Saturday, July 28, 2012

Live It Up


We don't beat the Grim Reaper by living longer, we beat him by living well and living fully, for the Reaper will come for all of us. The question is what we do between the time we are born and the time he shows up. It's too late to all the things your kinda gonna get around to.

Randy Pausch

Image: "Live it Up" by Debby Hasard Strauss

At Home

I went to the Bellingen Energy Festival and what a Festival it was. The Festival is in its sixth year and has previously focused on renewable energy. This year they expanded that to looking at sustainable communities so it included an art exhibition, contributions from Transitions Bellingen, the community gardens, many kids activities and a myriad of other local businesses and projects .... and was in conjunction run with the best local Growers Market I have seen! Dick Smith and Bob Brown were the headline acts.

I spent a good six hours there, mostly sitting in the shade chatting with people (for logistical reasons) but there was certainly wandering when I could. At one stage I got co-opted into helping supervise the kids (say 7 - 9 year olds) who were making paper mache .... which ended up in me getting paper mached and all of us laughing uproariously (and a number of fruit bowls made, as well as fruit and vegetables to fill them so there was some constructive work being done as well as the silly play).

What gets me most is that I am home here in this town. I have known it for a while but it is the first town ever I have felt at home (I have enjoyed living in many towns but always knew they were temporary stops on the journey of life) and it still surprises me when something happens to remind me.

I probably knew to talk to about a third of the large crowd, and could identify others as familiar. Obviously there were still lots I didn't know - be they locals or visitors to town. I spent the day talking to farmers and producers and chefs and moms and business people and artists and children and musicians and gardeners and friends and and and. Some of the conversations were deep and meaningfuls, others were on local food, some were on catching up on various projects I/we are involved in, still others were general chit chat.

There was very much laughter. There was much hugging of hello. There were promises of catching up again soon over coffee or wine or produce. After all of my years on this planet, I have found where I belong. I am home.




Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Time flies


What a year it has been -  certainly not my best, but far from the worst so I guess I can't complain too much.  One of the big highlights has been my little radio program Passionfruit and Chilli - broadcast on our local community radio station 2bbb but also available as a podcast (check out the website or do a search for it on iTunes).

But that is no excuse for neglecting my poor Mountaingirl's Musings (where have I head that before) - and my neglect has meant it is now getting spammed. Sigh .... my fault really.

But onwards and upwards :-)