While out walking I met ... those who spray

It has been a busier than usual day on the road that runs around the Lake and the Pond near the Ledge in the Woods. VardoForTwo is encamped a few yards from the road that is normally quiet and minimally traversed. Today after a nice tea of cinnamon and peppermint and two toasty slices of Mack's Flax I set off with my pink baseball cap to walk around the Pond. Within minutes the neighbor and his daughter jogged and bicycled past me. Soon after their dog "Babe" a giant of a hound woofed after them, gallumping past me again. Before reaching the bend and climb of the slope on the ridge side of the Pond, daughter on the bike whizzes back, neighbor with "Babe" collared and panting take the road back to the home. Wow, that has already more activity than I'd seen for months. On the flat side of the Pond road I spotted a young couple with two young sheep dogs on leases. The young capped man was talking on his cellphone. That in itself was cause for conversation .... "Your cellphone works here?" "Yeh ...yak, yak, yak...." It turns out his brand of cell makes the connection where all others will not. They were a pleasant couple, and then I read the logo on his green shirt. "You work for H----?" "Yes, that's us we live up there." The young man and his family own the tree farm just a mile or so from the Ledge.

Before the story continues I will tell you this: the Gods give me many opportunities to be of service to the bigger good. Life with multiple chemical sensitivities is one large test tube experiment. As our visitors and readers of VardoForTwo and Sam and Sally have gathered our life has been a journey of discovery, DIASPORA, and education. For 15 years we tried to outrun what we thought was simply an isolated incident with an ill-informed decision or a decision to just keep using/doing something because 'they've always done it.' : planting and maintaing plants that cause me havoc, using herbicides for convenience that disrupt my endocrine and immune system, spraying perfumes on the body, smoking, burning .... and the list has gone on and on. Two years ago when Pete and I arrived in Washington again we committed to building the wee wheelie home we call VardoForTwo. We began blogging to share the experience and make some sense of our lives.

In the process of building and being back in Washington a new phase of our journey took a positive turn. We began to have encounters with people who were WILLING TO BE EDUCATED.

1. We explained my severe sensitivity condition to neighbors in our White Center Wa. neighborhood and met with understanding and cooperation. They signed the Pesticide Registry application and one of them said, "Now you're safe here." Wow!
   
2. One of our neighbors in White Center was burning trash in her fireplace when we arrived last winter. It was making me sick. I filed a burning complete with the Clean Air Department in Seattle and that neighbor thanked me for 'reporting him.' He stopped burning all together, bought electric floor heaters to get through the winter and switched to natural gas. Throughout the nearly one year settle there in White Center Tony began watching from his backyard and then came to visit Pete often as VardoForTwo. When we pulled out in early April, it was his commendation of our efforts and perseverance that made such a difference to us. This was a special man come into our lives to blow on that amber of hope so dim in our hopper.
   
3. We now live with two old friends who began making the changes in their living and cleaning habits so we could share their space, their land and their lives. The commitment is not easy, and yet they continue to make adjustments and together we learn how to live respectfully and gentler on the Whole.
4. Our neighbor across the road has begun to learn how chemicals have and are affecting her health because our our "Anna and Joshua" friends who share their land with us. Anna got an update yesterday on the choices being made across the street. Seems there's one more positive change going on their today...through examples the process become the solution.
   

Perhaps it happens because in our life of having to escape and flee the affects of another's choices we came to the place in the road when we simply had to STOP, PAUSE and become part of the solution. When living in Hawaii, our attempts to make a difference by calling attention to the fact that we were being poisoned by pesticides were met with empty apologies and ineffectual governmental rationalization. There was nothing more we could do at the time ... we left O`ahu two years ago last May. Though there are still huge gaps in the practices and governmental monitoring and control of herbicide use in Washington state (and the nation) we have had positive experiences with face to face education. So if you're still here let me get on with the story of what happend while out walking ...

The question and answer about who these young folks were switched on my awareness: these are the folks who might be spraying herbicide on their trees. I was aware of the tree farm ... I informed them of my chemical sensitivities. They were not aware of The State of Washington Department of Agriculture's Pesticide Registry. They seemed open to learning. I took the lead and asked, "Did you use herbicides?" "Yes, about a month and a half ago." Somewhere within me I stilled the urge to flee or panic. The spraying had already happened. I knew it was possible, probable and now the fact was confirmed. We stood in the middle of the road and continued with this conversation. Unconsciously we stepped apart a bit. I prayed a silence prayer for protection and kept sharing information. The young man is seriously allergic to weeds ... that's why they spray. Oh no! I found enough calm to offer him a solution or at least a potential solution. I offered him the concept of NAET, the allergy elimination technique that has served my well-being in recent years. They were interested. I offered them the information of this blog and the links that may serve him and the bigger good ... Earth's good.

