The day it was picked

Sometimes people get the chance to eat food that was just picked that day. Those doing the picking might get to taste things right in the garden!

Life allows us to eat food all year that wouldn't have been available without trucks, trains, and ships. There's an upside and a downside.

I live in such a dry place that without import and transport, I would never even have seen most of the foods I can buy. I'm grateful for both—fresh local, for those things New Mexico can produce, and for those foods that needed different climates and seasons.

Live lightly and sweetly around food.

Joy / Live Lightly
photo by Belinda Dutch, in Brighton, England

Organizational skills

Most skills take more than one intelligence. The organization of tools and supplies probably requires nature intelligence (knowing which things are similar, in various ways), and spatial (seeing patterns and relationships in how things can fit, and be accessed).

People survive without being as organized as Tara Joe's kitchen, but it's good to appreciate the artistry of organizational ability.

If you see someone's desk, or sock drawer, or tools, or fruit bowl nicely arranged, maybe mention that you noticed.

Intelligences
photo by Tara Joe Farrell
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Threads

"Connection translates to trying to find more things that might tie into something that she might have liked before. Connection could translate to being excited about a bug or a thread or a cartoon."

—Pushpa Ramachandran,
part of Being means being

Thread literally is a tiny cord, but thread figuratively is a series of connections, and so it comes full circle.

Interwoven
photo by Nina Kvitka
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Over, under, in between

Where we are in relationship to others changes all the time, with physical realities of space, place, size and age, mood, waking and sleeping. We move; they move.

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Pam Sorooshian wrote:

"Unschooling is more like a dance between partners who are so perfectly in synch with each other that it is hard to tell who is leading. The partners are sensitive to each others' little indications, little movements, slight shifts and they respond. Sometimes one leads and sometimes the other."

—Pam Sorooshian

Being your child's PARTNER, not his adversary
photo by Jo Isaac
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All kinds of doors

Sometimes doors are open, and sometimes they're not. Sometimes it costs money to go through a door, or it's private, or it is so locked or sealed that it's just part of the wall.

Real doors open up to mysteries, beauty, food, something scary, or boring. All kinds of things have doors.

Metaphorical or figurative doors, ditto!

Sometimes the door is interesting even if it's not open to everyone.

Hidden secret rooms and magic doors
and
zombies
photo by Ester Siroky

Stillness

Beautiful moments of stillness and calm are around us all the time. Sometimes we notice.

Look Quietly
photo by Annie Regan, who wrote "Possibly my favourite spot in the whole world.
Cradle Mountain, Tasmania, just on sunrise in this photo"
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Same old appreciation

Same old sink, same old dishes. Same house, day after day. But look how, randomly, the spoon and fork handles all pointed in different directions. Look how the light hits things. The sky reflected down into my sink! I am grateful to have that sink and those dishes. My house keeps us safer, cooler in summer, warmer in winter, day after day. A dirty pot means we had food, and a stove to cook it over. Dirty bowls mean people ate. That is something to be happy about.

SandraDodd.com/dishes
photo by Sandra Dodd