How to Be Alive
August 1, 2008
Blue morning, I wander out barefoot and find my spot beneath the tallest Arizona Ash tree. Once, this tree lost half its limbs in a storm, but it’s still the tallest. Settling in, rackety thoughts silence until quiet enough for me to ask and hear answers. Dad always said we walk around like zombies, most of us, working but not really living. I need to figure out how to be alive, so I remember a time when he was.
Leo
August 1, 2008
In late July, the fiery Lion begins his rule, warming and brightening our hemisphere. The Sun is his lord and Leo shines accordingly, lighting up the zodiac. The Lion’s days are July 23 – August 22. When you compare the power of the Sun with anything else in our Solar System, you see why Leo is considered by most astrologers to be the most powerful of the signs.
Don and Carolyn Honnas: Ranching on the Pocahonnas
August 1, 2008
The Honnas family arrived in Arivaca in 1960, when they bought the Las Jarillas Ranch from Homer and Dottie Osborne. The Honnas family’s roots in Arizona go back to the late 1800s when Don’s grandmother Della and stepfather Peter Honnas arrived in the Sonoita area to do some homesteading. They had their own homestead, but also purchased others as they came up for sale by people who couldn’t make a go of it. Don’s father Cecil married Lottie Moore, who had been teaching at the Empire Ranch School in the late 1920s. Lottie’s mother, Nancy Moore, had come to Arizona about the turn of the century. Lottie was raised in Marana, where she was in the first graduating class of the high school there. Lottie and Cecil were serious ranchers who intended to make a go of it no matter what. Cecil sometimes had to work off the ranch while Lottie took care of the horses and cattle. But Lottie was also the mail carrier on the route to Greaterville. Lottie and Cecil had two boys, Ray and Don.
Are You A Locavore?
August 1, 2008
A little known aspect of the Patriot Act and one of the few good things to come from it was a section on making our food supply more secure by emphasizing local food production. The thinking was that locally produced food is less susceptible to being interrupted by terrorists between the field and the table. As usual the government was behind the learning curve. The exploding farmers’ market phenomenon has long been promoting locally grown food as not only better for local economies, but fresher, healthier and more secure. The last being a side benefit that comes with decreasing our dependency on imported oil. With food traveling an average of 1,500 miles to get to our tables - long before terrorists and the price of gas and food became an issue - many people realized the stabilizing aspects of acquiring food locally. About the time the Farmers Market phenomenon began getting traction in the early ‘90’s, those of us in the natural building movement were raising similar concerns about where the materials we use to build our houses comes from. Now everything is coming under the scrutiny of the “local” magnifying glass and I predict clothing will be the next major topic to be examined.
August 2008
August 1, 2008
