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Yoga for Shoulders & Neck
When I check in with my yoga class to see what they want to work on, the request is often for neck and shoulder stretches. Here are a few sets of class notes, in case you want to do some stretches, too.
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4 minute life story
Fridays in Satoyama Yoga classes are for community reflection and conversation. We practice half an hour of movement, then sit together and talk. It’s one of my favorite days, and not because I lead only 30 minutes of asanas. Today, we had a special assignment: tell your life story in 4 minutes. I gave a…
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Sankaku Road
Heavier work began yesterday with the arrival of the breaker yumbo. Today the crew spent the day cracking up slabs of concrete. We are reusing old concrete from around the property in the back of the gabion cages. I feel really good about this. It’s ecologically sound. We’re repurposing materials already on site, so keeping…
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Brush cutting
Yesterday we ended the “brush cutting” phase of 555. For about a week, I have been helping the Monaca Construction crew to trim back the wild overgrown sections of the property. It is amazing the difference once the trees are trimmed and all the bamboo removed. There are views I didn’t realise. Lots of space…
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Contract signed
Well, it’s done. The contract for construction happened yesterday. I signed the papers and Tod transferred first payment to Sasaki-san. The contract isn’t the beginning or the end. It’s sort of in the middle of the process. It’s been about a year in the planning and it will be 10 months in the making, more…
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AI Art & Creativity
If you’re an artist you’ve probably already played with the new generation of AI art tools: Dall-e, Craiyon, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion. They take your written description and turn it into an image. Each AI is differently trained, and even the same prompt will yield different results. For example, these three set of images were all…
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Pitchfork memories
This week, I have been using this hay fork to shift wood chips from in front of the chipper to a farther pile. And every time I secure the fork back into the pile, I can’t help but remember my first encounter with a pitchfork. I was six or seven years old and my next…
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Inhabitation
Yesterday, something shifted in my way of thinking about 555. With the yumbo on site and the all-star team cutting bamboo and brush, this place is now a site of continuous habitation. Someone will be around most days. From August 19th, 2022, there will be activity of all sorts, life lived, and stories created for…
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Cats on the prowl
Our neighborhood has a lot of indoor-outdoor pets and a few truly feral cats. The ones in this house are free to come and go; they have schedules around meal times and naps, so I usually know where to find them. More or less. Cats are very territorial, but the territories might not be quite…
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Climate Catastrophe Dissonance
Bill McGuire’s book, Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide, came out this week and a lot of press are turning their attention to climate catastrophe. In the face of yet another summer of extreme heat, floods, drought and fires, it is pretty clear that we are facing the catastrophe in this generation. Right now and maybe for…
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