Is an Agrarian Birth, an Orgasmic Birth? 12/06/2011
The gift of life and the gift of giving life. The images of these births are beyond amazing, beyond bright lights and sterile hospital rooms. This is a new view of birth, for many of us in the western world.  A mother gives birth to her son. This photograph captured a momentous introduction of a mother and baby's first exchange. The baby is suspended in time, half way inside his mother and the world; being guided out by his mother's own hands. Photograph was captured by friend and doula of the mother. 2 Comments Death, Suicide, and the Month of November 11/27/2011
Do you ever think of asking someone if they are ok—like when you know they are not but you don’t know them well enough to really ask… and then it’s too late. Like really too late. Like, the end. Like, lights out, Like, they have killed themselves.
On Life and Death and The Ever After 10/24/2011
 I find funerals to be extraordinary. Like a really good yoga class – on steroids. And acid. Death is commanding. Captivating. Shedding the layers of culture, of epoch, of fashion. Of time, and appointments that no longer need to be met. You become human, when a loved one dies. Just a simple human being, full of love and loss. You become part of the mourning family of friends. History surfaces. The stories of the Angel’s life, the fire that burned, are shared. The puzzle pieces begin to join as the people who cared come together. As they mourn together. As they remember because it is the duty of the living, the compulsion of the living, to remember.
 I lived through the Information Age. Make no mistake, we are now living in the post Post-Information Age, and it's not pretty.
The Information Age began more or less with the printing press, and took root as wealth and our ability to share information globally grew and as television provided nonstop news and documentary, and then skyrocketed to its Apex as the Internet became a way of life across the world. The Information Age has finally ended with the outright assault on Democracy and free speech, the re-consolidation of power in the very few, the Corporate coup of the United States government, and the overwhelming denial of scientific validity on all fronts of power and societal organization. What is it all for anyway? What is Backyard Agrarian? I'm not great at the elevator pitch - I mean, you can't say, to save the world - or can you?
The real purpose of Backyard Agrarian is to think about how to create a modern culture that will actually work - that will stop destroying everything in sight, and instead create a smarter culture that makes us all happier and healthier and less deadly to the planet and the bugs and everything else. Backyard Agrarian is like a sustainability think tank, but it's more than that. It is also about devising and developing everyday strategies and serious actions for this better world that is oh so possible. Hey Xcel - Sunflowers ARE for the Birds 08/02/2011
 One lone sunflower remains. Xcel's Valmont Coal plant in the background. Whatever one may think about the issue of burning coal, extending Xcel's Franchise Agreement with the City of Boulder, or about climate change and Xcel's level of contribution to it, one thing we should all easily be able to agree on, is that Sunflowers are good.
What kind of jokes will you tolerate? Racial ones? Sexist ones? Ten thousand knock knock jokes from a 3-year-old? It dawned on me this weekend, that I draw the line - at ecosystem jokes. At unabashed, it's ok to destroy because we are human, type of jokes.
The Onward March Continues 07/13/2011
 I just celebrated my 38th birthday. I enter the next year with some sadness as I look around at the world and the culture that I live in. I remember learning when I was young, about how that evil German was a master of propaganda - how he somehow used it to win over the people. As a child, I remember thinking, "How could the people be so stupid - so duped?" But when I look around at my own culture, or the dominant one that I live in the midst of, I see that we are just as duped and perhaps even more stupid.
Dams are Gross. Stop Gross Dam. 07/12/2011
 Living in a society that insists on progress towards mass suicide is, to say the least, disconcerting. We insist on subsidizing a food system that produces poisonous food that gives everybody diabetes. We subsidize the farmers that grow that "corn" through financial handouts and through even more insidious means like building ever-more dams to provide the water that is spewed randomly into the air to water the junk food crops.
In the Forest Garden 06/29/2011
 This hidden Columbine, took my breath away. Having been out of the professional gardening world for around a year, and having just taken a walk through my wild forest garden, bursting with hidden flowers, many of them edible, I notice that my garden aesthetic is entirely, unshakably changed - for the better. There is a Landscape Imperative, and in this dying world, we gardeners have to meet it.  Wild rose. | Backyard Agrarian's Thoughts on Sustainable LivingBackyard Agrarian living isn't about any one thing. It's about how all things are connected. It's about going through life day after day, making observations and continuos adjustments. It's a new way of life being developed during these new times in human and planetary history. It's about how we feel in times of birth, death, frustration, joy and how we respond and act and how we see the connections between our human stuff and what's going on around us. This blog isn't about any one topic. It's about day-to-day thoughts on exploring an agrarian-minded world view, in the modern world.
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