. Why? The food we eat has no nutrition in it. It has no fiber, no vitamins, no minerals. Our bodies are starving for nutrition, and we aren’t supplying it from our dead soils anymore. I see ads for food that has no fiber whatsoever, you know the stuff I mean. Pizza with cheese stuffed in the crust, covered with meat. Is it good for you? NO! Are you eating greens? NO? Change your diet! Your parents didn’t eat this way, and neither did your grandparents. It’s gotten progressively worse to the point where our food supplies so little our bodies need that it is amazing we still function, albeit marginally. Don’t accept your child saying he won’t eat his greens. Grow some with him, outside in a pot if need be. He will be so proud he can grow food! Find something to cook together, engage your children in the kitchen. One child with ASD so loved cilantro he’d help his mother make salad every night, munching on the wonderfully detoxing herb as he helped. Maybe this is a piece of the puzzle? 

Was it sitting in front of the TV all night after work? In this country, we do so little for our body’s health and expect so much. This evening I went to the gym, and was stunned. A Friday evening and there were more people there than I’d ever seen in 10 years. I thought about why. People need connections, and not just the Facebook or LinkedIn or Google+ kind. They need to talk to each other and interact. Go out and do things. We’ve become very communicative on our posteriors, and those posteriors are growing. Gastric bypass or the lapband are not the way to go. Your bones will lose the weight instead of your body. If you eat for comfort, when you do these procedures, you’re not dealing with the reason you put food in your mouth in the first place. Once you put the crimp on your stomach, you won’t have the one pleasure you’ve used to cheer yourself up. Don’t go for the quick fix. Fix the whole thing. Go for a walk, find a routine you enjoy. Do it with a friend, your kids, the dog, or plan a routine and stick with it. Wear a pedometer. Just do SOMETHING. Make sure your children see it’s healthy, and it’s a great thing to do. Let this be another piece in the puzzle. 

Was it taking a laxative? If this is the case, you’re in bad shape (literally!). Your gut needs cleaning, and this is so important for your kids, too. They watch you eat, and they follow suit. Don’t give them bad examples. Stand up and be proud! Eat those kale chips. They DO taste good! Get that system moving. When your colon doesn’t process food, as it sits, it ferments and rots. The fluids in this mess are being recycled by your colon, and it dries out the waste and gets hard as it sits there. The fluids are now toxic, and your body has to deal with this stuff. You wouldn’t eat out of the toilet, so don’t let your gut go bad. Start with some fiber, like an apple – it’s got soluble and insoluble fiber. Drink more water, or tea, or something else healthy! Your body needs vitamins and minerals, and if you don’t eat a balanced diet, you won’t be healthy. Neither will your children, so don’t let this be the reason. Another piece of the puzzle?

Osteoporosis has become quite a problem in the last decade, and it looks to get worse. Are you the type of person that really doesn’t like to eat greens? Get over it! They’re necessary, and you must change your outlook. Go to the store and buy some kale. Dry-fry it with some garlic (no Teflon, please) for 5 minutes on high heat and you will be amazed. Chop up some baby kale, drizzle it with olive oil, lemon juice, some pine nuts and feta, a little white balsamic, and poof! Instant lunch. Delicious. And it has fiber! Dehydrate a head of kale (OK, washed in the package is alright) by mixing a tablespoon of peanut butter, the juice of a lemon, a teaspoon or two of miso, and add apple cider vinegar (Bragg’s!) till it’s like salad dressing. Toss them around in a big bowl and if you don’t have a dehydrator, put them on a cookie sheet at the lowest setting your oven has (below 118F keeps it in the live-food range). Check it after an hour or so. When you taste it to see if it’s done, you won’t be able to stop yourself. You are now a chef! 

Start fixing meals ahead of time, maybe on the weekend. Make a big pot of chili with REAL food, stuff that tastes good all by itself, and add greens and zucchini and lots of onions and garlic and beans. Freeze some of it if you need to, but in one-container meals. Three in the family? Freeze enough of this meal for next week. Use a slow cooker, make some soup. Leave it on low while you work. Easy dinner! Roasting a chicken? Throw the carcass in a stock pot for 3 or 4 hours on low and you’ve got stock for the next time you make soup or rice. We need amino acids we can only get from eating a rounded diet. Don’t throw away things your body (and your family) needs. 

