November 26, 2007

12:17 p.m.

Give a Goat for Christmas

The above link will take you to my newest exciting discovery, Heifer International. I'd heard something vague about them a while back, and thrown out at least one unsolicited catalog. Yesterday I happened to take a look at the latest one and thought it was the most brilliant idea I'd ever seen. With Dar's help I looked up some stats for the organization to see how it fell in the big picture of charitable organizations, and while it wasn't at the very top, it was pretty high. So I decided that a few of my holiday presents this year will be livestock, in the names of friends.

See, you can buy a flock of chicks for $20 and they'll give them to a poor family to raise and sell and share with their neighbors, and to provide eggs. They'll be trained in how to take care of them and how to do business. Eventually the whole village benefits from the sharing of offspring. The birds (ducks, geese) were very affordable even for a singer songwriter, so this year I stuck with them. One can also donate a sheep, goat or pig -- or a higher end animal like a water buffalo. When was the last time you gave a water buffalo for Christmas?

I got Marc a hive of bees.

So somebody in Ecuador, or China, or Peru, or someplace else, will be eating eggs and selling beeswax because of me, Bornearly. And maybe one day they'll be able to replace that grass roof with something more substantial, and their kids will go to school.

Cool.

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We played a nice house concert Saturday at a Co-Housing community. We didn't get to see much of it, as it was dark by the time we got there, but this is something like a commune only not so intensely integrated. Everyone owns their own house, but they have shares in the common house, and some things are done communally -- dinner twice a week together, for example. There are 32 houses in this "village," and in seventeen years only five of them have turned over. We had a surprisingly large turnout and played unamplified in a big, woody room. The crowd was so large we almost wished we'd set up the PA, and if we do it again next year, we will. Sales were good, the apple crisp was the best in the land, and they fed us this delicious, complex Thai soup with lots of add-ins. A complete success, and a frequently repeated lesson for me. I'd arrived very peeved because I had inadequate directions and my bandmates did the last leg without me, and didn't tell me which building etc. so I had to call them to talk me in. Even as I was loading in, I thought about how it could be a great night and that these phases of annoyance have nothing to do with the gig. I was right. In those cases I put on a big smile and project affability and cooperation until it passes. I don't want to give strangers the first impression that I'm an old hag, even though I am sometimes.

Carol's birthday was yesterday. That means mine is coming up soon, and for a few weeks I'm younger than she by one number.

I am so feeling my aging process lately. The backs of my hands have become irredeemably wrinkled -- not horribly, but it's begun and lotion no longer makes it reverse. I have a light age spot on the back of my right hand that I have been trying to fade with a cream (yesterday I was thinking of the line from Joni Mitchell's song about the bird of love and time -- All those vain promises on beauty jars -- ). In a bizarre development, I have become fumble-fingered. I can't count the number of things I've dropped recently. And clumsy, banging my knees on things I know damn well are right there in front of me. Dishes clattering. I don't know whether I'm just not paying attention or whether something neurological is really going on.

And that doesn't even include all the forgetfulness. Where I put things, names, math skills. The other day I had a need to go over the nine tables in my head, which were always so easy, and I stumbled through slowly. Now they're back -- 9, 18. 27, 36, 45, 54, etc. In the car I did them up into the 300s just to practice. But numbers are hard. I'm assuming there is a lot of wisdom taking up the space that these skills used to inhabit.

My paternal grandmother was quite demented in her old age. So was my father. Please let me keep my wits.

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Last night I went to TJ Maxx to scoop up a couple of little gifties I was thinking about, having spent almost the entire day cleverly wrapping the things I'd gotten (including the printable cards from Heifer International, with pictures of little bright-sweatered children surrounded by their chicks/ducks/geese, etc.) and they were closed. So I went into Kohl's to see if they had anything like what I was looking for, and ended up buying a sweater and a pair of gig pants for myself. Right about now this sort of shopping will have to decrease. I've enjoyed it. But we have almost no gigs next month, and nearly none in February, so hard times are coming. We can use the time to rehearse and record, so it won't be wasted; but I'll be eating beans for a while.

In my new sweater.

Perhaps I could purchase a goat.