Sandhill Farm

When I was in college, it was fashionable to shorten words to their last syllable. Whence, "za" for pizza; "zeeks" for physics; and "rents" for parents.

While only some of these back-end phrases caught on (blessedly), I'm recalling those days as I spend a week in Las Vegas, visiting my "dren" (my kids). In their presence, I inevitably drift into reverie about what I was doing when I was their age, or recalling my days as a rent with young kids—which mirrors where my son, Ceilee, is today.

Ceilee is fast approaching 31, which was my age when he was born. He has two children (my granddaughter Taivyn, and my grandson Connor) and it's a delight to spend a week with these two curious beings (of course, I get to go home on Tuesday—it's incomparably easier being grandparent).

My daughter, Jo, is 24-1/2, exactly the age I was back in 1974, when I got together with three friends to start Sandhill Farm. There are many milestones to remember.

I spent yesterday with Jo. Along with her partner, Peter, they hosted an eight-person Game Day that lasted from noon to midnight. Not counting a brief break for dinner (at the neighborhood Chipotle where Jo works), we indulged in an orgy of board games (which Ceilee's Mom, Annie, refers to as bored games). I played Hansa Teutonica (1x), Stone Age (2x), Resistance (2x), World Market (1x), plus Acquire (1x) as a nightcap. This afternoon, Jo & I moseyed back over to Ceilee & Tosca's where we managed a four-person game of Siedler: Cities & Knights before dinner. (I say "managed" because it takes a certain amount of logistical sophistication when you're playing a board game and simultaneously managing child care for a six-month old baby and a three-year-old recovering from bacterial infection—there were an "above-average" number of pauses to field what passes for crises among small children).

Years ago I was giving a Friday evening public presentation about conflict at an urban university. I had been invited by a forming community, with whom I was going to be working over the weekend. They were using the occasion of my being in town to drum up interest in their group, and the woman organizing the event had a clipboard on which she was diligently capturing the names and contact information of the folks she didn't know.

In the minutes before we got started, she approached one unknown young man from behind and tapped him lightly on his shoulder to get his attention, for the purpose of getting him to register on the clipboard. The man startled at her touch, turned around abruptly, and glared at her with intensity. In the spur of the moment, the woman decided that perhaps she didn't need his contact information that badly and chose to back away.

At this point, I have just described the entire history of interaction between these two people. If there were any words exchanged, it was less than a sentence each way. Shortly after the woman retreated to her seat, I began my presentation—blissfully unaware that there was a storm brewing in the audience.

Ninety minutes later I was in the home stretch of my presentation, explaining how everyone has the option to work on conflict unilaterally. While most of the time we prefer (naturally) to be met by the other player(s) in a good-faith attempt to resolve conflict, I was pointing out the possibility and potency of working solo when the door to joint work is closed.

It was at this juncture—only three minutes away (I thought) from ending the talk and inviting everyone to regather in a nearby reception for punch and cookies—that the young man became quite agitated and blurted out that it wasn't easy to work through distress all on one's one. Surprised by his comment, I slowed down and offered something like:

Today I'm starting an Integrative Facilitation training weekend in Oakland (weekend three of eight) and the teaching theme is conflict. It seems an auspicious occasion for making it my writing theme as well.

A significant fraction of my work as a process consultant is working with conflict—by which I mean the condition where there are at least two points of view and at least one person is experiencing non-trivial distress in relation to events. (Disagreements where no one's nose is out of joint are also interesting, but not nearly as tricky to navigate, so I'm concentrating just on the hard part here.)

The stakes are pretty high here. Our mainstream culture—the one nearly all of us grew up in—conditioned us to respond to conflict by fighting, submitting, suppressing, manipulating, or running away. As far as I can tell, this menu essentially goes back to Neanderthal days. One of the cornerstones of cooperative culture is that there has got to be a better way. The good news is that there is, but it's not necessarily easy to get there. The theory is not hard, the challenge is being able to respond differently in the heat of the moment.