Over the past decade, as a society, we have become so much more dependent on ‘time-saving’ inventions so that we can get more work done. Is this a good thing? I think not. If we can go back to doing things that take the time, maybe we would see that all time-saving has done for us is make us tired, fat, and unhappy. 

Some of the children I see with ASD are the sweetest kids. But they have toxins in their little bodies and can’t get them out. Is it just the vaccine? No. It’s also the gut that isn’t digesting, it’s the parent that thinks it’s OK to just let them eat Chuckie Cheese this once, it’s the food that comes straight from the microwave or wrapper. We need to get back to cooking real food and sitting down to real dinners. We need to take our child’s hand and go for a walk and just enjoy being out of doors, without checking the iPhone every few minutes. It’s the flu vaccine that the moms are given while pregnant. It’s the doctor that insists on a C-section for whatever reason (I always say I’ve never heard a doctor admit he did a C-section because it wasn’t needed!). It’s the medicine you’re taking for acid reflux when a change in your diet is all that’s needed. It’s the candy and the garbage we put in our children, thinking it’s normal or a special treat. No, vending machines don’t belong in schools. We need to teach our children about healthy food IN SCHOOL. 

Recently I watched Jamie Oliver on a YouTube series. I was horrified and couldn’t stop watching. The lunch ladies were saying, ‘Let’s see if they eat it.’ WHAT? You teach them about healthy food and they will eat it. They follow what they are taught. They follow what they see their parents doing. This is the first generation that will die younger than their parents. Shame on us. 

How about diet foods? Don’t. 


Aspartame should never have been allowed on the market. It is an excitotoxin and kills brain cells by opening the calcium ion channels and toxins flood the neurons. Once we lose 80 to 90% of them, plan on Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or ALS, or diabetes. Don’t use fake stuff, don’t use MSG. Look at those food labels. Autolyzed yeast extract? That’s a fancy name for MSG. In the 60’s they put MSG in baby food. Did they know better? Yes, but they did it anyway, until Congress was forced to act. Don’t believe these huge agro companies care a smidgeon for your sweet pea. They will sell your grandma poison and make her believe it’s good for her. The word ‘natural?’ Don’t buy anything that says ‘natural’ on the label. It’s pure baloney. And no, don’t eat baloney! 

Make use of your computer to research things like what’s in your shampoo, or your kid’s toothpaste. Go to www.ewg.org and find out what’s in your mascara or new couch. SLS? Bad stuff, found in toothpaste and shampoo, used to wash floors (an industrial detergent!). Doesn’t belong in your child’s mouth. Find out what’s in your food. Find out what’s ON your food. Don’t believe that the restaurant doesn’t use MSG, ASK! Your computer is a wonderful resource when it comes to finding out what’s healthy and what’s not. Share recipes. Share exercise routines. Share inspiring healthy stories! 

We haven’t even talked about GMOs yet. Let’s save that for another time. Too scary. 

What ties all these things together? We’ve been sold a bill of goods by companies looking for a profit. Not just the big screen TVs, the drug companies, and the fast food places. By the companies looking to sell us on saving time, on immediate gratification. We need to get back to basics, and start eating whole foods. That will take some getting used to. But it’s cheaper, and it’s healthier. We need to stop relying on our doctors to give us a pill to make something better. You can improve your health. But you have to work on it. 

You may think I harass my clients into improvement. I don’t make suggestions much of the time. I often let them find their way with supplementing a few things. Suddenly they feel better and after a homeopathic remedy, they start wanting to improve. Often the parents of my ASD kids are wonderful loving parents that do everything possible to keep their child from slipping away. It’s often not something that they had control over. But we need to take control of our health back into our own hands. 

Let’s start planning things. Find out what’s fun in your area – maybe a market or a festival, a street fair or local group meeting you’ve always wanted to join. Take a cooking class with your spouse or your kids. Have someone show you how to really shop for good food. Learn about nutrition. Get the Nutrition Almanac and study what you crave. Maybe you can find why you crave those particular things! 

