"When the tomatoes are ripe, everything else can wait."
The garden becomes my schedule keeper at the this time of year. I may have had plans today, but when there a finally enough ripe strawberries, THAT is the day one must make strawberry freezer jam. When the cukes are the perfect size, THAT is the time "put up" my darlin's favorite hot dog relish to enjoy for the next year.
So, everything else is taking a back seat to attending to the harvest. Yesterday I began drying some herbs that were prolific this year. Why not try drying some parsley and chives when I have it in abundance. I can transfer skills from other things I have dried, do a little research and learn how to do this!
Every food item that I can grow, preserve in some safe and healthy way prevents the use of packaging, transport and my concern about where it came from and what chemicals were used. Reduce, reuse and recycle. What a good mantra to repeat!
Enjoy the delicious bounty!
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Going Greener for Musicians
Joyce (Earth Mama®) Rouse checking Magnificent Healing Cd's from new energy efficient manufacturing process.There is a revolution happening in every facet of life. Some people call it the “New Green Economy,” or “Sustainability”. Others refer to it as “The Race to Save the Planet.” Whatever phrase on behalf of Earth’s best interest you choose, its clear that in the music world as in any segment of life, culture or work, we have vast choices every day. Often we are so used to doing something one way that we don’t see the growing number of healthier choices available.
If you can hit the record button on Garage Band, you can release a CD. But did you know that you can eliminate the shrink wrap and the jewel case with a variety of recycled paper packaging choices? And that you can request all soy-based ink, which is not made from petroleum?
Many printers will not mention the choice of recycled paper unless you ask for it, but you and your PR team can build a beautiful promo package using gorgeous 100 percent recycled paper stock for every piece. Look for a printer who is certified to use Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) paper. They will include a small logo of FSC on your print piece so that your savvy listeners will know that you are caring for the planet as you make great music!
* A sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without jeopardizing the prospects of future generations. — Lester Brown, World Watch Institute
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
First, Let's Stop the Stupid Stuff (or Blowin'in the Wind)
The Virginia House of Delegates once again struck a blow to clotheslines, (were they all strung out on something?) refusing to stop community associations from banning them in neighborhoods. The State Senate passed it, but the House bill died from the dreaded disease, “party lines,” in committee. I’ll let you guess which party is opposed to air drying your clothes in your own backyard. Oddly enough, it might just be the same one that is always howling about too much regulation.
I have now been clothes-dryer-free for 7 years. I have extra space in my laundry room. The hanging damp clothes add humidity to dry winter air. I use less whitening agent because I let the summer sun do the bleaching. The clothes smell great and the towels are crunchy, so they really dry your skin instead of just pushing the wet around. (I once lived in a neighborhood in Tennessee where clotheslines were banned, but I moved before I could be arrested or test it in the courts.) I am free, free, free of another energy hog appliance.
What in blazes are they thinking in Richmond...(and Brentwood)? Can they not connect two dots?
We live in a season of great change on Earth. Climate disruption is triggering water shortages and flooding, glacial melting and deforestation, ocean changes and unusual species migration. That is Massive Climate Disruption (MCD) caused by CO2 production from burning of fossil fuels. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to see that the MORE conservation of gas and electricity by NOT running those dryers, means LESS CO2, and a MORE stable climate.
Or can it be that SOMEONE thinks that what you hang in your own backyard is his business? Or could it be that Party Line holds more sway than Clothes Line?
Please send alarm clocks to Richmond (or YOUR state capital) and tell the boys to wake up!
OY-VAY.
Climate Change action: First, let’s stop the stupid stuff, like banning solar clothes dryers.
resource songs:
“Less is More” from Around the World with Earth Mama CD
“Habitat” from Under the Rainbow CD by Earth Mama
“Energy” tango from Around the World with Earth Mama CD
“They Were Right” from Love Large CD by Earth Mama
songs at www.earthmama.org or www.itunes.com/earthmama
Monday, February 15, 2010
Mother Nature Calls the Shots
Mother Nature Calls the Shots
Another 4-5 inches of snow predicted today. I’m getting used to this. And, truth be told, loving it. We are getting out, down our half mile long, steep, curvy driveway about once a week to the grocery store. It’s getting back UP the drive that presents a challenge.