This entry will be the opening of a series on the theme of conflict. Today I'm going to try to make the case for why the cost of not learning to effectively address upset is prohibitively high. I've come to the view that we simply can't afford to not learn to deal constructively with conflict, and I'm going to try to persuade you to my viewpoint.

I recently received this inquiry from a person in a well-established community wrestling with the explosive issue of sexual abuse:

Our community has recently had an experience of having a sexual assault predator living here who was arrested on charges. We were completely caught off guard in regards to this endemic social issue entering our community. We’ve done lots of healing and brought in a sexual assault prevention educator—all of which has been good. Now we’re at a crossroads, needing to make decisions about how to be responsible gatekeepers and guardians of our community. In other words, what proactive prevention do we put in place? I’m curious if you have had any experience with communities setting agreements for proactive prevention? And what have other communities done to provide a forum for that “uh-oh”/gut feeling that someone isn’t a good fit (could be around this issue or anything, really)?

This is a tough issue, mainly because it brings into play several complex challenges all at the same time:
o A wide range of societal views about what constitutes healthy sexuality
o Widespread disagreement about how much it's advisable (or even acceptable) to openly discuss sexual matters
o The boundary between private matters and group matters
o How the group works with intuition and gut feelings
o The group's responsibility to be a safe environment to raise children
o How to work constructively with strong emotions

It can be overwhelming knowing where to begin and how to proceed.

While I am not a sexual abuse expert, I am a group dynamics expert and I've been involved with a handful of instances where groups have had to handle this hot potato. Here is framing that I've assembled for setting the stage when charges of sexual abuse arise:

One of the hardest challenges in interpersonal dynamics is how to stay fluid and soft (as opposed to armored and entrenched) when both people are in distress. Even though I understand what's happening, and the way through it, I find this maddeningly difficult to manage when I'm one of the players. I just can't seem to avoid falling into the pit of tat for tit, and I say some of the most damaging and regrettable (not to mention embarrassing and unhelpful) things when I'm caught in this whirlpool.

Here's how it typically unfolds. (While it's not hard to picture the geometric complications possible when there are many people in distress, it's enough for the main points I want to make to concentrate on the simpler, two-person version of this dynamic) Person A has a strong reaction to something Person B did (or did not do) or said (or did not say). Person B then has a strong reaction to Person A's expressing their distress, probably feeling unfairly accused, blindsided, or grossly misunderstood.

Now we're off to the races. Absent the ability for someone to get off the merry-go-round, both people then proceed to engage in a largely unproductive impromptu poetry slam, following the rhyme scheme of ABABABAB... ad nauseam. At its worst, the protagonists are exchanging blows, not information. People get hurt, and the pain of the initial reactions gets deepened. Yuck!

In general, when someone is in serious distress, the road to getting unstuck starts with a recognition to the distressed person's satisfaction of what they're experiencing. This means demonstrating to the upset person that you grok the essence of both their feelings and their story. It is not necessary that you agree with their position or have the same personal reaction; you just need to be able to show the person that you get what's happening for them. (Note: this includes getting the affect right, not just the words.)

Looking back over my posts, I detect a complaining tone – about how weather has a negative impact on our crops. But hey, that is only half of the story: after all, weather is also responsible for us having any kind of crop. Further, I like to be appreciative of good times. This is one of those times.

The heading of this post indicates “Another…”. I am referring to the fact that we had a wonderful fall last year. I reported rather dismal crop yields last year – BUT at least we had a crop; in large part due to having warm fall weather, that allowed the crops to mature – at least enough for a decent harvest.