Start somewhere, start small, but just START.

Are You Using Both Sides of Your Brain?

Finches impatiently waiting to feed

In looking at the science and art of homeopathy, I am struck by the inclusion of both hemispheres of the brain in using this wonderful modality. We listen and look at our clients; we analyze. We read our rubrics, and select which thoughts best convey our conception of the client. We may come to a few remedies that we feel are right, and whether through intuition backed by logic, or logic alone, we dispense a particular essence to our clients. This composition is rife with words that use one part of the brain. The act of typing involves both. Should we go to our software and look at families of remedies, we may take in text, and various icons or images that engage both sides of our brain. Left brain is hunter, killer, logic, analytic, causal, and linear. Right brain is iconic, illogical, intuitive, nurturing, empathetic.

Recently reading a skeptic's post on homeopathy online, it struck me that most of these skeptics are men. Most are young and white. I thought it odd, and talked with a fellow homeopath about his thoughts. He perceived them to be angry young men engaged in some science based career, feeling they didn't quite live up to the solid science academia that would recognize their talents. I got the feeling that they were angry they felt slighted by the scientific world, not being bright enough to make a name for themselves. After thinking on this for a long time, I added a bit more to it. Most homeopaths are women, most skeptics are men. Most women use their right brains, buttressed by their tendency to listen to intuition, and, having children, a nurturing tendency. Most men use their left brain, and tend to prefer science and logic over intuition and nurture. These men went deeper into their left brains, instead of correcting the imbalance. The imbalance comes when one lives solely on one side; when a man becomes too vested in his logical, alphabet-dependent left brain, which favors math and science. This is true with women, as well, when logic flies out the window, and intuition and emotion carry the reasoning away. When one lives too much on one side, perversity and psychosis can develop. Often, though, I find myself telling new mothers in my office to listen to their intuition; nothing brings it out more than a newborn baby. We were told by Dr. Spock to let the baby cry; a male writing a book on something we should have trusted ourselves to know! We are so much in our right-brain after childbirth, there is often that 'lost-my-brain' feeling we often describe as new moms. The left brain (memory, linear thinking) takes a back seat to our right brain (nurturing, intuitive), so desperately needed to raise our young.  How often does the young mother, craving some left-brain stimulation, feel ravenous for some adult conversation? This may be the overworked right brain letting her know there is an imbalance.

What about ridicule, a tool often employed by skeptics?  This is a fear-based, rigid reaction to losing power. The left brain is struggling to maintain power, and the right brain is dormant. The hunter/killer instincts are overdeveloped, and seeking blood. Feeding this need, the skeptic attacks, over and over, unaware of how it must look to onlookers. Looking back through history, we see the overreactions to new thought, new paradigms: witch hunting was the most obvious of these overreactions. Killing women was the largest mass murder in history, a hysteria there was no basis for it. Here were left-brain centered men attacking harmless, innocent women, and often children.

A junko pretends he's a finch

Sometimes, as with homeopathy, we must use both sides; either side will not carry the day. We must use our senses and our logic, our intuition and our analysis, to be successful. I've noticed sometimes, that I have a strong hunch that one remedy will be better than another. When alone, I often do not verbalize or cogitate on the reasoning. When at clinic with another homeopath, I often must. I now see how and why this happens, and realize it is more that I intuit something that has an actual logical thought process; selecting the remedy is often just the most obvious point this occurs.


How often do we use one side of our brain too often? Can you see in your own life where you may become stuck on one hemisphere? Too much book-reading, not enough image, or vice versa? I often feel the need to spin wool into yarn, or knit a few rows, just to center myself. It's often when my left side has become hypertrophied, and my right brain is screaming for attention. This morning I went outside with my tea and book. I sat and watched the finches fighting for room at the feeder. Even with 5 pages left in my book, I could not concentrate, and sat watching the finches till my right brain was happy. 

