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The Merit of Everything

healthy clothing

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Saturday July 11

Some things on my mind this morning:

It is overwhelmingly gratifying to browse through my Instagram feed and see examples of everyone caring for one another. Post after post of people sharing tools, thoughts, and resources that contribute to ending injustice. Thank you to everyone that regards each life as having equal value and requirements. There is nothing that hurts my heart more than knowing there are humans who don’t have freedom of choice. Love to all of you who are raising awareness and organizing actions that illustrate the disparity.

The idea that not everyone will thrive in the role I’ve mentioned above keeps coming up for me. We as humans are blessed with a variety of skill sets and temperaments so it’s important to focus and feel confident in the things that we do well and not be too concerned with the efforts or perceived lack of effort by others. 

Some of us will take on the initial role of igniting the fire, some of us will feed the fire, some will tend the coals, and some the new growth after the fire. All are important and part of change.  

Rest is important in growth. We need time to integrate and recharge. How can we be supportive and nurturing to our community?

 I really get a charge from the posts people make regarding solutions and ways to move forward. I think it’s equally as important to be actively creating the new paradigm as it is dismantling the old. Buckminster Fuller says “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

What dreams have you been dreaming?

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Saturday 07.11.20
Posted by calli blau
 

Sunday July 12

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Saturday 07.11.20
Posted by calli blau
 

Thank You Radish

My garden isn’t all that big when you consider that I would like to feed four people. My tendency is to want to plant some of everything. Because everything tastes best when picked directly before eating. If I plant a little bit of everything then I will harvest only a little bit of everything. Not enough to feed ourselves for more than a meal. I have a practical side that wants to get the most out of my work. So I have been planting things that grow well in our climate, have a high yield per space used, and can be trained to climb. Root vegetables take up too much real estate. One row of carrots takes awhile to mature and when it finally does we eat them within days. I can plant three tomato plants in the same amount of space and gather fruits throughout the summer. We will be eating a lot of cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes this year. I plant greens; lettuce, kale, and chard amongst the vining plants as they will mature just as the larger plants become big enough to shade them out. The past two weeks have been salad party weeks. Greens at every meal!

Radish have moved out of the frivolous zone and into the I can’t live without them room. Until this year I had not connected with radish. I grew them, for some reason, I always had a pack of seeds in my stash. But most years I forgot about them after sowing. They were too close together and grew spindly or bolted and tasted woody or the flea beetles got to them first. I definitely didn’t have a way of eating them that sustained my interest. An occasional snack with ranch dressing or eaten right out of the dirt while I was pulling weeds.

This year is different. The weather was unseasonably cold. Covid quarantine shut down the local compost source. Money for plants was tight. Our neighborhood farm set out a seed sharing box for people to take and give what they need. So cool. The farm was on the street we travel to walk home from school. One day there was a pack of radish seeds on the street, in the rain. We rescued it, thinking there was a small chance they were still viable. Fearing for future lack of food security I was desperate to get something in the ground, compost or not. So in went the radish seeds. The opposite of nonchalance is how I tended these babies. I was watering them diligently. Checking their spacing daily and pulling anything that got too close to it’s neighbor. I added the greens to my smoothies or wilted them with an egg on top. The flea beetles never showed. My radishes grew! We continued to harvest a few every day, round, succulent, crispy ones. When you only harvest a few a day it doesn’t constitute making an entire dish. You can put them in a salad, but without our garden grown lettuce the merits of the radish were drown out by old grocery store greens. How to eat a radish besides biting right into it that extols without diminishing every desirable quality of a fresh, plucked right out of the ground fruit of your labor?

You slice it thin

Lay the gorgeous slivers on a plate so that they are not overlapping

Lightly sprinkle with sea salt

Drizzle or plop ghee all over, making sure each radish gets it’s fair share(butter works too, and maybe olive oil)

Eat with your fingers, one at a time, dragging the radish slice through the ghee when necessary

Taste all the flavors. Salt, fat, heat. Crunchy Salty Fatty Goodness

Wipe your chin and check your shirt for grease stains

And then make sure you plant some more because this snack is too good to be done with so quickly. Maybe keep the seeds by the door and every time you harvest a radish you also plant a radish. Don’t buy chips anymore. This will cover that craving and doesn’t require any packaging or cooking. Science says that radish are good for your immune system. I feel like I’m the queen of the universe when I eat them, that’s likely to be good for my immunity.

