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I Discover an actual HOLE in my MEMORY! PLUS, RIP WENDELL BERRY

September 1, 2026

And this time I have proof, evidence! It’s not just that everything seems to swim around inside my brain, but there are actual holes in my memory! For example . . .

FLEA TRAPS

For the last few months I’ve been dealing with fleas inside the house. Both dog and cat are indoor/outdoor, so no wonder. Plus, both dog and cat are supposedly protected from fleas and ticks due to expensive flea collar (just put on a second one this year on Scampi) and other monthly, expensive poisons squeezed onto the backs of their necks. Yuck!

Plus, Marita keeps the grass mowed outside, and sprays an essential oil mix on that area weekly.

This problem is nothing new. I always deal with fleas during hot humid Indiana summers. But for some strange reason, this year I completely forgot the most important remedy of all. FLEA TRAPS!

Instead, I’ve been vacuuming, the entire house, daily. That takes a full hour each time, including underneath couch cushions, etc., plus washing blankets on couch and my own sitting chair over and over and over again. Plus constantly puffing way too much diotomaceous earth everywhere. Plus combing through Scampi’s hair twice a day. . . Usually find five to seven fleas . . .

An endless Sisyphusian task. And what’s really weird. I wondered why do I have so many fleas this year? Why do these little critters dominate my day no matter what I do?

Then yesterday, I suddenly remembered the flea traps. Seven of them altogether, one per room, two for living room. I’ve been using flea traps each summer forever!

Is this significant memory hole just to be expected as I age? I wonder.

So I got the stored flea traps out, and brought them upstairs. seven in all. Put new sticky mats in each one, made sure each light worked, and set them into dark corners of various rooms. A big plus: I didn’t even have to go to the hardware to get either lights or sticky mats; I had extras here of both. (That’s a first. Usually, I have to do this also, in prep.) So thank you, Ann. For your forward thinking attitude at the end of last summer!

Which reminds me: Wendell Berry, who passed yesterday at 92, was a hero and model for all of us who see our purpose helping to regenerate this beautiful Earth, beginning where we live, right here, right now, at home, place-based. For me, that’s right here in Green Acres Permaculture Village. Thank you Wendell, for the far-reaching, revisionary template you created. You left New York for Kentucky in the 1960s, to move back to the place that birthed generations of Berrys, and in so doing, helped birth the “back to the land” movement, as well as may other hippie values, including, at least for me, an old hippie, this way of putting it into words:  “Money is a mere scrim upon Nature.”

Kentucky writer, farmer and advocate Wendell Berry dies at 92

I find it interesting that he passed only slightly more than two months after Trump signed the regenerative agriculture bill.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/advancing-regenerative-agriculture-and-strengthening-american-farm-resilience/

 

 

 

Mitakuye Oyasin! I find that even my snarky ego can be forgiven. . .

August 31, 2026

Yesterday, during an official neighborhood meeting hosted at my house, I noticed myself being snarky, with snide comments on others, who were not present. I noticed this, not as I was doing it, but within a few seconds, due to those present immediately countering, even flooding, the atmosphere with non-snarky responses.

 Thank goodness for other people!

Thank goodness that “all my relations” includes not just the natural world but fellow humans too!

Mitakuye Oyasin!

 

I have a sense that most of us see this Lakota phrase as helpful for us to feel our interconnectedness, our “interbeing,” with all more or less fleeting forces within the ever flowing web of life; every creature or any size or temperament, every structure and process in this mysterious multiverse. I’ve long identified with this phrase, and find Nature herself deeply welcoming.

But other people! That’s where I fall short.

Very short.

Even so, I realize that the only way I learn about myself is through relations with others. And am eternally grateful for the mirrors they provide.

I see the origins of what seems to be my lifelong tendency to snarkiness as stemming from my Libran mother. Not that she’s “to blame” for my snarkiness, but she too, was quite capable of this kind of behavior (her Mars in Scorpio). When I was young, my siblings noticed this; I, however, did not. Even though I was the oldest. And it may be because I was the oldest, born so early on. My Dad left for the WWII when I was only nine months old. So it was just the two of us, Mom and me. This, in contrast to my sisters and brothers, all but one of whom who were born after the war, and so by that time, human relations in family life were growing more complex, with more personalities involved, more chances for each of us so see how certain behaviors from others, both sibs and mother, were not helpful in getting along!

 

In any case, whatever the origins, I do of course, also utilize the language of astrology for self-analysis and development. My own chart happens to include a rare triangular formation called a YOD. It includes first house Capricorn Mercury/Venus square (90° friction) (very public) Libra Neptune/MC, plus inconjuncts (150° uncomfortable, constant adjustment) to both primal, generational Pluto in Leo and stern taskmaster Saturn in Gemini, themselves in a harmonious 60° sextile . . .

Here’s the kicker: This entire, and in my case, very tight, difficult triangular YOD formation (with Mercury/Venus/Neptune/MC/Saturn/Pluto)  is also known as a “FINGER OF GOd.” In other words, get with it Ann! Learn this lesson before you die!

 

Meanwhile, my snarky egocentric self is, and has always been, always just a hair’s breadth away. And can infect any atmosphere, like it tried to do in yesterday’s group discussion. Luckily, the other three present were having none of it; and their subtle reach to include me in an atmosphere of kindness, forgiveness, etc. managed to soften my “stance.”

As I said, thank goodness for the “others” in my life! Without them I would not even notice my own projections!

I am so “sick and tired” of my controlling nature!

 

The good news: on today’s early morning walk with Scampi, I noticed what happened yesterday more fully, and then noticed, way more fully than usual, THAT I HAD NOT FORGIVEN MYSELF FOR THAT SUDDEN, ERUPTIVE, EGOCENTRIC BEHAVIOR.

THAT second, higher level noticing, was impactful. In fact, it may be that this was the very first time I noticed it so quickly! I thank my daily, decades-long walking routine, my strong, resilient, 83-year-old body’s daily immersion into the natural world — striding under gigantic sheltering oak trees, myriad twittering birds, scampering squirrels, shadows on pavement with the rising sun —  for my sudden eruptive (Uranus!) capacity to thoroughly forgive myself.

For this was, as usual, the crucial step needed to begin again.

Mitakuye Oyasin!