Taking It Slow

Ecstatic mustard

Sometimes life gives us a message. Sometimes it’s pretty loud. Other times it’s a whisper, a gentle nudge. A hand waving in your face when you’re focused on the distant mountains. We listen or not, we see or don't. We may not have another chance. Is this a bad thing? I don’t know. 

Recently I had a doctor berate me because I hadn’t had some exam that was expected. I got the typical run around about how they can find things 15 years before they become a problem. I responded by saying that it may never become a problem. Why would you want to go to the doctor and check regularly for growths? How many parts of your body are you going to do have checked? I'm not interested. I'm the kind of optimist that will step in a mud puddle expecting it to be shallow. It always has been.

Tomatillos holding seed

You can excise something and take it away, but your body grew it, it came from you. It’s your disease. You can’t hide it, it’s your burden. I say let it go. Maybe it disappears in 5 years. Or wait 15 years. Deal with it. Find out what makes it go away. Awhile back a close family friend said he would never go back to a hospital ever, for anything. I immediately thought, no, you must go, I wouldn’t want to lose you, and neither would your mate. But thinking about that sentiment lately, I realize it was selfish. It’s his call. He must decide what he wants to do with his life, and no one else.

Happy parsley

If you can walk in someone else’s shoes, then you may see. I see now the point he made. Is it really necessary? Do we need to intervene in someone else’s path? What if they find what they are seeking on that road, the joy from the little things in life, instead of the cold hard world of a hospital? This may sound funny coming from a woman that went through IVF many times to have a wonderful, healthy, happy pregnancy and baby. But sometimes we don’t focus on the things we’re doing while we’re living through them. We focus on the goal. I always knew I’d have my baby, and I stayed the course through a lot of pain and sorrow. I’m so happy I did. I can look back and see the grief, but so much more the joy from looking at his face.  

Almost looks like snakeskin.

Having this son, I have had so much more from life, seeing the things we shared. I remember taking him to the health food store before he could talk, and letting him point to what he thought we should buy in the produce section. It was an experiment. I learned about passionfruit, cherimoya, and many other fruits and vegetables I’d never tried. Now I’ve let him go, finding his own way and am confident his childhood was happy and sound. 

 When I look around my garden, and dig my fingers into the dirt, pulling up a carrot, or removing a caterpillar, I feel the life, and love the wholeness. I wander outside and pick a few leaves of sorrel, munching on them as I water the blueberries and blood orange tree on the porch. The blood orange that’s never had a single blossom will bloom when it’s ready. I’m confident I will find the right combination, not allowing the clover or the vetch free reign at its feet, not too much citrus food, just the right amount of water, to make it healthy and productive.

Out for a walk: Luna, Renita, Jane, Rio

There is so much to be thankful for; these wonderful friends, human and animal, the wild and the tame, the life and the death.

Yesterday, Luna, my friends' almost blind and deaf 13 year old dachshund, was around the back of my cabin. When I caught up with her, she had feathers all over her mouth. She'd found a dead bird and made herself a meal. She was so happy.

It's all natural, it's the life we live. We take it or we leave it. So I’ve cut out the coffee, and have done some fasting. Will I flower? We’ll see. We have one life each. Live yours the way you want. Don't let others voices drown yours out. Above all, be happy with your choices.

Placebo Therapy

It's always fascinated me, the way people can take pills and assume they're going to do some good. What happens in the mind, that we trust someone to help us, and not do harm? Part of that answer may lie in the person taking the pills. If you're an optimist, I'll bet you're more likely to think your fellow man has your best interest at heart. If you're a pessimist, you may be suspicious, but depending on your age, you may put that thought aside. I've noticed people over about 70 or 75 tend, generally, to believe everything an MD tells them, and not question their instructions.