(I’m going to go pick a radish now and try it with olive oil)

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Sunday 07.05.20
Posted by calli blau
 

Looking for Justice, Beauty, and Love

  • I recently submitted a shirt to the open call entitled “Looking for Justice, Beauty, and Love” at Germantown’s Imperfect Gallery.

  • I thought about a lot of things in the process of making this shirt and want to share the context. So I have compiled my notes..

  • Looking implies not being clearly seen, not being transparent, but still having vision. Something is up ahead. I used white fabric with holes on the back of the shirt to represent the unclear present and the  forward motion of looking ahead. 

  • The fabric is slightly transparent which allows you to look through.

  • Fog and clouds are white and challenge the seeker to look harder

  • When you’re being called to look for something it can be an invitation from spirit to connect. White is often a color used to represent spirit.

  • Spirit is like a friend sitting on your shoulder and whispering in your ear. Beckoning you to feel the beauty in things that we haven’t yet thought of as beautiful.

  • Purple is another color often used to represent the spiritual chakra. I put it on the shoulder to be a companion in the noticing and identifying of beauty.

  • Justice is to behave according to what is moral or right.

  • To be just, or right, as opposed to culturally significant one would need to be aligned with their inner compass or intuition.

  • I’ve used a hood as a way to block external influences and go inward.

  • Our third eye sits near the forehead, between our eyes and is the power center for intuition.

  • The color associated with the third eye is navy blue.  I added navy to the part of the hood that rests near our third eye to encourage intuitive thinking and just decision making.

  • If I had to describe beauty as a feeling I would say that it feels soft and soothing. I used pink to represent this. It reminds me of the safety of a womb and the nurturing love between mother and child.

  • The gradation of the pink shades were used to represent transformation and movement. And to illustrate how our idea of what’s beautiful changes with the passing of time and lessons learned. What was once an extreme challenge can in time and metamorphosis be seen as a crucial turning point. There is beauty in the changing of perspective.

  • Just implies balance and equality. Not only in being fair, but also in that it is not more than enough or less than enough. It is just enough!

  • Four equal panels on either side of the torso represent the balance and equality of justice.

  • In order to chose to make decisions based on morality and compassion, one would need to be grounded in understanding and empathy.

  • Roots are reddish brownish and live on the base of a plant. 

  • Red at the base of the shirt represents sending energy down to our roots and feeling connected. 

  • We make fair decisions when we are connected.

  • We feel love when we are connected

  • We notice beauty when we are connected.

  • In seeking we either inadvertently or purposefully gather perspective. These perspectives offer understanding and an opportunity to make informed decisions. 

  • I made the red panels on the torso different height to represent stairs and the gradual climb and the  gathering of ideas that lead to new perspectives.

  • I used yellow stitching near the elbow for two reasons. Your elbow creates a sort of pocket and I wanted two things to be in the pocket. One is your power. Yellow is the color used to represent the power chakra and having your power in your pocket could be useful if you were feeling pulled by the persuasion of outside influence. Two is the golden rule; to treat others as you wish to be treated. Keeping this idea in your pocket ensures that you believe in justice, beauty, and love for those around you.

  • Love feels round. You give some and you get some. I cut the green chest piece from a circle. I used green because it’s the color used to represent the heart chakra and I put it on the chest because it’s close to the heart.

  • To me the ultimate feeling of beauty is when two people speak their truth and both feel understood. I used light blue, the color of the throat chakra, near the throat, to enhance the speaking of truth.

  • Thinking of the saying; Beauty is only skin deep, I used blue stitching on some of the red panels to represent blood and our inner workings.

Friday 05.29.20
Posted by calli blau
 

Libra

I feel a strong connection to these daily horoscopes!

https://weeklyhoroscope.com/horoscopes/daily-horoscope-libra.php

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Thursday 01.31.19
Posted by calli blau
 
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