Deep dives into the issues of our times

Posted on September 20, 2024 by Donna Mitchell-Moniak

One of the few radio stations where I live is an activist, information-based station that is funded only and completely by listeners, KCEI. No corporate, public broadcasting, or other organized sources of funds. The station is decidedly left-of-center, people of the world and Planet oriented, including recording and then airing local town hall forums or Indigenous or historical lectures about this area.

For wide-context on world issues, may I suggest a few podcasted shows or weekly ones?

  • Bioneers.org: any podcast
  • Project Censored.org: any podcast
  • Economic Update with Prof. Richard Wolff: any podcast. Also on YouTube
  • Nuclear Hot Seat: “what are those old boys thinking?!”
  • Ralph Nader Radio Hour: I’m not finding the links I want!
    • last week’s focused on IT being aggressively marketed to school boards and admin, whereas the leading scientists evaluating IT’s results on student reading capacity and learning overall have determined that IT-focused learning provides no improvement – except for particular special needs learners.
    • this week highlighted the Quaker group, Friends, in their decades long international promotion of peace focused on the unfunding of the United Nation Relief Administration (UNRA) almost one full year ago.
  • Alternative Radio:
    • Ilan Pappe: professor, dignitary, author and lecturer on Myths about Israel
    • Noura Ekarat: on International Law, Real or Fiction. Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and a professor of Africana Studies in the Program of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University. She is the author of the award-winning book Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.
  • Letters and Politics: always such an intelligent discussion. Recently, Elan Pape was the guest about his latest book, Lobbying for Zionism, a History.

To obtain the podcasts, you might have to make a donation to the organization. Please do. Keep thorough journalism available.

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Meditation: simple presence 2, gratitude

Posted on September 19, 2024 by Donna Mitchell-Moniak

How one begins a meditation sitting/session sets the tone. It supports the session by orienting the mind, aligning one. We begin with gratitude, then do the simple, yet deep, technique used Tuesday.

https://blazinglight.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/simple-presence-2-gratitude.mp3?_=1

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Meditation: gentle Presence 1

Posted on September 17, 2024 by Donna Mitchell-Moniak

We come back to a simple technique which combines factors that we have used before. The sense of Presence, brought forefront in many ways through our practice, is one aspect or feature of this technique. The heart another. The fresh factor is purposeful non-modification. Letting smooth and unfabricated BE unfabricated.

https://blazinglight.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/gentle-Presence-1-091724.mp3?_=2

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Garden: primal forms

Posted on September 12, 2024 by Donna Mitchell-Moniak

Just like an egg yolk and its albumen.

These tomato seeds display a primordial form which Mother Earth invented and then has used countless times, for myriad and diverse life forms. Clearly, the “egg” is an excellent way to bring forward the next generation.

It has been wondered if early life forms were similar: a primitive center of cognition and sensation floating within a type of egg-sack, itself floating in the first oceans.

In the garden and in Nature around here, several renditions of this design are seen. Chinese Elms (now naturalized to the area) put out millions of circular white paper shapes with a single, tiny black seed at the center. Mountain Spinach, orache, does the same but a hundred or so rather than millions.

When harvesting cucumber seeds, one sees that each single seed in the rows of seeds is caressed in gelatin. As the seeds dry for storage, some of the gelatin is subsumed back into the seed and the rest evaporates. Summer squash and zucchini seeds are similar. Winter squashes and pumpkins, however, don’t look like they have a “sack” of nutrients, yet when the seeds are dried, each has a thin coat of dried film, like dried egg white.

But, as I harvest seeds each season, it is the tomato seeds that make me giggle. Each a perfect egg; their “albumen” the color of the tomato juice and flesh of the tomato.

Once Mother Nature and Mother Earth landed on this design, it was replicated; and to this day, all fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds lay eggs. All insects lay eggs. Plus, for every mammal, including humans, the egg design is used. In all of these cases, the eggs lay infertile until sperm activates gestation. But for plants, the so-called male and female exchange – called pollination – is what creates the seed.

As you garden or stroll in Nature, notice the primordial designs. We are surrounded by such wonders!

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Garden: drum roll … the winners are!