Once, my father-in-law, when offered juice, said he couldn't drink OJ. I asked about grapefruit, since I was about to squeeze some fresh. He said his doctor hadn't mentioned grapefruit. Of course, knowing there are meds that have been shown to be less effective with grapefruit, this had me wondering. When I asked him why his doctor told him no OJ, he said (rather curtly) 'I don't know, he just said not to drink OJ.' Acid? Sugar? I couldn't quite figure out the reason for the dietary restriction. As he got more annoyed with me, I asked, 'What about tomato?' He just about fell off his chair, 'I don't know, he didn't SAY tomato, he just said ORANGE juice!!'  The trust was there, no need to ask why. Giving up the responsibility for your health to the doctor was the mantra of his era. Now, I think the public has become a little more wary. We've seen our trust eroded by the machinations of the pharmaceutical industry time and again. This has encouraged us to learn more about our health.

But now more information has come out about placebos. PLoS One researchers gave patients pills and TOLD them there were no active ingredients. They also told them these sugar pills might help their IBS. The pills reduced symptoms and improved quality of life! What happened here? The researcher, at Harvard Medical School, said, "We told participants they didn't have to believe in the placebo effect at all - but they had to take two pills a day." How do we tease out the many psychological influences here, not the least of which is the worse it tastes, the more painful the procedure, the more expensive it is, the more 'effective' it is deemed to be.

The interesting thing here, is that the control group also improved. Part of it may be the therapeutic relationship, which we've always recognized in homeopathy. Telling the story is the start of healing oneself. 

Lies About Length

I know what you’re thinking. This is not how to buy lumber. This is how not to buy lumber.  If you’re a guy, you already know this. You can stop now, unless you want a good laugh. The rest of this tirade is for women who may one day find themselves in the lumber department of a home improvement store.

There is a law that says you must have truth in advertising. These guys have NOT gotten the message. They maybe have and don’t care. It’s just unbelievable no government agency hasn’t confiscated their measuring tapes. They should all be ashamed.

If you went into a yarn store and asked for 6 oz of a yarn, and they handed you a skein that said 6 oz, you can be sure you’d be getting 6 oz. If you went into a fabric store and requested 3 yards or 5 meters of a fabric, you can bet they’d give you what you asked, and possibly a tad more for good measure.

Not so in a lumberyard. Ask for 2x2s (short for 2” x 2” with varying lengths of stick) and they give you anything but. When I first built my cages to cover my vegetable beds, I used whatever was at the store, and went to the joist department to complete the (what I thought was a) good idea I had. When I got to my cabin and started cutting, I realized the joists were for 2x2s, but the wood was only 1 ½” square! What? How did this happen? I must have bought the wrong wood. Well, I would make it work, I didn’t want to drive 45 minutes back to the nearest place to get more wood. My veggies wouldn’t get planted and I wouldn’t have dinner.  Time waits for no veggie. The next day, I got busy.

Reclycling the corners and screws with new wood.

I had to make reinforced corners to fit over my ‘shoebox’ covers. The metal corners were bigger than the wood! If I made the '2x2's larger, I couldn't lift the cages up, they'd weigh a ton. When I tried to fit them together, nothing really worked. The wood was too skinny. And if I used the metal corners the way they were intended, the mice could get in underneath the base. You have to use screws that, together with the metal reinforcements, make the wood sit almost ¼” above the base of the bed. I needed the lip of the cage to be as flat as glass. If you know how little a gap mice can get through, you know what I mean. That just wouldn’t work. The mice would have a field day. I did it anyway. I didn't have time for the little details. 

The old cover in front, new one in back. 

For awhile, the mice enjoyed the bounty of my garden. Mostly it was the baby leaves they ate, and they were reasonable. I couldn't complain. Once I found a dead finch inside. I never did figure that one out. Pretty yellow feathers everywhere. 

You’d think that was the end of the story. But no. That was 3 or 4 years ago, and I needed to replace the covers I’d made. Back to Home Depot I went (Friedman’s was closed) and as I looked up at the signs to figure out which way to Oz, a guy asked if I needed help. “I need redwood 2x2s.” No problem, sucker, just follow me.  While too busy asking why they only had 3’ long pieces, I didn’t really inspect the pieces he loaded into my cart. My beds are 3’x5’ and I needed some 10’ sections too. That was good, I reasoned, I’ll have to make another stop, but I won’t have to make more than a few cuts with my rusty saw. Another stop, and by this time, I don't want any help. I just want the damn wood.  After unloading the wood, I started eyeing the small pieces. It looked rather feeble for 2x2s. I was too busy unloading in the dark, tired and hungry from a long day. 