Not being able to jump in the car and go, on a whim or to a scheduled event has its advantages. I’m making my way through stacks of magazines and newspaper articles I just never had time to tackle. I finished sewing warm window quilts (moveable insulation) and hung them on all our north windows, immediately keeping the house more comfortable. I’m working on photo albums that have been sitting in boxes for too long. I wrote a whole song in uninterrupted, record time at the piano. I’m loving it.
Yup, we have to carry in loads of wood to keep the wood furnace going, shovel off the patio when the drain pipes are iced up. But I am here and grounded. Fortunate indeed, that we have not lost electric power since before Christmas. (My heart goes out to those thousands still without power.) It’s not a big deal when we run out of milk or the right kind of flour or mushrooms. We can find something else to substitute for it in whatever is cooking. Sweetie Pie made the most wonderful lasagna, even after we discovered several of the key ingredients gone AWOL. Whole wheat fettucini noodles worked just fine and were a whole lot easier to install.
The most annoying part of all this unusual extreme winter—this winter just like I remember them from my childhood, this winter that all the old timers say used to be more the norm—is the people who spout comments mocking the ideas of Global Climate Change, usually with a snide clever attempt to sport their superiority in intelligence to a former Vice President. I look for an opportunity to mention that there is a difference between weather and climate. My step-son quietly responds to them that he is still very concerned about the melting of the polar ice caps.
Makes me wonder, "If ignorance is bliss, how come there aren't more happy people?” (author unknown) No matter how smart we think we are Mother Nature is still in charge.
Blessings and Earthpeace,
Joyce
P.S. And for those of you wondering where God stands in all of this, I think that God and Mother Nature are VERY good friends.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Are You a Chosen One?
Music has great power and potential power in the Green and Sustainability Movements: go ahead hum a few of your favorites....
Not everyone GETS music. Almost everybody likes some form of music or another. But just as I don’t GET football —yes, I can sit and watch a game with friends, mostly follow it, cheer and and be engaged a little, but it does not have the power to MOVE me, and I don’t much care about the stats or the finer points— I have often been struck by the difference between people who GET the power of music to transform and those who simply think of music as kind of a wallpaper for life. I don’t think it is merely a lack of education, but more to do with exposure, genetics, the brain and interpretation, and the sensory system.
Exposure
I have very early memories of the power of music in my life. My mother did all of her housework while singing. Some were popular songs, some were from her high school choir repertoire, some from years of church hymn and choir singing. She knew that vacuuming, peeling potatoes, weeding the garden, stirring the soup, washing dishes, hanging out clothes were all best done when accompanied by music, preferably from within. I also remember sitting on my dad’s knee as he sang You Are My Sunshine and feeling the vibrations of his tones in his chest. Parked in pew #3 on the left side of the aisle and lined up with my four siblings in the Immanuel Lutheran Church every Sunday morning, there was great power in being surrounded by voices singing How Great Thou Art and Holy, Holy, Holy. In third grade I joined our neighborhood 4-H Club and noticed that we sang a few songs at EVERY CLUB MEETING! The following year I got to the Central School where we had Mrs. Precious, the veteran music teacher who at sixty-plus taught music with her whole, spry little body. She reinforced the tenants of 4-H and Sunday School singing: it doesn’t have to be perfect or even pretty, but had better be enthusiastic and most often FUN.
Choosing to Listen
By middle school (well, they used to call it Junior High) I learned to save my money from ironing for Mom, pulling mustard in the oat field and other specialty work, so I could buy carefully chosen LP albums. I listened for hours, over and over in a dark room to Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence and Cat Stevens’ Tea for the Tillerman. Ten years later I would do the same with Peter Tschesnokoff’s Salvation is Created, the music I still consider the greatest piece of choral music ever written. Getting to sing this as part of the soprano section of Iowa State Singers in a concert with the touring Moscow Symphony Orchestra in my junior year of college was and still is a peak experience of my life. While writing this, I listened again to St.Olaf choir’s recording and yet, again got goose bumps several times in its three and one half minute duration of nearly four- octave-span from rumbling bass section to soaring soprano line that shoots to heaven.
