You Are What You…

When life is busy, there is little time for reflection. Tasks present themselves, one after another, sometimes tumbling into existence simultaneously, to keep the mind and hands engaged.

Other times, when life has slowed to a pace that invites reflection, thoughts and feelings deferred present themselves. It is then that I notice the eroding effect of online media, social and news media. The bigger picture is presented, almost always through the filter of conflict, almost always negative, primarily in contexts where there is little to no personal agency other than emotional outrage, or despair, or disgust. There is little that uplifts.

Today is a quiet day at Mist Cottage, filled with light rather than activity.

The chore of perusing the media, for information that affects decision making at a domestic scale, has has been accomplished for the day. This scanning of information is done early in the morning, allowing recovery time through daily activities. There being no cause to be seen in the media for optimism on any super-structural front, the rest of the day will be dedicated to doing what can be done to make the world a better place, at the micro-scale of one little and insignificant life.

The lack of of healthy human social structures is keenly felt during the first hours after digital-social contact exposure. The unhealthy parameters of thought and logic presented by “social influencers” are afterwards unlaced and shed like an over-tight corset. See Switching Trains of Thought: The Impact of News Frames on Readers’ Cognitive Responses for further details on this concept. The sadness and despair, that seeped through the screen into personal space, slowly but surely evaporate into light.

Humans are not only “what we eat”, we are also in some measure “what we read”, or watch, or listen to.

I am left sitting here with sunshine, and the surety that the core of love that sees to the survival of humanity is alive and well.

Yesterday was a busy day, spent milling flour, both Hard Wheat and Kamut. Wednesday had been spent baking, which used up every last ounce of home-milled flour. Two one-gallon jars were filled with Hard Wheat flour, and two quart-jars with Kamut flour.

Day-to-day life here offers projects of some sort every single day. Many tasks fill a day: refilling the water filter system; milling flour; baking bread; baking other products; making vegetable broth; cooking everything from scratch; and the constant management of the equipment and storage items that make all this possible.

For example, every single day I wash plastic bags and hang them up to dry. The only plastic bags that are not cleaned for further use are those that are not food safe, many of those are used as garbage bags. We use the food safe recycled bags for freezer storage, vegetable/fruit storage, leftover storage, bread bags, etc. We did buy some zip-loc bags a few years ago, as they make certain kinds of storage easier to handle, we are only using, and reusing, a few out of the box.

Last night just might have been the coldest night of the winter. Since the weather people warned about this, the beds were furbished with extra blankets. Both Attila and I slept soundly, as the cold weather agrees with our sleeping rhythms. The outdoor temperature was -22C early this morning.

The cold snap is supposed to continue until next week, so I will be busy wetting towels to keep the humidity up for the duration. Then the weather will get warmer! It won’t be warm of course, but warmer is preferable to colder from where I sit.

Today’s big project will involve sanitizing the week’s incoming mail. The mail is first removed from the envelopes, which are kept in larger dated envelopes, to be stored for eventual use as scrap paper. I spray the actual mail with hydrogen peroxide, then hang hang it to dry before processing it. We err on the side of caution here at Mist Cottage.

This is a pet peeve I’ve been thinking about this morning: One cannot readily purchase beverages in returnable and reusable containers. Almost all of our recycling items at the curb for pickup are beverage containers, metal and plastic. I notice Loblaws is experimenting with returnable ketcup bottles in Toronto, Ontario. This is good, but we don’t live there or buy commerical ketchup so it is lost on us. It would be nice to see juice sold in returnable glass bottles!

Stay safe dear friends.

Worldly

Weather

Fri, Feb 12, 10:05 AM
-18 °C
feels like -25
Overcast (sunny this morning!)
Full blown winter weekend ahead in Ontario with widespread snow, locally heavy lake-effect bands and dangerously cold conditions.
Wind 12 NE km/h
Humidity 52 %
Visibility 29 km
Sunrise7:12 AM
Wind gust 18 km/h
Pressure 103.1 kPa
Ceiling 9100 m
Sunset 5:32 PM

Quote

“Seeing ourselves as others see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them.”
Franklin P. Adams
1881 – 1960

This made me laugh out loud!