Bob Trausch

Bob turned 65 years old today!
Addie and Chloe remain joined at the hip best friends as they have been for years.

This is an awful photo but at least you can tell there is joy here.
Bob is at the heart for making community work here and in Belize. He is a true jack of all trades and peace maker.

celtic festival

This weekend I went alone to the www.kvmr.org (89.5FM) Celtic Festival in Grass Valley. It was a good thing to do since it allowed me to let go of some of the tensions I’d accumulated and just ease into lots of great music and a world unto itself. Many of my favorite performers were there but these photos are not of them…just photos I enjoy….

this night

I couldn’t sleep. My mind usually doesn’t blink on at night but tonight at 3am it was wanting to remind me about my life 40 years ago and about the people I knew then. I realized I need to start writing stuff down as there are details that are like poofed up islands now as the time/space context of the memories, like the linear way we could remember yesterday if we spent a few minutes recalling it, is gone. Theres just little blasts of stuff and sometimes it doesn’t make much sense. How did I end up there? I don’t know who I’d be writing it down for but community organizing in Newark, NJ and opposing the Vietnam War still looms formative for me but it’s really bathed in shadows because I ordinarily don’t go back into the past. Anyway, it’s been an over stimulating week, ending with the McCain-Obama debate tonight.
This will be the week that was. Hopefully the last truly devilish thing to happen of the Bush administration’s imperial presidency… I just hope the demos don’t cave like they usually do… Power to the People and the Planet!
Sleep is starting to want to reclaim me. What a spectacular way our bodies have of keeping us healthy…the empty space of not needing to be conscious and the dream modulator of our nervous impulses.

Peace.

Mime Troupe and Musical Fest

The musical Hair is 40 years old but the San Francisco Mime Troup is going to be 50 next year! It was so great to hear them tonight doing “Red State” in a benefit for KZFR community radio. The people triumphed over capitalist greed. Yeh!
A good chunk of the last two days was spent at Chico State at the World Music Festival. So fun to dance outside and listen to wonderful music! Unfortunately, after the creek clean-up and first day of dancing I was too stove up to boogie much today. There was also lots of kids projects and puppets. The photo is of the Venezuelan Music Project. Just like in Bluebird, Kansas, we may lose funding for the Festival next year…as our taxes pay for less and less of human need, including the arts.

Creek Clean Up

Last night, after a full week, we went to see Hair. It’s been almost 40 years since I saw it. 40 years since Vietnam, being young and confused and unhinged by the world and our place in it. Michael took a different path than I did. He was a Green Beret and I was a Vista volunteer and demonstrated against the war in New York and Washington at every opportunity. Still, our conclusions about war are of one mind now.
It’s been a hell of a week for tumult in the world and I have the Peace and Justice Show to do on KZFR (www.kzfr.org) this coming Friday (11:30-1pm.) My mind dances among topics and once again, potential guests aren’t calling me back. Will it be a ranting monologue I wonder?
Yesterday we put in broccoli, cabbage, kale, beets, onions and parsley starts and peas. That was part of why I really felt my age when getting up to go from Hair last night and today why I was less spry on the creek banks.
Today was the Chico Creeks Clean Up sponsored by the city and Butte Environmental Center (www.becnet.org) Citizens and students and Conservation Corps… we were all out there. Our beloved Comanche Creek, home to many homeless people, and generally ignored by our fair city, was lined with plastic and the hated Styrofoam. Michael told me he pulled mattresses, tires, a recliner chair, and a shopping cart out of the creek itself. Our most interesting find was over 80 tennis balls bobbing along.
Here are pictures of Comanche Creek and a beautiful old cottonwood and the baby garden….all that is opposite of the ugly and toxic stupidity of garbage in our riparian corridors.

