to ask the questions that have no answers, to provide the answers to questions no one asks

Turns out that around this time ELEVEN years ago, I must have been thinking about doing a blog.  I don't even remember now what or how much I even knew about blogs.  I'm pretty sure it was a lot like having children was for me -- I had no expectations.  I wanted to write about what we were doing, what I was thinking about.  And I wanted to show people that a different life IS possible.

Eleven years.  A lot has changed.  A lot hasn't.  There is time, so that my eldest was 12 and is now 23; the youngest was 4 and is now 15.  Just that changes a whole lot.  Life with young children IS different, and should be.  The life of a parent should not just go on as though nothing important has changed -- it has!  And it will always be different.  Life with a household of adults is also quite interesting.

This morning:  one child home from a few days working in town, one child (and a parent driver as she works to get her license) goes in to work a few hours, I -- just off having to get up early several days in a row -- sleep in, boys pick up most animal chores.  Then I get a supper started while one son does laundry and husband works in the wood shop.  You know, everybody does their thing.  But everyone pulls in roughly the same direction.  And help is generally available.

And yes, the corn is tasseling and the hunt is on for the cucumbers.  Weeds are over your head high.   Potatoes seem to have set on well.  There is good grass and some fencing projects are in my mind's eye.  The bull has a little neighbor's field with his cows but still comes up for his creep, and the billy we'd like to not breed the girls to got out of there just now so we need to go investigate.  Supper is on, sweeping needs to happen, unschooly lessons in Japanese and Spanish are planned for tonight.

Time invested with kids is a good thing.  Working to keep a good family dynamic is a good thing.  Farming the soil is a good thing.  Loving your food and your community is a good thing.  Working three years out is a good thing.  Being prepared for change tomorrow is a good thing.  Consuming very little is a good thing.

But I'd take a huge wasteful blowout trip to Disney tomorrow given the opportunity, and I wouldn't apologize for it.  But we'd also come right back and pick right back up and if it were another 20 years before we took another "vacation", we'd all be fine with that since we haven't built a life we need to vacate from every year, or several times a year.  And it is stuff like that that I think needs to be looked at.  It is never "the thing" but always the lie about the thing that is deadly harmful.  It is not the specific thing but the system of exploitation you buy in to that is deadly harmful.

And so the question very often is, what is the lie, what is the system?

What is in that Wendell Berry poem?  "Ask questions that have no answers"

Also, answer the questions that the psychotropically drugged and privileged and overly paid masses will never ask.