This year we had another challenging spring; due to wet weather, we could not get our crops planted in a timely manner. So the crops were late and I wondered if they would mature (mostly the sorghum) before frost. I could not help projecting: we had a great fall last year – could it happen again this year, 2 years in a row?. Then, we had drought conditions in August: it stunted the beans and put the sorghum crop on hold (delaying maturing). However, we are now having another great fall – unseasonably warm weather. We are harvesting the sorghum before it is fully mature because it is very labor intensive: we now have a lot of visitor help as well as labor exchangers from our sister communities – Twin Oaks & Acorn in Virginia and East Wind in southern Missouri (and because we are already at the average date of the first killing frost).

At this time, we are about half way through the sorghum harvest (2 weeks into it), but I can tell already that we will have an “average” harvest – due to deliciously warm fall weather.

Thank you Gaia, nature spirits, & the Mysterious Ones for two consecutive glorious autumns!

Wringing meaning from my blog postings is not necessary a pealing to all.

Stephan Wik, a friend in Ireland, sent me this message yesterday:
I always make time to read your blog as I find your insights useful and, for the most part, concise. Thanks for the hard work you put into them.

I'm writing to make a small suggestion. I'm not sure how much exposure you've had to non-US audiences, and I haven't seen anything in your writings that indicate you are interested in communicating with the rest of the world outside the US. If you are however, you may wish to consider replacing some of your idioms with more generally understandable expressions. Even I, a native English speaker with an American mother, find that at times I struggle to understand what you are trying to convey.

Here are some examples from your latest blog:

"Hot dog" (does this mean you are excited?)

"all sulfur and no molasses" (no idea what this means)

"This is a combo characteristic" (a combination characteristic? What does that mean?)

"I reckon" (I believe this is used in the Deep South of the US to mean 'I understand'?)

In a spirit of international understanding,
Stephan

While I'm all in favor of international understanding—and am happy to hear from readers about their reactions to my postings—this is not a simple request. Stephan is quite right to point out that my writing is full of idioms (as well as replete with metaphors and ripe with analogies). Thus, there are times (a handful of which Stephan has enumerated above) when my attempt to be breezy and eclectic comes across as an odd wind, blowing the meaning out of reach. Oops. In an effort to stretch the language (intentional) I accidentally poke a hole in the envelope, and the meaning leaks out.

Today is the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack that destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Centers. The horror of that day was the kind of watershed moment that people remember where they were when they first heard the news, or first watched the unbelievable video footage of the collisions and the buildings collapsing.

I was at home when the news first came in, alerted by a community member calling to tell us that her flight home from Hartford that morning was cancelled indefinitely. After that, we had the radio on all day. Because Sandhill doesn't have a television set, I watched the first images of the attack that night at Kurt & Alline's house at Dancing Rabbit. I recall how hard it was to accept what I saw as reality, distinguished from the trailer for a Hollywood thriller.

It seems to me an appropriate occasion to reflect on where we've gotten any closer the last decade with respect to security, and hope for the future.

I remember that the responses immediately following the attacks sorted into two kinds. The dominant kind was outrage (and it was chilling to watch how quickly the Bush administration was able to orchestrate a retaliation). While this was understandable, it was also depressing. How was the call for violence in response to violence going to end violence? Have we learned nothing?

This is installment three of a four-part series on outliers started Aug 25.

All cooperative groups struggle with how to work constructively with members who position themselves on the outer edge, and I want to explore some of the nuances that come into play with this dynamic. In groups that make decisions by majority rule outlier dynamics are often sidestepped simply through the convenience of voting, in consensus-based groups, however, the culture is obliged to work with all elements, and that means the edges as well as the center.

In this series of entries I'll examine outlier dynamics through the following sequence:

I. Considered as a Singular Occurrence

II. Considered as a Pattern Based on Temperament or Style

III. Considered as a Pattern Based on Values

IV. Considered as a Strategy

• • •

Considered as a Pattern Based on Values

This person holds an extreme (in the context of the group) interpretation of one or more of the group's values and the pattern is that the group repeatedly bumps into that when working issues. The further out the position, the more work it is to bridge to it. The more frequently it surfaces, the more exhausted the group can become.

