Who is this voice in the wind...
So first off I realized I haven’t really revealed who we are or what we look like. I’m going to start fixing that now! Above*: Matt and I, Melinda, on our wedding day (Aug 18, 2006). I wore a blue dress, it took place in a beautiful natural setting at the arboretum in Seattle, the 26 people at the ceremony were all close friends and relatives, and everyone there was a part of the wedding party.... Hopefully that gives you a bit of a sense of who we are, and more will follow in future posts.
Technicalities...
If you have been following along, you know that we have been having a number of technical issues - first getting our internet running in a rural setting, then getting our site to upload, and currently, fighting off serious and time-consuming bugs with the blog program. The good thing about it is that it has forced me to think more about where the blog is going and where Elements in Time is headed. I have plans in the works to fix our buggy system (yes, bugs are coming up again!), but it will take at least a couple of weeks to fully iron out. In the meantime, I’ll continue to post and hit “save” a lot, and hold my breath every time I try to publish!
Back posts...
We were fully online in September, and I’ve been slowly back posting our journey since we came to Geyserville in early May. There are still 2 months of story missing - boy what a lot of work it is!
But I’ve come to wonder how useful it is to chronicle the day to day steps in our garden, other than to provide ourselves with an online gardening journal. It’s sounding a bit selfish! Is it really helpful for anyone besides me to know that I watered the plants today?! Or, more importantly, can my posts be more helpful? A resounding yes, I think!
I thoroughly enjoyed writing the bug posts, and the eating locally post. Plus I’m finding that - go figure - that’s what I like to read in others’ blogs: one idea explored in each post, fun and informative.
So rather than continue our day-to-day journal, I think it will be more helpful to spend a post writing about our tomatoes, for example: what techniques worked, what didn’t work, what our yields were, what I’d do differently, and generally what I learned. Surely I won’t do that for every crop, but I’ll focus on one idea per post - on the topics of sustainability and gardening - and investigate it.
Elements in Time...
Ok, here’s the big change. And more about me, too!
Change #1.
I set out from the time I was about 12 to save the world. Yep, it’s true. Since then I’ve realized that the world doesn’t need to be saved, exactly, and furthermore, that one person alone has a really tough time saving it. I’m worried about our climate, I’m worried about the terribly negative effect our species has had on other species. And I’m worried about poverty and greed and how both will fare as we face more global issues in climate, energy, and environment/habitat destruction. So I’ve learned that what I can do is help make this world a more compassionate, caring place, in the hopes that people will care enough to take a step back from their lifestyles and see the effect that their own choices have on the world around them.
The modern Western model of living seems to be to divorce ourselves as much as possible from our natural environment, from how things work. We have iPods and McDonald’s happy meals, but we don’t know how they are constructed, where the parts came from, or who made them. Nor do we think about how insular our lives become when we tune the people around us, or buy McDonald’s fries rather than potatoes from a local farmer.
When someone like us wants to know these things, wants to begin to live a life where we consciously think about where things come from and apply that knowledge to the decisions we make... we are looked at as strange, foreign, different, unusual. In fact, I’ll admit that we often hide it because we are ultimately trying to provoke change, and to be seen as an outsider does not help us in that effort.
I’m meandering a bit, but all this is to say that this blog is cataloguing our exploration into how to create food, and our path toward consciously making choices about what we’re putting in our body. And we would like to amp that up a bit, and begin to incorporate video into the mix, since that is my area of expertise. As soon as we iron out the programming bugs, the plan is to include a weekly video podcast - again, on the subjects of sustainability and gardening. Look for our first installment in a couple of weeks (assuming all goes well technically!).
Change #2.
Along the same lines, Elements in Time as a whole needs a bit of an amping up, too. More about me:
Over the past several months, I have been taking a bit of a break from work. I’ve done some small jobs here and there, but I’ve spent most of that time developing my own ideas and thoughts. Matt and I were calculating this summer that I have gone straight from one project to the next for the last TEN YEARS, without much of a break at all. And for those of you who don’t know, working on film projects is a 7-day per week, 14- to 16-hours per day job. It’s brutal. So I deserved a break!!
That said, it’s time to get cooking. Our next media project is going to be a little different, a bit of an experiment. If all goes well, it may become a model for future projects. Here goes:
Our as yet untitled project (temporarily called Planting Seeds) will focus on interesting people around the world who are exploring exciting, innovative techniques in the area of sustainable gardening and sustainable agriculture. It will be a 15-part video podcast series. And it will also be available as a self-distributed DVD series (more work for us, but also more control and less overhead).
Finding funding for such a series will be an interesting endeavor, as we’re entering uncharted waters. If you know of anyone who might be interested in funding or partially funding this type of a project, please email me (projects at elementsintime dot com).
I have been building a great list of interesting innovative people over the last few months, but if you know of someone or some group that might be worth investigating for this series, please do email me (projects at elementsintime dot com).
Our long-term goal is to create an on-line media source for sustainable lifestyles... But one step at a time...
Here’s to new beginnings!!
*Photo taken by Harrison Hurwitz, an amazing photographer.