It was too late for them to know that we, seriously sensitive to chemical folks are living in that caravan around the bend: they had already sprayed around the small trees on their farm. There is that risk almost everywhere we live. Could I have prevented that by acting with more due diligence? I could have, didn't and now I was given the opportunity to meet 'those who spray.' Perhaps more than anything I would like to be the NOMADnomad that is not just mad at the world of choices that creates health hell for me and my darlin' Pete. Now that we have built a small world that spokes from VardoForTwo, the possibilities for education grow. We are living examples of what is necessary to live a life of few conveniences, and learn instead to live a life of consciousness. As much as this post is for educating and sharing what it's really like to be Gypsies of a Canary Lineage ... this post is a nod to the young people I met while walking.

I hope the meeting makes a positive difference in your today and tomorrow. We all live with the affects of your choice to spray herbicides and there are other ways to make tomorrow different. (click on the link to go to Beyond Pesticides) I will go into VardoForTwo do a treatment to boost my immune system, clear the energy that is contrary to my well-being and give thanks to the Gods for a chance meeting of those who spray.

Mahalo! Mokihana

What is a Savings Circle PART II

I was inspired to explore the intimate functions of a Saving Circle sometime late in 2008. The life Pete and I are creating seems to beckon to a method of humanizing our relationship with Value, and in the process reinvent our relationship with money. After more than 15 weeks of regular DREAM COMING TRUE Posts here on VardoForTwo, the shift from spending Dream Money to Saving Circle is to me, a natural progression. A tiny home lifestyle could be better served within a community that knows, trusts and values me, Pete, and all we touch.

Here's what I found in my mailbox a couple weeks ago. The following quotes are from the letter I received from Michelle Mungall of the Circle of Habondia Lending Society, in the West Kooteney Region of British Columbia, CA.

Dear friend,

We are writing you to introduce the Circle of Habondia Lending Soceity, to share our vision and to encourage you to invest in the women of your community. Through the sharing of resoures, we envision a society whee abundance is a way of life ...

From the Circle's Organizing Principles

Habondia, the real abundance, is the power
To say yes and to say no, to open
And to close, to take or to leave
And not to be taken by force or law
Or fear or poverty or hunger or need.

I have a long and varied history as an organizer and leader of future visions. As a young woman, I worked with a band of other young women and designed the first Early Childhood Education Programs where the teacher taught from the child's home. Those programs began Head Start's Home Base proto-type, still alive and well today, thirty some years later.

Something in me loves to spark new possibilities, or meld two existing separate pieces into something yet to be. That's how I feel about inciting the belief that Saving Circles are a hands on real solution to my community's sense of value, worth and resources. Pete and I are nearing our initial goal: Build and live in VARDOFORTWO. Each step of the way ... whether moving forward with a successful materials choice and completed wall or a step backward because my sensitive self could not be with a material, we have shared the journey. Blogging offers a level of transparency uncommon in past histories. Storytelling has reached new heights!

The next step: build a community we can support, and a community that will support us. In a few weeks we will hitch the VARDOFORTWO up to a rented flat bed trailer and make our maiden voyage to the foothills of the Olympics. Two friends with eight acres of Earth are willing to let us park VARDOFORTWO, and the four of us will begin growing a community. A whole chapter opens up to us with that next step.

Gathering and sharing the idea and practical steps involved in forming a Saving Circle is one of the things I will be nurturing this year.

"Informal savings clubs have a long history all around the world...But we have had to wait for the Village Savings and Loan Association movement to show how the same basic principles can be used by, and be useful to, poor and very poor people who, because of illiterarcy or isolation or discrimination, never before had a chance to test out the ideas..." -Stuart Rutherford, author of The Poor and Their Money

Definitions of "financial wealth" and "poverty" in countries like America are changing. Our personal story as a pair of old dears who live within a global society where environmental illness must be 'proven' rather than rectified at its source, has been enough to reinvent wealth and poverty for us. The poll we posted last week showed some interest in Saving Circles. I hope you will email us or leave a comment if your interest includes being part of forming a Saving Circle. We live in Washington state, and would welcome hearing from our neighbors interested in this form of Simplicity and Reconnection. We find ourselves at this stage of life more like the village "poor isolated or discriminated against" and yet, that does not turn us into victims of society. We are very conscious of the systems which challenge us. Equally though, we know what our strengths are and what resourceful souls we are. Our journeys (separately and together) define these strengths and our values. This blog is all about transformation. There is room for transformation in the way we support, save and value our resources.

I'll close this week's post with this excerpt from the book Village Savings & Loan Associations Chapter 1 "How the methodology works".

" The basic principle of the VSL system is that members of a self-selected group voluntarily form a VSLA and save money, in the form of shares...
The primary purpose of a VSLA is to provide simple savings and loan facilities in a community that does not have access to formal financial services. Loans can also provide a form of self-insurance to members, supplemented by a social fund that provides small but important grants and interest-free loans to membes in distress...
All transactions should be carried out at meetings in front of all the members of the association, to ensure transparency and accountability. To ensurce that transactions do not take place outside the regular meetings, a lockable cash-box is used, both to prevent unauthorized cash movement and to avoid the risk that records might be tampered with."

Here a link to another view of GROUPS in collaboration, 'Giving Circles.' There are ideas for forming a 'Giving Circle that might incite you to start one of your own, or transform these basic steps into a Savings and Giving Circle in your community.

Timing is divine and the time is now. Cheers, Mokihana