Perhaps their take on the group's commitment to taking seriously the environmental impact of its choices leads the outlier to consistently advocate for non-motorized approaches to everyday needs. While this may be a reasonable position in a group dedicated to living off the grid in a remote rural location, it is likely to come across as extreme in a group of urban professionals—and if you hear one more plea for a bicycle-powered washing machine you're going to puke.

—How it looks to the individual

I recently spent a couple hours doing couples counseling with my wife (in this case, we were giving advice rather receiving it), and we spent most of the time unpacking a fresh, representative example of how things go off the rails for this couple. It was both illuminating and poignant in that you could easily follow how each person came to the same dynamic with different perspectives that compounded their challenge in navigating a tender moment well.

While it remains to be seen how well our session provided the players with sufficient insight and hope that they'll be able to more productively handle the next flare up—and there is always a next flare up—rather than sliding back into the unproductive pattern that motivated them to ask for help in the first place, I want to devote today's blog to laying out their story, as an excellent cautionary tale of how tangled and hurtful these tough moments can get—despite deep love and both players intending well!

Let's call our couple Pat & Chris. Pat has self-esteem issues and a tendency toward jealousy and feeling neglected when Chris spends time with others. Pat also feels inarticulate and less powerful in conversation with Chris.

Going the other way, Chris was raised to be afraid of conflict (bad things happened at home when Chris' parents fought) and has been doing considerable personal work to better recognize and articulate feelings—which is something Chris has never been all that great at, and Pat is encouraging Chris to work on. On top of this, Chris also has self-esteem issues and often feels that whatever they offer is not enough; that criticism is much more likely than praise. While Chris is aware that they have more personal work to do, they're starved for recognition for what they've accomplished and for the effort they're putting in.

This is a standard Missouri greeting in the sweltering, humid days of July & August. (For some reason, this segment of the calendar is referred to as the Dog Days, yet canines don't seem to enjoy this weather any better than humans.) The perverse protocol on this greeting is that you don't ask the question unless you're well past what a normal human being would label "pleasant." If it isn't grossly understated, then you haven't waited for the thermometer to get high enough.

Last night I was over at Ma'ikwe's and it was damn hot. (Do you remember the monolog that Robin Williams does in Good Morning, Vietnam, where he's interviewing himself, playing the role of the hypothetical grunt, Roosevelt T Roosevelt, and asks him how he's doing? Roosevelt replies: "It's hot and wet. That's good if you're with a lady, and bad if you're in the jungle." Well, I was with the right woman but the ambiance was too jungly.)

Ma'ikwe's house is still a construction zone and she doesn't yet have screens installed on her bedroom windows, leaving you with a Hobson's Choice between: a) cross ventilation with unfettered bugs; or b) doing without, which translates to still air and temperatures too hot to tolerate skin-to-skin contact. Yuck! Last night we chose no insects and no intersection between bodies. (If I didn't already have a vasectomy this would be a highly effective prophylactic against undisciplined lust.)

I was the cook yesterday, and the timing was right to gather the ripe berries needed to create a traditional Schaub family dessert: suet pudding. The direct lineage for this recipe comes through my Aunt Hennie (my mother's older sister), who made this summer treat with Stendhalesque proportions: red & black raspberries, combined with red & black currants.

The roots of this concoction go back centuries into English cuisine (Hennie was born a Howard), and can be made in a wide variety of ways. Most commonly, it relies on a sweet biscuit-like topping that is steamed atop a base of small fruit—fresh in the summer, or dried if featured at Christmas. However, it can also be offered in savory forms, such a steak & kidney pie.

While for the most part suet pudding is steamed—that's the way Aunt Hennie prepared it—I've come to favor baking, and presenting this dish as a cobbler. (Where do these English names come from? When, for example, dried fruit is used instead of fresh, this offering is sometimes called "spotted dick," the etymology of which I'm going to refrain from exploring.) As yesterday was sunny and in the 90s, I was easily able to accomplish the baking in our solar cooker (which has no trouble reaching 250 degrees in such conditions) thus neatly shunting BTUs from a kitchen that was already plenty warm. It's fun employing modern technology in service to the adaptation of a traditional dish.