Posted on September 12, 2024 by Donna Mitchell-Moniak

The keepers and will-grow-again-ers from this year’s play in the garden are:

  • Rattlesnake Pole Beans: sweet taste and delicate texture up to five inches long. After that, pickle them or let them go to seed. (which they are doing now)
  • Morris Collard Greens: abundant crop on each plant. Through the season, I must have picked, given away, eaten, and cooked down to preserve at least six pounds from four plants.
  • Hon Tsai Tai and Yukima: Japanese early greens. Can be eaten salad style or stir-fried/sauteed. Pretty yellow flowers for the pollinators as it matures. Easy to gather seeds from both.
  • Container style Cosmos flowers: they got bigger than expected: 18-24 in; but they are beautiful in the vegetable bed.
  • Mexican Marigold: a small plant, 8-9 in. max. Bright orange-gold flowers on foliage that has a full marigold scent. Fun to rub against when weeding and picking. Great for small spaces.
  • Corn: Sweetness from the local Amish: the one ear I have had was absolutely delicious. I ate it raw, it was so good!
  • Yellow Cauliflower: the photo says it all.
  • Di Cico and Belstar Broccoli: just yummy.
  • Tomatoes: in addition to the usuals grown each season, the keepers are: German Red beefsteak (Amish), Yellow pear, Chocolate Cherry, Pole Cherry, Pink Cherry, Pineapple Hawaiian, and Beauty King. For quantity and flavor: the Yellow Pear, Pole Cherry, Pineapple Hawaiian and Beauty King. Often the first season growing a new tomato variety, the size and yield are adequate but not what the seed package or catalog said. However, by using seeds harvested from those fruits, the next season is bountiful. I think the altitude is the issue the first season. The mother plants were grown at more common altitudes. Yet, once seasoned, the second year plants usually excel.

Non-returners

  • Not for altitude: Green Zebra tomato, which grew great at Spirit Fire in Massachusetts
  • Fireworks Peppers: a container or raised bed hot pepper. Many small ones per plant and could be ornamental as well as edible. But, not here.
  • Kyoto-3 cabbage: like Napa in look and flavor, if it would produce an actual cabbage. Altitude again, I think. The leaves of the plant were delicious, gratefuuly.
  • Cranberry Bush Beans: I will grow them next year for dried beans but not as string beans. The pod is almost woody; not very palitable.

Grown each season because they are just soooo good

  • Chard, all colors. Though this season, it was the white-stemmed Fordhook that took off.
  • Japanese cucumber: sweet taste, burpless, and long. This is trellis variety whose shape is similar to an English cuke, though the Japanese has more ridges and is 8-9 in. long rather than 12. My favorite way to eat them, other than plain as a side veggie, is cubed with cubed cherry tomatoes (all colors), some feta, little olive oil, and squeeze of lemon juice. Finely chopped parsley, too, if its in the garden.
  • Purple Bush beans: Beautiful flowers, compact plant, abundant production. Delicious, delicate string bean. Easy to harvest seeds. The trick is to stop picking them and let them go to seed!
  • Kentucky Blue Pole Beans: a classic green bean. Delicious, abundant, and seed pods easily dry on the vines.
  • Tomatoes: Sun Gold Cherry, Bumble Bee Grape, a medium Red probably an Early Girl, Orange Saladette, Cherokee Plum. And usually a Sunset Grande, but this year no bueno. Bummer. The original seed was brought from Massachusetts and has produced bumper crops of palm-sized gloriously colored fruit each year. Not sure why other than that it was an odd season.
  • Yukon Gold Potatoes: I grow potatoes annually from kitchen potatoes that have grown eyes. Always productive. Beautiful flowers, too.
  • Zucchini: Raven is my favorite. Cozelle is second. Round zucchini is fun, too. One has to remember where it’s planted, though, so it isn’t mistaken for a young winter squash and let grow in error.
  • Summer Squash: Gold. Gentle flavor and eye-candy in a saute with other vegetables.
  • Winter Squashes:
    • Kabocha is my hand’s down favorite. Sweet, nutty taste. The skin is edible, so no need to scoop out the meat. Excellent for soups, baked, or steamed. Stores for four months when stored properly. Orange and green varieties.
    • Blue Hubbard: large fruit, nutty taste.
    • Jarradale: like a small blue hubbard in look. Very sweet.
    • Sweet Meat Gray: similar in size to a Jarradale. Sweet and earthy flavor.
    • Sugar Pumpkin: though I grow it seasonally, I find it to be the least versatile from a culinary perspective.
    • Red Kuri: a Japanese variety that didn’t do well this season but that I will try next year again.
    • all of these store well; sugar pumpkin the least long

Diversity is the key! Six to nine varieties of tomatoes, six or so winter squashes, a variety of greens and of lettuces, bush and climbing cucumbers, same for beans. Next year’s experiment will be Fava Beans for early crop and Scarlet Runner Beans on the trellis.

Happy Harvest!

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