The next morning, I grabbed my measuring tape, and, WTF? 1 ¼” square. How? How can you call them 2x2s by any stretch? So the lesson is: Don’t believe any measurement a guy gives you for ANYTHING. They exaggerate.

Quail Death

Today while sitting in my favorite chair, reading a suspenseful novel, just at the crescendo of excitement, with my nose buried in the book (Mule - at the heart of harvest season, a book on moving pot!) a loud thud levitated me off my seat by a few inches. Just behind my head, I realized a bird had hit the window. After just having taken down my summer shades, white panels that hang with suction cups, I wasn't ready for such an immediate kamikaze. Normally it's a finch. This was obviously much bigger. I grabbed my Arnica spray from the bathroom and rush out barefoot. There just off the back step, a quail moved a bit, then lay still. I picked her up, her eyes still open. Before I could spray her, her eyes closed, and she died.

Everything I need - and the fateful glass door behind me.

I wasn't ready for this. This was my first casualty. The finches always sat on my open hand for a few moments after a spray, and after fluffing their feathers, and would flit off. She was the size of a softball, round and soft and now dead. Her neck was broken. I didn't need this after yesterday. It was too much. I gently set her down in the only place I saw; a planter at my feet, white and clean and safe. I went back inside, and just sat there, my sadness growing. Normally death and dying doesn't bother me, but I had held this life while it passed, and somehow it made it different. Maybe it was the underlying sadness of losing a friend.

After standing over the planter for awhile, I realized I needed to do something. Normally if I find a dead animal, whether on the road or off, I put it somewhere that is conducive to being returned to the earth. Once my son, at maybe 5 or 6, went to the airport with me. On the lonely road to the airport, there was a dead jackrabbit in the road. We got out and looked at him. There was no blood or apparent injury, so I talked to my son about death, something he didn't understand when his grandmother passed recently. I explained the rabbit's body stayed behind, and it's spirit had gone. I set him carefully off the road, so no other animal would get run over. I thought I did a rather good job of it. One the way back, as we approached the spot we'd found him in, he got agitated, 'Maybe he's alright now!' I realized, he just wasn't ready. Maybe it was because there was no blood. Not on the rabbit, not on my bird.

As I left to walk with my neighbors (a first mushroom forage) a short time later, still contemplating how to care for this dead thing, I wandered out front to look around. There, not 4' from the front door, was a large hole. Not a gopher, probably the ground squirrel that ate all my grapes and grapevines, the calendula and hollyhock flowers. I decided here was a perfect burial spot. I tucked her gently into the hole, and apologized for not marking my windows.  RIP, my soft chubby quail, may your next life be better.

Don't Hide

When did I get so reactionary? I don't know, maybe it was my latest birthday. Taking stock of what I have and what I don't. I am immensely grateful for all my friends. But there is one issue with a friend I feel strongly about, and if you know me, I don't sit still until I've said my piece.

So these aren't people, but you get the general idea.

We all need people. It doesn't matter how long it takes, we all have that 'discharge' when we connect with another - like a capacitor that suddenly lets it all hang out. Skinner did those horrible tests on real kids 50 years ago (including his own daughter, poor thing) and we came to realize that when humans aren't touched or stroked (physically or mentally), they become stunted or blocked. Their higher purpose is thwarted.

You can't just decide not to connect. It's like denying your humanity. If we look at people that are really happy, what is it that makes them this way; is there a common theme with these people? I think there is, it's strong ties to one or more people. Maybe it's not love, maybe it's desire, or hate, or community. It's a connection.

Suppression is the worst way to be unhealthy. Everyone has needs. We don't live isolated in our own little boxes for a reason. To think you can do so is courting trouble; it's denying and punishing yourself.  This is especially true if you have passion. When you have a fire in your soul, it should be allowed to burn, not to be hidden or snuffed out. Opening one's heart is hard, I know. It can cause immense suffering, but also immense joy. Don't hide, come out into the world.