Creating
I have a sprinkling of fans and friends who really GET what I am doing. (Thank Goodness I am married to one of them. : >) They write via paper or email and quote some obscure line in one of my songs, telling me how it inspired some ah-ha moment in their life. I feel immense gratitude because when I boil down all the reasons I write, perform and record music, the most basic answer is “to touch people” in a way that only music can.
I know that my music in not really my creation—though I will defend my copyrights to the grave—but some creative force of the Universe that flows through me when I am primed and remember to turn the spigot on. As with all composers and songwriters, my job is to put it all together in a way that only I can, given my unique combination of life history, geography, experience and eccentricities. Give fifty professional songwriters the same song title to write and I guarantee that they will compose fifty very different (some pretty darn good, some not) songs.
Musician Conversation
The years I lived in Nashville, surrounded by the best of the best songwriters, pickers, sound engineers, (who are mostly all fine musicians in their own right, which makes them better engineers at the board), I was immersed in an environment of great musicality everywhere—well, maybe except for most of Top 40 radio. I would hear stunning songs by great writers and singers whose names you would not recognize because there are just so MANY good music makers. Not all can be anointed by radio or internet or Amazon. Some days on breaks in the studio the assembled players would have diagnostic discussions on something like a chord progression, its prior history in country, classical, and Ukrainian folk music, followed by several bad puns, and a story, from when one of them was playing on the road with Some Once Famous Artist. Then back to work coming up with a stunningly brilliant intro on the spot to the recording session. Musician brains are a marvel, and they don’t work like any other. Yes, I understand that there are parallel universes to this in the Jazz, Classical, Opera,
Cabaret, Music Theatre world.
(These days there is plenty to bring down any music creator’s dreams. What with people making CD copies of whatever they like and passing them to friends, internet piracy and illegal downloads, producing a sustaining income stream from music is getting harder and harder, except for the likes of Beyonce, Bono, and Black Eyed Peas. Now with programs like Garage Band, musicians who could never have dreamed of recording a CD can do so in their spare time, duplicate it and declare themselves both an artist and a record company. Some of the resulting recordings are great. Some are awful. But who am I to judge? Music is such a personal thing.)
In my work booking my shows for Helping Heal the Planet One Song at a Time—which can be called concerts, showcases, school assemblies or Music and Conversation,—I sometimes have to explain why music is so important. Can’t do it. People either GET the power of music in any movement or venture or they don’t. No amount of explaining how the affective domain of the brain works in influencing cognition and action, no reminder that they know their ABC’s because they learned them by singing them, (and probably still sing them occasionally when looking up something in the dictionary or phone book). Imagine the Civil Rights movement without the power of We Shall Overcome, Christianity without Amazing Grace, elementary school without Yankee Doodle. I can’t, but some can.
So, if you happen to be one who is moved, tortured, lifted up, or inspired by melody, harmony, lyric, rhythm, or a really sweet string arrangement, count your blessings. You are one of the chosen ones. Not only do you have ears, a sense of timing and pitch, but the molecules, enzymes and synapses in your brain are arranged in a way that coalesce the components of sound into the majestic tones of the Universe, the first of which vibrated with the Big Blossom over fourteen billion years ago. You are blessed. God is Great. And She loves music.
Get yourself a little inspiration now!
To hear and purchase Earth Mama® (Joyce Rouse) songs about the Big Blossom
and the New Story of the Universe:
Listen to (I Come From a) Fireball at:
Earth Mama — Eco Music Therapy For Our Planet
http://www.earthmama.org/hearundertherainbow.php
or a gentler telling, Mystery
http://www.earthmama.org/heargrassroots.php
Earth Mama’s latest music can be found at
http://www.earthmama.org/hearpayattention.php
Or at www.iTunes.com/earthmama
Do you REALLY listen to music? Care to share examples of what moves you?