While the recipe that Hennie passed down to me calls for the traditional beef fat (suet), I long ago switched over to butter—which is still beef fat if you're willing to stretch a point. It says something profound about the origins of a recipe that its name highlights fat as its most salient feature. In the context of 15th Century England, the rural peasantry would not frequently enjoy desserts as part of their meal, and beef fat would be a treat more prized than fresh berries.

My reference to windows in this context is a limited time period in the weather allowing for specific farm work; currently, I mean a break in the rainy weather – enough time for the soils to dry so that we can till and plant our field crops.

About 2 months ago, my post read A More Normal Spring – indicating that after 3 years of wet springs, we were having  normal spring weather – ie, the absence of small windows; that turned out to be premature. It is being another incredibly wet spring – with small windows.

In an average year (actually, I’m not sure there is such a thing anymore), all of our spring crops would be planted by now: sorghum, field corn, popcorn, corn for seed for SESE (Southern Exposure Seed Exchange), soybeans, pinto & black beans. Right now only about half of our sorghum crop is planted – and none of the others. Earlier this spring, we had windows when we could have planted these crops but it was too cool for us organic producers. A week ago, we had a 3 day window in which to work down the green manure crop & weeds, and plant. We transplanted/planted about half of our sorghum crop; we could have planted more, but the weather was once again cool and the green manure crop was not all dead yet – so we decided not to plant more. Was it the right choice?

FYI: for background of my/our experience with honey bees at Sandhill, see http://www.sandhillfarm.org/beekeeping1.php

In my experience as a farmer, it is with honey bees, that I am most humbled. A prime example is this post.

Here is what I wrote May 1:

My last post on bees – only 7 months ago – was very positive and optimistic. To recap, I was very encouraged/optimistic about our bees last fall. They appeared more vibrant and healthy than in many years. We fantasized about the year ahead: we would build up our colony numbers and have a normal honey harvest.

THEN – this winter, we lost more than half of our colonies (11 out of 20) and currently, several more are struggling for survival. How could this happen? I’ve been keeping bees for 30 years – how could I have totally misjudged this situation?

I don’t have an answer; naturally, I have theories/possible explanations:

1. It’s really the mite problem all over again: for about the last 20 years, the varroa mites have been the main challenge to honey bees in this country – they compromise the immune system of the bees, who are then susceptible to various opportunistic diseases.

2. It’s due to a new class of agricultural chemicals: systemic seed treatments; some beekeepers believe that a new class of systemic seed treatments (eg on corn and other crops) have a devastating effect on honey bees. How so? The theory is that the systemic nature of the seed treatments expresses itself in the entire plant including the pollen – which is collected by bees to feed their brood. The effect of this pollen compromises the development of the immune system and health of the bees. Further, the effect  may not be noted for 6 months or more since the pollen is stored in the hive until it is needed – which may not be until the following spring.

Last night I participated in an hour-long interview for a thing called the Prepper Podcast, talking with Pat Carson from Wild Horse Ranch (a quarter section located in Sandy Lake, about 35 miles northwest of Edmonton, Alberta—which Pat refers to as "the land of oil and money"; a shibboleth updated from "the land of milk and honey").

The Prepper Podcast is a network of radio hosts promoting survival, preparedness, and sustainable living lifestyles, and I was solicited by Pat to be the guest for his Life on a Wild Horse Ranch program, which holds down the 8-9 pm slot every Friday. As always, it was fun talking about community, the FIC, & sustainability, and the hour went quickly. Pat was an enthusiastic interviewer and it was easy finding the intersection between intentional community and his homestead ranch.

