www.threestonehearth.com

a cooperative community supported kitchen in berkeley, set up to function just like a CSA (community supported agriculture). boxes of highly nutritive, freshly prepared foods(in their kitchen!) – from cereals to main dishes to lacto-fermented sodas go out every week to members. i worked in their kitchen when I was passing through town – these folks are really doing it.

wild sourdough starter = liquid + flour + wild yeast

mix together a liquid (non-chlorinated water, unsweetened fruit juice, whey, soymilk…) and a flour (wheat or rye) in equal measures. throw a damp cloth over the mixture. you have just invited the wild yeasties to come – just wait for them. when you see bubbles the wild yeasts have arrived. feed the wild yeasties equal parts of liquid and flour every day until you have enough for bread or pancakes etc.

wild pickling = veggies or fruit + brine + wild bacteria and yeast

chop veggies/wild greens/fruit whatever you want to pickle. make a brine with non-chlorinated water and sea salt. brine should be near saturation. toss denser material (i.e. roots, garlic cloves) into brine and and swirl it around a bit. drain veggies saving brine. mix pre-brined veggies and less dense material (i.e. greens and fruit). pack a glass jar with your mix and pour the brine over it submerging all material. work out trapped bubbles with a stick. fill a small bag with extra brine and use as a water bladder to keep material submerged. leave the jar open to allow the beasties to eat for at least three days. taste and eat, let them keep eating for a stronger taste or refrigerate and slow them down.

wild mead = uncooked honey + water + wild yeast

determine the amount of mead you want to make. water to honey is 1:4 . bring non-chlorinated water to a low simmer, if you are making a medicinal or flavored mead, add herbs. a singular or simple combination is best. allow to steep with the lid on to trap the evaporating oils. after a good medium-strength tea is made, pour in honey and stir until it dissolves. remove from heat immediately. allow to cool and pour into glass bottles or a carboy. cover with a cloth and a rubberband. be patient. better yet, forget about it. the yeasties will have to eat for almost a year until you get a nice dry mead. and yes, you can always siphon off the liquid and transfer it to another container. you can use the fall out crud on the bottom to make sourdough starter…

Uh…you guys…wait, wait…I…uh…I want to tell you about something that happened this week.

My car passed its 100,000th mile. I anticipated the milestone for sometime and found myself thinking about time, distance and life changes. A spiritualist once told me that cars represent the symbolic self and marketers may sell to the id and the ego, but while I admire fine vehicles the cars I have owned are utilitarian. Basically I look for cars that stop, go, and have a spare tire.

My current vehicle is best described as a “permanent rental car.” I purchased the car new in 1998 and considered neither style, nor color, nor options package. I told the dealer the payment stream that I could make and he responded with a white mid-size four-door sedan. Like what you find on any airport’s rental car lot. “What’s a Contour?” I asked. A vanilla white Ford that I drove off the lot onward to my future.

I was a different man then, a bachelor pursuing humanitarian good through finance. I was not casper milktoast; I labored for years, more than a decade, to organize, finance and fund a bank/information network granting credit based upon the ability to communicate: the fewest people have material assets but every person has the ability to communicate. Our birthright could form the basis of a system humane and pivotal.

My financial logic was valid, no banker did deny, and the prospects seemed strong but with galling naivety I asked the wrong question, wondering, “Could this be done?” And as certainly as folk wisdom knows to “be careful what you ask for, you just may get it” I learned that while such a system is possible the salient question is whether the political will exists to implement such a system? I found “humanitarian finance” to be an oxymoron, and I came to question an economic system where pursuing the common good is classified by what it is not - the sector of community service, of the arts, education and culture termed “not-for-profit.” More than semantics are at play here; the economy is about ownership rather than stewardship.

To the Ancient Greeks hubris was the greatest sin. I sought the brass ring, to slay the dragon and my transgressions came not by an assigned fate but rather through conscious choice. Assets far and rare, hundreds of millions of dollars, came in pursuit of the structure that I built but so too came lawyers in wing tips and lawsuits. For one year I was held in contempt of court with fines mounting daily, until in the end the Federal judge erased the ruling and its penalties were fictive, though intensely painful scarring memories. Oh, the angst and tempering pressure was slow to play out. Its half-life ripples still.

The fall was sharp and wrenching but it granted me a lesson in compassion. How do we learn compassion? It’s not just an idea and it really can’t be taught. It’s not an achievement, not about doing, but a quality within that is practiced in the local and present. Humility must be renewed daily.

I am a different man now, and stronger for the experience. My journey, while specific to me, I sense may be general to a wider population, my peers – male or female - raised in pursuit of opportunity, fueled with ambition and an unquestioning sense that to achieve is to be, that to “climb the mountain” is inherently good. The orthodoxy of the masculine, regardless of gender, celebrates action, too often unreflective, as heroic, meaningful and lasting. But there is an imbalance at our core.

The miles also brought sterling moments, as when I drove along Lake Shore Drive one Chicago autumn evening. My passenger was a beautiful soul clad in a woman’s body and about whom I was moved to say, “It’s true that still waters run deep.” She stood beside me while my prior self was burned and reborn. I speak now of same life reincarnation. While I did the work, in so many ways she nurtured the transformation and through all the miles since she has been my daily companion. In fact, most of the time she drives.

100,000 miles have measured a distance greater in life than in geography. We have moved far from the city but further still from the life lived there. As I approached the turning of the zeroes I thought on these things. I discounted the place where the event would occur, thinking mostly in symbolic terms. When it happened I was driving to work and it was an astonishing coincidence that the fifth zero fell into line exactly upon the threshold to the parking lot of my employment at a factory making durable goods. I took this not as an omen but as a cosmic joke.

The universe, as it often reminds me, does have a sense of humor. Sometimes not subtle.

- william ulysses