Please comment below
Not everyone GETS music. Almost everybody likes some form of music or another. But just as I don’t GET football —yes, I can sit and watch a game with friends, mostly follow it, cheer and and be engaged a little, but it does not have the power to MOVE me, and I don’t much care about the stats or the finer points— I have often been struck by the difference between people who GET the power of music to transform and those who simply think of music as kind of a wallpaper for life. I don’t think it is merely a lack of education, but more to do with exposure, genetics, the brain and interpretation, and the sensory system.
Exposure
I have very early memories of the power of music in my life. My mother did all of her housework while singing. Some were popular songs, some were from her high school choir repertoire, some from years of church hymn and choir singing. She knew that vacuuming, peeling potatoes, weeding the garden, stirring the soup, washing dishes, hanging out clothes were all best done when accompanied by music, preferably from within. I also remember sitting on my dad’s knee as he sang You Are My Sunshine and feeling the vibrations of his tones in his chest. Parked in pew #3 on the left side of the aisle and lined up with my four siblings in the Immanuel Lutheran Church every Sunday morning, there was great power in being surrounded by voices singing How Great Thou Art and Holy, Holy, Holy. In third grade I joined our neighborhood 4-H Club and noticed that we sang a few songs at EVERY CLUB MEETING! The following year I got to the Central School where we had Mrs. Precious, the veteran music teacher who at sixty-plus taught music with her whole, spry little body. She reinforced the tenants of 4-H and Sunday School singing: it doesn’t have to be perfect or even pretty, but had better be enthusiastic and most often FUN.
Choosing to Listen
By middle school (well, they used to call it Junior High) I learned to save my money from ironing for Mom, pulling mustard in the oat field and other specialty work, so I could buy carefully chosen LP albums. I listened for hours, over and over in a dark room to Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence and Cat Stevens’ Tea for the Tillerman. Ten years later I would do the same with Peter Tschesnokoff’s Salvation is Created, the music I still consider the greatest piece of choral music ever written. Getting to sing this as part of the soprano section of Iowa State Singers in a concert with the touring Moscow Symphony Orchestra in my junior year of college was and still is a peak experience of my life. While writing this, I listened again to St.Olaf choir’s recording and yet, again got goose bumps several times in its three and one half minute duration of nearly four- octave-span from rumbling bass section to soaring soprano line that shoots to heaven.
Creating
I have a sprinkling of fans and friends who really GET what I am doing. (Thank Goodness I am married to one of them. : >) They write via paper or email and quote some obscure line in one of my songs, telling me how it inspired some ah-ha moment in their life. I feel immense gratitude because when I boil down all the reasons I write, perform and record music, the most basic answer is “to touch people” in a way that only music can.
I know that my music in not really my creation—though I will defend my copyrights to the grave—but some creative force of the Universe that flows through me when I am primed and remember to turn the spigot on. As with all composers and songwriters, my job is to put it all together in a way that only I can, given my unique combination of life history, geography, experience and eccentricities. Give fifty professional songwriters the same song title to write and I guarantee that they will compose fifty very different (some pretty darn good, some not) songs.
Musician Conversation
The years I lived in Nashville, surrounded by the best of the best songwriters, pickers, sound engineers, (who are mostly all fine musicians in their own right, which makes them better engineers at the board), I was immersed in an environment of great musicality everywhere—well, maybe except for most of Top 40 radio. I would hear stunning songs by great writers and singers whose names you would not recognize because there are just so MANY good music makers. Not all can be anointed by radio or internet or Amazon. Some days on breaks in the studio the assembled players would have diagnostic discussions on something like a chord progression, its prior history in country, classical, and Ukrainian folk music, followed by several bad puns, and a story, from when one of them was playing on the road with Some Once Famous Artist. Then back to work coming up with a stunningly brilliant intro on the spot to the recording session. Musician brains are a marvel, and they don’t work like any other. Yes, I understand that there are parallel universes to this in the Jazz, Classical, Opera,
Cabaret, Music Theatre world.
(These days there is plenty to bring down any music creator’s dreams. What with people making CD copies of whatever they like and passing them to friends, internet piracy and illegal downloads, producing a sustaining income stream from music is getting harder and harder, except for the likes of Beyonce, Bono, and Black Eyed Peas. Now with programs like Garage Band, musicians who could never have dreamed of recording a CD can do so in their spare time, duplicate it and declare themselves both an artist and a record company. Some of the resulting recordings are great. Some are awful. But who am I to judge? Music is such a personal thing.)