It turned out that Wild Horse Ranch is an intriguing amalgamation of interests, offering a distinctive trinity of foci:
a) preservation of the Carson Breed Mountain Horse.
b) development of wild black currants as a vitamin-packed food source with excellent medicinal properties.
c) a retreat center for Japanese interested in experiencing a taste of the "Western lifestyle." Yeehah! (I knew right away I was onto something unusual when I went to their URL and the opening page—for a remote location in northern Alberta, mind you—offered me a choice of continuing in English or Japanese.)

I feel reasonably confident that this particular trifecta is not duplicated anywhere in the universe. In fact, I seriously doubt you'd find any two of these specialties combined elsewhere.

As a for-hire facilitator, I'm typically brought in to navigate one of two kinds of dynamics: something volatile, or something complicated. Of course, there are times when it's both. I encountered an excellent specimen of the combination plate special just last weekend, when my training class was facilitating quarterly meetings for the School of Living (SoL) in central Pennsylvania...

Two of the sessions we facilitated were meetings of the Land Committee. They had a proposal in front of them to execute long-term lease for a piece of property that SoL had owned for many years yet had experienced persistent trouble in finding a stable leaseholder for. The candidate was someone known to the organization who had been a caretaker on the property for the past half year and had already accomplished a considerable amount of clean-up and repair (to buildings that had been seriously degrading). Thus, the lease prospect had already established a good track record for herself as a motivated hard worker. On top of that, she is a permaculture teacher and wants to use the land as a demonstration site for sustainable land use practices.

As the School of Living wants long-term leaseholds for the property it holds in trust, they were happy to have a bona fide applicant, and in the afternoon we were able to establish to everyone's satisfaction that there was a sufficiently solid match with the woman's plans and the the school's mission around promoting education and community.

The trouble came in the evening when we discussed the financial details. The applicant has steady income as a working professional and was willing to commit tens of thousands of dollars in personal funds over the course of the next decade to renovating the dilapidated farmhouse. Understandably, she didn't want to embark on that ambitious program until terms had been negotiated with SoL.

For me, acknowledging what I don’t know is as important as what I think I do know. I am now 65 and except for a 10 year hiatus in/with academia, have been involved in agriculture all my life. For the last 15 years I have also been an organic inspector, which has brought me into contact with many organic farmers and processors of organic foods.

I figger I am now officially a senior – even though retirement is not in any of my plans. In one of my paradigms, my senior status indicates that I am now an “elder” – with connotations of experience & wisdom. Some days I relate to both those terms. This post is about times when I don’t.

I have been sharing this experience recently with my friend Dan, who has a 500 tree apple orchard. Although Dan is about a decade younger, we both note that the longer we live, the less we know for sure. Here is the crux: after decades of experience – when we thought we would be experts in our field, we find there are very few things that are always true.

So what’s the problem? First off, we appreciate how much we do know: we no longer have the angst of being new to the basics: soil fertility, plant growth, etc; but even those are incredibly complicated and what seems obvious one year is totally contraindicated the next (or several years later). It doesn’t seem fair: really, I was paying attention to the weather, the health of the plants/crops, and nurtured them the best I could – yet the outcome was totally different; eg, usually, the sorghum we grow from transplants is healthier and more productive than the ones we direct seed in the field, but in 2010 – it was exactly the opposite. So what is the lesson here? That really I don’t know – after all? Humbleness? OK, I got it.

Another prime example is my experience with honey bees – see next post (forthcoming).

In the agricultural life, every season is special & unique. Spring is a time of new beginnings – nature wakes up from resting during the winter and we humans get excited by swelling buds on the trees, new shoots of grass, crocuses flowering, etc.(at Sandhill, it heralds the beginning of the maple sap season – usually mid February),

It’s amazing how easily we take the seasons for granted – it’s simply the natural flow of life. However, the last three years we have had incredibly wet springs with below normal temperatures – making it very challenging to get crops planted in the fields and even in our gardens. I noted that last year, it was hard to be excited by spring – the constant waiting became depressing. In short, spring was mostly not joyous.

