Welcome

Householding in the elder years

Welcome, we begin, I begin. Maybe you’ll join me. Seems like everyone’s doing it. The “kids” mostly. This substack thing. And by “kids” I mean anyone younger than 40. At least that’s what I figure cause everyone wants a voice and maybe just another way to pay the bills if they’re lucky. But I’m just writing cause I’ve reached the 7th decade with impressions and perspectives I hope the “kids” (or anyone) might find interesting or helpful or whatever. Likely I’m just writing for myself and you are willing to come along. At least for a minute or moment of your day or longer should I catch your attention. Should writing about what my life as a householder in her 7th decade (you’ve read the book haven’t you?) interests you. What book? Oh, A Householder’s Guide to the Universe. A guide, a memoir, a rant. A year in the “life”. What “life”?

The “life” is an immersion into a time and world that doesn’t really seem to exist anymore but calls all the same. You know…. conversations over the clothes line. Shucking corn or stringing beans (yeah, that’s what they call them string beans) or peeling apples with your neighbors. Living in the seasons, sowing, growing and stowing the stuff you want in your store. Your store not theirs. The store you’ve stocked with the stuff you’ve grown or harvested, gleaned, put up. These are the imaginings. But the life is a difficult given how we all live, or most of us live, with one foot, or two feet in the city trying to make a living doing or selling or marketing the stuff that comes from the imagining. Which is ironic in a way cause the imagining have nothing to do with selling anything, not really, but what you gonna do? One foot or two feet in the city comes with a price tag, a steep one most the time, so a person’s got to punt. Gotta turn the imaginings into a way to pay the bills even as the better part of our hearts wanders amid some time, somewhere that doesn’t really exist anymore but calls you all the same. Or calls me.

This is always how it always is for me but i’m in my 7th decade and with my time on main street, in restaurants (Harriet’s Eat Now), cafes (Groundswell), teaching food preservation (Preserve) creating preserving videos (Preserving with Friends) writing books (A Householder’s Guide….) or teaching how to be a householder behind me, sorta, I now face another chapter. One that has brought the imaginings into the life of an elder without a neighbor across the clothesline to talk to. Which is why I figure I’m talking to you now hoping I have something to offer the “kids” or anyone who is willing to spend a moment of their day to find out what this elder is musing on. Which, frankly, is generally about how the heck to make the “life” work in today’s times given all the stuff we are up against.

Okay, we’ll start and stop there. The first installment. More to come.

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