In my work booking my shows for Helping Heal the Planet One Song at a Time—which can be called concerts, showcases, school assemblies or Music and Conversation,—I sometimes have to explain why music is so important. Can’t do it. People either GET the power of music in any movement or venture or they don’t. No amount of explaining how the affective domain of the brain works in influencing cognition and action, no reminder that they know their ABC’s because they learned them by singing them, (and probably still sing them occasionally when looking up something in the dictionary or phone book). Imagine the Civil Rights movement without the power of We Shall Overcome, Christianity without Amazing Grace, elementary school without Yankee Doodle. I can’t, but some can.
So, if you happen to be one who is moved, tortured, lifted up, or inspired by melody, harmony, lyric, rhythm, or a really sweet string arrangement, count your blessings. You are one of the chosen ones. Not only do you have ears, a sense of timing and pitch, but the molecules, enzymes and synapses in your brain are arranged in a way that coalesce the components of sound into the majestic tones of the Universe, the first of which vibrated with the Big Blossom over fourteen billion years ago. You are blessed. God is Great. And She loves music.
Get yourself a little inspiration now!
To hear and purchase Earth Mama® (Joyce Rouse) songs about the Big Blossom
and the New Story of the Universe:
Listen to (I Come From a) Fireball at:
Earth Mama — Eco Music Therapy For Our Planet
http://www.earthmama.org/hearundertherainbow.php
or a gentler telling, Mystery
http://www.earthmama.org/heargrassroots.php
Earth Mama’s latest music can be found at
http://www.earthmama.org/hearpayattention.php
Or at www.iTunes.com/earthmama
Do you REALLY listen to music? Care to share examples of what moves you?
Please comment below
Monday, February 1, 2010
Greenwich Village Green
You would have to be in a coma not to see all the green initiatives sprouting out everywhere these days. Recycle bins in unexpected places, reminders not to use plastic bags, restaurants encouraging tap, instead of bottled water. The list goes on.
I have heard a few notable experts remark that “all the easy things have been done” adding that the significant planet-saving we do from here on in will be difficult, expensive and complicated. WRONG. Every day I see some creative new re-use or innovative reduction or recycling tricks. What follows is my favorite from this week.
In Greenwich Village, (on the island of Manhattan, between the majestic Hudson River and the rich mysterious Atlantic Ocean— container for and home of the warm Gulf Stream waters and cold water cod), there are lovely little streets that run between the major big avenues. The Avenues have subway stations, many-laned corners with multiple traffic light and pedestrian direction combinations, and the other, usual city street stuff, i.e. trash (and recycle!) bins, Starbucks, newspaper machines, street people, honking horns, frantic-paced taxis, and a conspicuous absence of trees or shrubbery. Running to and away from the Big Daddy Avenues at inconsistent acute and obtuse angles are quiet little streets with names like Christopher, Barrow, and Cornelia. These are quieter with apartment buildings or shops or tiny trattorias and cafes. Many of them are lined with small trees in their own little square yard—literally a “square yard”— surrounded by brick or wrought iron.
Generally the yard is bare dirt or perhaps a little chipped mulch or a ground cover such as a vinca. Along the streets I visited last week, I found that many of those square yards were lush with greenery, the evergreen kind—fir, pine, hemlock. It appeared that wreathes, roping, and small branches had taken on a new life as natural winter protection surrounding the planted dormant landscape trees. And no petrol-fueled power tool had been fired up to grind it to mulch. Imagine that—skipping the whole “collect the Christmas trees, haul them away, pulverize them to spreadable form then redistribute for landscaping material!" What a great way to shrink a neighborhood carbon footprint.
So, was this an organized city initiative, a neighborhood project or just someone’s personal beautification project? I have no clue. But it brightened my day to walk along and find holiday greenery exhibiting one more life of use, adorning the next generation of trees along grey winter sidewalks.
No, all the easy actions have not yet been taken. And we need every little innovative energy saver, as well as all the big changes that will require Herculean effort, courageous leadership and a few well-place miracles to get to sustainability. May the forest be with you!