This year we are having a more normal spring: average temperatures and rainfall which means that so far we have been planting crops in a timely fashion. It is still too early to be planting most of our field crops but we are on schedule in planting the vegetable crops. This year we started a new venture – planting produce to sell on a larger scale and that planting is in the normal range. Our peach, cherry, and pear trees are in full bloom; the apricots are finished, and the apples are just beginning.

t is noteworthy how uplifting I find this situation. Perhaps I had not fully realized how much the cold/wet springs had affected me – although I do remember us talking about it last year. In my role as an organic inspector, I had also noted that I had never seen organic farmers more depressed about the weather preventing them from timely planting of annual crops.

I note that this is still early in the season – hopefully, I am not jinxing us by writing about it; in fact yesterday & today it is rainy and cold.

BUT – at this time, we feel uplifted by having a “normal” spring. I am not taking it for granted – I am celebrating and once again, joyous for this season!

When I come to Las Vegas I rarely spend time on the Strip, but last night was an exception. I had a lovely evening with my son Ceilee, my daughter Jo, and her partner Peter. We started with a three-hour sake tasting at the Mirage (150 varieties!), and followed that up with a nostalgic visit to the Sahara, where we played some blackjack and roulette until midnight and my kids each pocketed a souvenir chip when it was time to cash out. The Sahara is one of the grand old ladies of the Strip (it opened in 1952), but the owners announced last month that they plan to close this icon May 16. We decided to pay homage to this classic casino whose time was coming to an end.

For a Vegas casino, 59 years old is ancient—not for its patrons, mind you, but for a business operating in the land of hype, where show-me-what's new is king and they overhaul the landscape of the Strip about as often as strippers change outfits (and with a similar degree of subtlety). The Sahara goes all the way back to the prime of Louie Prima & Keely Smith.

Sadly though, the glory days of the Sahara are long gone. There are many newer, glitzier hotels and casinos and the epicenter of the action has moved further south down Las Vegas Blvd. The Sahara had become a dog of a casino, and it couldn't survive the current recession.

Man's Best Friend
While many people who visit Vegas may consider casinos their best friend, I'm more of a traditionalist: I like dogs. Sitting next to me as I type is Zeus, a pit bull/boxer mix that Ceilee brought with him from Missouri when he and Tosca moved to the desert back in 2007. Occasionally he gets bored with my pecking away at the keyboard and suggests we go for a walk by placing his considerable muzzle on my thigh and staring at me hopefully (and when doesn't work he starts licking my ear).

As a process consultant and FIC administrator I'm on the road about 60% of the time, which is a gob. Among other things, it further complicates the challenge of spending time with my wife (which is already sufficiently complexified by our not living in the same community—Ma'ikwe's bedroom at Dancing Rabbit is three miles away from mine at Sandhill Farm).

While I'm more or less in regular communication with my wife whenever we're apart (usually by email and occasionally by phone), and my relationship with her is never far from my consciousness, every now and then I get reminded of her in surprising and tender ways. I want to share one of those experiences that occurred this past weekend.

Friday and Saturday night I was staying with a client, in a house that I'd never been in before. They had me in a lovely guest room and the accommodations couldn't have been better (including unlimited access to fresh brewed curl-your-toes coffee with half & half in the morning—my kind of people). My first night there I noticed that there was an unusual, subtle smell in my bedroom that I couldn't place. It wasn't unpleasant (like a dead mouse); it was just odd and I couldn't figure out what it was.

In the morning, I showered, got dressed, and walked into the kitchen, leaving the mystery of my bedroom behind, or so I thought. After worshiping at the altar of the coffee maker—getting psyched for my day on stage as a consultant—I was sipping my java and casually glancing around. The kitchen is my favorite room in a house and they had a well-appointed one.