tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-368321122024-03-07T04:24:56.183+00:00ElderwomanblogMarian Van Eyk McCain's occasional thoughts on green and conscious ageing, simple living, green spirituality, loving the earth ... and life in general.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-40519871462103477602023-11-09T17:12:00.000+00:002023-11-09T17:12:37.288+00:00Third Time Lucky? It seems that we are somehow not meant to be part of the elders cohousing community we have so long dreamed of establishing. The Barney Fields venture that I was so excited about in my last blog post has now gone the same way as the previous one -- the developer has decided that it is not financially viable. This is another huge disappointment for us - in fact it's an even bigger Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-40217193681232004072022-02-11T19:22:00.010+00:002022-02-11T19:27:34.588+00:00Reviving this blog - and a whole new cohousing ventureThis blog has seriously languished in recent years. I can't blame the pandemic because the blog started languishing a whole year before the pandemic began. But I have been engrossed in my various projects.The last time I posted, I was telling you all about our exciting plans for an elders cohousing community in south Devon (on the Dartington Hall estate near Totnes). Everything was going Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-90400573465297218642018-07-28T18:53:00.000+01:002018-07-28T21:39:23.017+01:00Eco-cohousing for Elders: A project dear to our hearts
One of the things that a lot of people don't get around to
doing as they get into old age is to make plans for how they are going to spend
the last stage of their lives. All too often, they just drift along, year after
year, until one day they reach the point where they can no longer cope with the
tasks of daily life and someone else has to step in and make decisions for
them—frequently, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-54084855048706560482017-10-29T15:12:00.000+00:002017-10-29T15:12:21.415+00:00September/October 2017 Travel Report
We have been off travelling again, this time to the USA.
See: http://www.elderwoman.org/USATrip_2017.html
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-74558897805249624192017-08-09T16:25:00.003+01:002017-08-09T16:28:37.633+01:00'Elderwoman' Republished at Last!
In 2015, when Findhorn Press told me they were taking my book Elderwoman out of print after thirteen years, I decided to republish it myself. It has taken me all this time to get around to doing it, but finally, here it is, the second edition, with an extra chapter that I added about how it felt to turn eighty last year.
And now, as well as a paperback with a brand new (and I think much nicerUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-67572232256792363792017-04-17T18:29:00.001+01:002017-04-17T18:34:45.038+01:00Elderwoman Newsletter - May 2017
The May 2017 issue of The Elderwoman Newsletter is now online at:
http://www.elderwoman.org/May17news.html
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-26298974787004040382016-10-02T17:36:00.002+01:002016-10-02T17:36:54.155+01:00Me - A RetrospectiveLike most people, I save photographs. And like most people my age, a lot of those photographs pre-date the digital era. But of course paper deteriorates over time. Some folk who, like me, have collections of old photos in a box in the attic, are tackling the task of scanning them in order to preserve them for future generations.
Whether or not future generations will have the slightest interest Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-25046970953931537922016-09-24T17:02:00.001+01:002017-03-18T11:37:31.679+00:00Down from the Mountains
Whenever
we visit Italy - which we have been doing every year for the past six or seven
years - it is usually to the Mediterranean coast because I am such a lover of
the sea. But Sky also has a great love of mountains. So this year, as a special
treat for him, I organized a trip to the far north of Italy, to the Dolomites.
As
usual, we came overland - train from London to Paris, Paris to Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-55067167508525222742016-05-28T17:31:00.000+01:002016-05-28T17:39:02.456+01:00At This Time of Year....
...in our Devon hedgerows,
the campions reign supreme.
And when I get to the top of this lane, there is another beautiful sight to behold.
The wild orchids have popped up again...
...like they do every year around this time,
despite the rough treatment this ground has seen during the winter, with those big, clumsy agricultural machines that gouge out deep, muddy ruts andUnknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-49034689868338627182016-04-20T17:20:00.000+01:002016-04-20T17:20:23.679+01:00Deep Green Living
Once again, I have had the pleasure and privilege of editing a book in the GreenSpirit series of ebooks. This latest one has the title Deep Green Living, and it deals with themes that are very dear to my heart. It has a lot of very beautiful writing in it, too. Like several of the other ebooks in the series, it is an anthology. Some of the pieces have been published previously in our Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-62184140164179106922015-05-17T18:04:00.000+01:002015-05-17T18:05:23.905+01:00Roller-Coasters and Robins
Most of us who have been parents will probably recall that our children's behaviour seemed to cycle between periods when everything seemed calm, pleasant and easy and periods when chaos reigned and we started to wonder what we were doing wrong. I remember very well the day, nearly half a century ago, when I discovered a book in our local library that explained how and why this process occurs.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-91923302807763319872014-10-30T14:48:00.000+00:002014-10-30T14:48:53.453+00:00Off Travelling Again
Yes, I have been neglecting this blog for several months. And that, of course, is because we have been 'on the road' once more.
Here's my latest trip report - once again from Italy.
http://www.elderwoman.org/Italy_Sept-Oct2014.htmlUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-69137847136566905522014-09-14T20:42:00.001+01:002014-09-14T20:44:06.700+01:00Harvest Then and Now and ...Again?
It is September and the green fields around here are
interspersed with gold, just as they have been for generations. Not that there
is much arable farming in this area as the culm grassland is mostly sheep and
cattle country. But our local farmers do grow a little wheat and barley and
this has been a wonderful year for it as the weather has been so warm and dry.