I have heard a few notable experts remark that “all the easy things have been done” adding that the significant planet-saving we do from here on in will be difficult, expensive and complicated. WRONG. Every day I see some creative new re-use or innovative reduction or recycling tricks. What follows is my favorite from this week.
In Greenwich Village, (on the island of Manhattan, between the majestic Hudson River and the rich mysterious Atlantic Ocean— container for and home of the warm Gulf Stream waters and cold water cod), there are lovely little streets that run between the major big avenues. The Avenues have subway stations, many-laned corners with multiple traffic light and pedestrian direction combinations, and the other, usual city street stuff, i.e. trash (and recycle!) bins, Starbucks, newspaper machines, street people, honking horns, frantic-paced taxis, and a conspicuous absence of trees or shrubbery. Running to and away from the Big Daddy Avenues at inconsistent acute and obtuse angles are quiet little streets with names like Christopher, Barrow, and Cornelia. These are quieter with apartment buildings or shops or tiny trattorias and cafes. Many of them are lined with small trees in their own little square yard—literally a “square yard”— surrounded by brick or wrought iron.
Generally the yard is bare dirt or perhaps a little chipped mulch or a ground cover such as a vinca. Along the streets I visited last week, I found that many of those square yards were lush with greenery, the evergreen kind—fir, pine, hemlock. It appeared that wreathes, roping, and small branches had taken on a new life as natural winter protection surrounding the planted dormant landscape trees. And no petrol-fueled power tool had been fired up to grind it to mulch. Imagine that—skipping the whole “collect the Christmas trees, haul them away, pulverize them to spreadable form then redistribute for landscaping material!" What a great way to shrink a neighborhood carbon footprint.
So, was this an organized city initiative, a neighborhood project or just someone’s personal beautification project? I have no clue. But it brightened my day to walk along and find holiday greenery exhibiting one more life of use, adorning the next generation of trees along grey winter sidewalks.
No, all the easy actions have not yet been taken. And we need every little innovative energy saver, as well as all the big changes that will require Herculean effort, courageous leadership and a few well-place miracles to get to sustainability. May the forest be with you!
Thursday, January 7, 2010
The Man Who Precycles Christmas Trees
We ran into our friend, Joe, Christmas week and he pointed out the beautiful big decorated (no lights, just outdoor ornaments, garlands and a big star) in the field in front of his house.
We asked him if he had cut down a real, live tree for this display and he told us a wonderful story of how he PRE-cycles and reuses trees every year:
Joe has lots of friends and family here, most of whom have houses and yards. He keeps track of folks he knows who have evergreen trees that have outgrown their backyards, or need to be removed for a building project, or must sacrifice their space for some other use. Then come December he performs careful tree removal for them and has a beautiful fresh Christmas tree in his front yard/field. It is a tradition that has gone on 8 or 9 years now. He has trees lined up for the next 2 years and is certain that there will be more after that. Of course, as with most conservation efforts, it takes forethought and some advanced planning. But it gives the tree that must be removed one last flash of attention and glory. And is a joyful reminder of this season to all who pass by, as well as a model and example of careful use of resources for those who know the story.
What things might I precycle or reuse in the coming year? There are new examples showing up every day!
We asked him if he had cut down a real, live tree for this display and he told us a wonderful story of how he PRE-cycles and reuses trees every year:
Joe has lots of friends and family here, most of whom have houses and yards. He keeps track of folks he knows who have evergreen trees that have outgrown their backyards, or need to be removed for a building project, or must sacrifice their space for some other use. Then come December he performs careful tree removal for them and has a beautiful fresh Christmas tree in his front yard/field. It is a tradition that has gone on 8 or 9 years now. He has trees lined up for the next 2 years and is certain that there will be more after that. Of course, as with most conservation efforts, it takes forethought and some advanced planning. But it gives the tree that must be removed one last flash of attention and glory. And is a joyful reminder of this season to all who pass by, as well as a model and example of careful use of resources for those who know the story.
What things might I precycle or reuse in the coming year? There are new examples showing up every day!
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