Sudden (Yurt) Emergency: working together; ’twas both fun and necessary!

April 2, 2025

In this first-ever-since-the-U.S.-Civil-War Neptune in Aries season, Have you noticed? It’s crucial to remain centered, no matter what? Who knows what will rush down the pike next! I have the continuous sensation of batting out brush fires, one after another. Oops, there’s another one! Turn around, oops! Quick! Another one. I heard someone say it’s like we’re trying to run on a rolling log, which is itself cascading down a river.

In any case, here’s what happened today, a day when the wind has been picking up, presaging yet another gigantic weird storm that is likely carrying tornados.

Here’s today’s scary map.

However, I must tell you, it’s been years since I did NOT see The Weather Channel (weather.com) as one more  deep state instrument, here to instill FEAR. Even so, in any case, it does seem that the storm business in spring 2025 is off the charts.

So, likely tonight will be the third time in the past month when the dreaded tornado siren will go off in Bloomington IN, or I should say go on, and stay there, at the same fear-mongering pitch, for at least several minutes. Each time it does this, depending one one’s attitude toward the twisting train that might just roar towards us right now, some of us (seven altogether in three houses), head down to the basement of this house to ride out the siren. During March 2025, some of us found ourselves sitting down there twice (Never in 20 years in Bloomington, did I need to wait out a tornado watch twice in the same month in the basement.)

On the other hand, I very much appreciate that, since this IS tornado country, that we do have tornado sirens which, BTW, are tested at noon, the first Friday of every month.

And when I moved here with my (now deceased) husband Jeff, I told him we were not going to buy a house unless it had a basement.

 

Okay, on to what I wanted to talk about, and this is the sudden decision to take down the backyard yurt, ASAP. The wind had picked up; we knew more, much more was on its way. Each time after one of this year’s March winds, Joseph and were out there, putting up rafters that fell, repositioning the walls of the yurt so they don’t bulge where they shouldn’t; making sure the top was secured, further securing all the ropes, etc. And, little by little, we knew that the yurt was getting off-balance altogether, and we were just waiting for a nice day in April to pull it down, wash off all the walls, get the creeping mold off the ceiling, and so on, and then dry it, before putting the yurt up again.

We didn’t take it down at all last year; it’s such a bother! — we thought, and there’s more pressing business. Joseph did take off the top cover, and wash and demoldify it. But the entire yurt? It’s been up for two years now; after having sat, unopened, in its large boxes, piled on my covered front porch for an entire year before that! — until we dared to tackle the job of putting it up!

So, today: A sudden whipping wind gust had just passed through. I saw it through the window, how it had whipped the walls out from their rafters again. Started out to go get Joseph, in the next house. He came out just as I opened my door. We both looked at the yurt. I said, suddenly: “I think we should take down the yurt NOW.” He had been on his way downtown. I had just served myself lunch. But this took precedence. Then we ran into Emerson, who had just taken her special coffee out to the greenhouse. Asked her, want to help? YES.

The three of us ended up taking only 40 minutes to take the entire yurt down and store it, for now, in the basement. Total coordination of what none of us had ever done before. It was both fun and necessary. Pivoting in place to face yet another unforseen situation, running on the log rolling down the river.

Emerson had to reheat her coffee. I ate my lunch cold. Not sure what Joseph did afterwards.

Since we had planned to take the yurt down to wash it off and refresh it this month anyway, it turns out we got a head start!

Plus, having decided to leave the (all weather) mandala rug in place, we’re now thinking up which local musicians we will invite to come give us a concert on the backyard stage!

 

 

From Pisces to Aries: Our deepest challenges are LOCAL

April 1, 2025

Please realize: No matter what I put up at any point in this blog, it’s provisional, speculative, a scattering of shots in the dark. WHO KNOWS WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON? Certainly not little old me; and I imagine, not anyone in a human body on this planet. Whenever I use memes, or meme-like configurations, it’s just to illustrate quick moving items that strike me from the floating, swelling, ever-changing waters of change (that was a Pisces remark), and now, more and more, we’re going to be sensing the swelling, cascading, bursting (Aries) fires of death and destruction, which will themselves burst open individualistic seeds of regeneration. But who knows how quickly regeneration will take hold?

Regeneration will take hold as quickly as we take hold of our own lives, notice that we’ve grown complacent, or resentful.

Consciously recognizing that we have given up our sovereignty to others, let us each go for broke and take it back. Become conscious of our self as not just an “ego,” that’s a shell; underneath, inside, each of us is a sovereign soul, powered by the primal fires of the entire universe.

As sovereign souls regenerate, so then we can regenerate togetherness, community.

In small pockets first, likely very small pockets. Like, hopefully, this place, this Green Acres Permaculture Village, which I ignited (being a fire sign myself!) nearly 20 years ago, and which is itself currently undergoing a slowly developing shift to extend and deepen its purpose while also rendering it hopefully more sustainable in the long run.

This coming Saturday, I will be hosting a relaunch lunch meeting of the Green Acres Neighborhood Association, which went dormant after the wonderful woman I worked with earlier on this larger community effort sickened and died. That was at least seven years ago. Meanwhile, I began GAPV as a living template to illustrate how we’d like to see our larger neighborhood evolve — as a series of tiny, interconnected retrofit villages, all “growing community from the ground up.” To this end we host here twice monthly “Community Dinners” with the invite going out not just to neighbors, but to their friends and families as well. At our dinners, someone is always available to give first time visitors a tour of the place, which is at present, three homes with large gardens, chickens, a common patio, a large greenhouse, and a yurt for visitors.

It’s going to become more and more obvious that we must cultivate our own local food sources; that each of us, as a sovereign individual, must dig down into our innermost cores to muster the vision and energy to begin to  work together locally, everywhere, to regenerate this depleted planet. Not an easy prospect here, or anywhere, given the yawning maw of the dragon of “progress”: massive, technocratic, corporate, “smart city” visions and values, which operate under the “get what I can for me and mine” model for the “elite,” while aiming to stealthily transmogrify us “deplorables” into basically controllable robots.

Sovereign Individuals, unite!