Carson Pass

I’m back at our kitchen table, being dined on by mosquitoes that came in when the door was left open while we were off in the mountains. The dawn is slow in dawning here at the equinox time and I’m in that first slow period before my day starts popping.
I used to work at the Health Dept with these two good women and those were appreciated times that soured and slipped away but back in 1997 we started back packing together once a summer and that tradition has continued despite much change in our work lives and in our bodies. It may not mean anything to anyone but I wanted to chronicle our trips:

1997 Gold Lakes Basin trips to Sardine Lake and Deer Lake under the Sierra Buttes
1998 North side of Lassen around Cinder Cone and to Butte Lake and Snag Lake
1999 Modoc County to Medicine Lake and the Lava Beds and Capt. Jack’s Stronghold
2000 The west branch of the Feather River
2001 Paddled Loon Lake and hiked in the Desolation Wilderness
2002 Canoed the Albion and Big Rivers as well as the cove at Van Damm State Park
2003 Hell Hole Reservoir canoe trip and hike
2004 Deadfall Lakes and summit of Mt. Eddy
2005 Paddled Lake Tahoe into Emerald Bay, hiked Barker Pass on the Tahoe Rim Trail
2006 Hiked Grouse Ridge to Island Lake and out Carr Lake
2007 Hiked the Boulder Lakes in the Scott Mountains of the Trinities
2008 Hiked from Carson Pass into the Mokelumne Wilderness and Frog, Winnemucca, Round Top and to the oh so steep Fourth of July Lake

Being up at 9000 feet it’s dry but the freezing cold lakes are great for shaking it off midday. The plants are mostly dried out and setting seed now and you have a real sense that this is the end of a glorious summer.
Our bodies aren’t used to carrying packs and heavy weight nor rocky steepness but at the end of it I feel great peace with my well earned aches. For me being up there when the full moon was rising and the red sun was setting and we were the fulcrum…that was the highest peak.

Work rant

It seems the thing I want to write about is work and life balance. I worked full time for years to maintain my benefits. It was the only option we had with the county. On Friday we went to the birthday party for my friend Lisa who is a counselor with severely disturbed kids. (Our garden made her the marigold garland that decorates her table.) She is now doing the job that used to be done by three people. She can’t sleep at night. She loves her work and is just extraordinary at it but she’s underpaid, undervalued and driving herself, I feel, into illness, not in a neurotic way, but just because there aren’t enough hours in the week to work full time, commute like she does, and maintain a family and a home. It’s really crazy. I’m doing almost full time and both my jobs are low pressure and yet I’m feeling bad that I don’t have my winter garden in, am missing yoga and meditation and can’t volunteer where I am needed. I do love the stimulation and collegiality of working…I just want better balance, for me, and all the working people of this country. The 40 hour work week just keeps people from being healthy and their family or personal lives from having the kind of nurture and attention that is needed for true sustainability. When you retire it’s usually like you are jumping off with the sense of saving your life.. It doesn’t have to be like that. It’s obvious to me that the present system does not work for the people but we are enslaved to it.
So, here are some good signs. The GRUB people have their winter cruciforms in while Bruce is still harvesting peaches. I got to do a guided meditation for members of the Chico Peace and Justice Center Board. And, tonight, many of us, supporters of the NO on 8 campaign (supporting the right of people to marry who they love,) were treated to a wonderful dinner of middle eastern food prepared by Ali Sasour, Palestinian Unitarian Muslim cook extraordinaire and City Council candidate of our hearts.

Labor Day loop

Happy Labor Day!
Michael has been picking up veggie oil this last month up around Lassen Park and at the county fair. On this trip he got oil in Mt. Shasta, McCloud and in Mineral—about 40 gallons after we burned about 22 gallons on our loop.
We started off in 108 degree heat and ended up above Mt. Shasta. On the way we walked to gorgeous Mossbrae Falls along the tracks in Dunsmuir.
The next day we visited the falls along the McCloud River and camped in the woods. We biked on a trail that extends along the river for many miles, enjoying a dip in this beautiful little pond. Last night we camped on the backside of Mt. Lassen. It was freezing and blowing the powdery dust of late summer all night. Quite a change from when we left. Even when we got home it was still cool and comfortable and a real relief.