Over recent weeks, on my daily Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-85012904980517701052014-08-26T17:35:00.000+01:002014-08-26T17:35:45.185+01:00Summer Ending (in haiku)
Nights are lengthening.
Leaves hang heavy, all that's left
one fluttering fall.
Swallows gathering:
"Mum, why must we wait on wires?
—and what's 'africa?'
"
Shall I burrow down
here into my home soil, or
follow the sun south?
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-17626719694028991422014-07-25T17:23:00.001+01:002014-07-27T18:49:29.172+01:00Sunshine, Sweat and Purple Flowers
Lately, the days are warm—so wonderfully warm that if feels
like a miracle after the cool, wet summers we’ve had here in England in recent
years. There are butterflies everywhere. The grasses are high, the meadowsweet
is fading into seed and there are small green berries forming on the brambles.
The colour palette for these late July days is deep pink to
purple, ranging from willowherb andUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-46593130797287914822014-07-13T16:04:00.000+01:002014-07-13T16:04:50.488+01:00The Greenie's Not (For) Dozing
One day, back in the early 1990s when we were homesteading
in the Australian bush, we went to town for supplies. Just before we headed
into the hardware store for our latest unglamorous purchase of whatever it was
we currently needed in our build-your-own-self-sufficient-mudbrick-house
project, I noticed that we had parked immediately behind a very large and very full logging
truck, to the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-30486451062927089442014-03-30T16:35:00.000+01:002014-03-30T16:43:38.176+01:00A Spring in Time
It takes a chest infection and a week of sitting around
indoors to appreciate fully how quickly the spring is moving. Even before I got
sick, the world around here was golden, with primroses dotting the banks and
vast drifts of daffodils and celandines everywhere I looked. The marsh
marigold beside our back door was bursting with thick buds, the first violets
were appearing and the first few Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-37176999225090592852014-03-22T14:07:00.000+00:002014-03-22T14:07:44.694+00:00Behind the Scenes
A few years ago, Big Pharma’s push to have everyone taking
cholesterol-lowering statins was starting to make news all over the place. See
for example this
article in the New York Times from 2008.
More recently, there has been more and more news emerging
about the downside of ingesting these drugs. More and more warnings against
starting on them. More research into the dangers. I was Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-30438300046633918662014-03-15T21:04:00.000+00:002014-03-15T21:04:46.059+00:00My New Copper Trowel
My new copper trowel arrived in the mail
this morning.
It is truly a thing of beauty. When I
unwrapped the parcel and took it out, it positively glowed. As I held it in my
hand and admired it, it seemed almost a shame to put it into the ground.
We already had a trowel like this that we
bought several years ago. But since we have two gardens—the one next to our
cottage and an ‘allotment’ Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-46553891357008307252013-11-06T19:44:00.003+00:002013-11-06T19:44:49.819+00:00Exploring Islands
I have been absent from this blog for a lot of weeks now and that is because I have been indulging my passion for travel, especially in the Mediterranean region and especially in Italy.
This autumn, Sky and I returned to both Sardinia and Sicily and explored five small offshore islands that we have never visited before. Here is my account of our travels:
http://Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-5772406159616728022013-08-30T15:09:00.002+01:002013-08-30T15:11:36.594+01:00Engaged Elderhood
One day recently, two things that came into my email inbox at the same time set me thinking about the way old age is commonly portrayed in our culture these days. The
first was a post by that indomitable blogger, Ronni Bennett, whose 'Time Goes By' blog about aging is read
and relished by hundreds of people every day. In this post,
headed 'An Old Age Better Than I Ever Expected,' Ronni wrote: Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-17135994005339406752013-07-16T14:52:00.000+01:002013-07-16T14:52:42.574+01:00Making a Mark
My Teva sandals have a distinctive tread on their soles and
when the summer sun softens the tar patches along the lane the little kid in me
can't resist pressing my foot's pattern into them. Then, next day, I look to
see if my footprints are still discernible. They almost never are of course. By
the time the sun has left the lane and the tar has cooled, they have long since
been obliterated Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-71012875492060076692013-06-05T22:14:00.003+01:002013-06-05T22:16:44.826+01:00A Summertime Flowering
This year, as the unusually late spring nudged up against the first days of summer, we have seen an amazing array of wildflowers along our lanes and hedgerows. The bluebells, which are usually long gone by this time of year, lingered long enough to co-exist for several weeks with the first pink flushes of campions...
...and even now, in a few shady places, there are still a few primroses Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-62996710048173343662013-05-14T16:42:00.001+01:002013-05-14T16:42:42.828+01:00Getting From Here to There
We have just been doing
some travel planning and that set me thinking, once again, about my
relationship to modern modes of travel.
One of my early heroes
was Ivan Illich, who died in 2002 at 76 (the age I am now). I was lucky enough to
meet and converse with him at one point in my life and it is to him that I owe
many of my ideas about simple and sustainable lifestyles.
Illich, as he Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36832112.post-85833117157652406702013-02-24T13:10:00.003+00:002013-02-24T13:13:32.857+00:00Spiritual TeachersWatkins magazine just published its annual list of the 100 most spiritually influential people in the world. It was interesting to see whose names made it on to that list, but I found it even more interesting to ponder about all those whose names didn't - and why they didn't.
How, I wondered, would you go about compiling a list like that? It seems they did it mostly by looking at how many Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2