In November of 1997, my brother and I were visiting our parents to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. We’ve known since we were sixteen, when our mother let slip one day that she was our father’s second wife, that our father had lost his first wife and three young children in Auschwitz. And long before that revelation, we’d heard about our father’s other relatives who were also killed in Auschwitz. Our father occasionally told us stories of those people. The stories often ended with, “They were taken to Auschwitz.”
The Golden Key to Everything: Imagination
Picture a world in which imagination is valued for the infinite expansion it adds to our lives. Government, toilet paper, electricity, e=mc2, Jazz, Starry Night…these all sprang from the deep well of their creator's active imagination. Yet in families, schools, government, commerce, and most other corners of our culture, imagination is often seen as frivolous, a waste of time, or unprofitable. It is neglected in favor of the countless more “important” tasks that fill our days, our screens, or pay the bills. Those who forge ahead by letting their imaginations run wild in the face of adversity, such as Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Gertrude Stein, Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Toni Morrison, and so many other creative warriors, shine a path into a better world for the rest of us to follow.
Book Review: Trauma-Informed Music Therapy: Theory and Practice
The timely book Trauma-Informed Music Therapy: Theory and Practice is a collaboration of the expertise of music therapists, educators with experience in psychological health and trauma-informed education, clinicians, and psychotherapists. Based on the intersection of music therapy and trauma healing, the resulting body of work is an expansive text readers can utilize repeatedly.
Great Tastes in Local Food: Fall 2023
Local restaurant reviews for fall 2023.
Elements Preschool
I discovered Elements Preschool a few months ago during my extended early childhood education studies. To my delight, it is not only a place of discovery for children, but also for adults. Soon after being introduced to Elements Preschool, I started working with Kirsten Voiles, the founder and director, with whom I share a passion for education and the arts.
Fall Produce Preservation and Meal Prep
It’s the perfect time to preserve the abundance of the local harvest—and make meal prep a snap all through the winter! If you’ve only used your dehydrator to make apple rings and kale chips, get ready to fall in love with dehydrating some new vegetables and learn how to use them to make fast, nutritious meals.
Tea with Peggy, Mystical Pu'erh Tea
As fall and winter fast approach, night arrives earlier, and the once lush fields and gardens filled with flora and fauna are dying. The magic of fall and winter is different than that of spring. Earth emits a darker unknown quality. It’s a mystery to be explored. A time of year to tell a good ghost tale while shipping on something warm, dark, and inviting—like Pu’erh tea.
Gateway Farm: Growing with Permaculture
The mid-January day I visited Gateway Farm in Plymouth was breezy, and the temperature was in the low thirties with faint flurries falling. At the farm’s small, dirt parking lot off Joy Road, I met Bridget O’Brien who, along with her husband Dr. Charlie Brennan, is the farm’s co-director. After we greeted each other, I said, “Not the best time of the year for me to see the farm, I guess.” “It’ll be okay,” she replied cheerfully. “We’ll be able to see everything because there’s no snow on the ground. Plus,” she added, “The sorrel is still green.”
Joob Activewear — Ann Arbor Clothing Company — Aims For Fair Trade, Climate Neutral Fashion
The hiking pants swished as I walked, hugging my legs as I squatted, lunged, and brought my knees to my chest. Not as tight as a legging but not as loose as a typical hiking pant, they ghosted over my skin, covering it, but not hampering movement a bit. I pushed my hands in the front pockets, felt the tug at the elastic waist, and checked out the zippered back pockets. A barely-there logo of an elephant shimmered near my left hip on the black fabric. I found the fit comfortable. I could wear these pants all day.
Tying the Knot in Nature
Infusing a wedding with nature adds a sense of lighthearted whimsy and charm through elements such as fresh air, natural lighting, vibrant flowers, and wildlife. Several local venues bring the ceremony to nature's doorstep by offering outdoor ceremony sites, while others bring nature indoors. Some Crazy Wisdom favorites include botanical gardens, riverside views, sprawling fields, and vineyards. Each of the following venues is unique, but all of them offer nature's aesthetic beauty and are perfect options for a nature-inspired wedding.
Herbs for Your Garden: Calendula
Calendula is grown as a self-seeding annual in USDA grow zones two through eight. In areas with warm winters (above 25⁰F), it blooms year-round. Calendula thrives in full sun with well-drained soil. I recommend sowing Calendula seed directly into the garden early to mid-spring. It’s ideal to plant the seeds as soon as the soil is workable since germination benefits from cool weather, but don’t stress too much about timing. I’ve had success planting seeds year-round. Calendula is a self-seeding annual, which means seeds dropped by the plants in the fall will lay dormant on the ground all winter and then sprout the next spring. However, it’s not an aggressively spreading plant, so don’t worry about it taking over your garden.
Psychedelic Medicines in Trauma Recovery
Life is hard and yes, terrible things can and do happen, oftentimes to people who do not deserve it. Denying trauma and trying to inspire people out of its impact, both individually and collectively, has been the go-to method of dealing with trauma for generations.
Learning From Our Year Round Birds
Whether you enjoy watching birds flit about casually, are a dedicated birder, or keep a bird feeder going, it is likely some of our beautiful year-round birds have caught your eye on more than one occasion. For centuries, humans have observed birds for signs and omens (called augury or ornithomancy) as well as told stories illuminating the lessons birds carry. Birds have a wealth of wisdom to share with us, and this article highlights several of our year-round winged teachers who can be called on at any time in our hearts and, with some bribing, in our yards. These Michigan loyalists are the Black-Capped Chickadee, the Blue Jay, and the Northern Cardinal.
Handcrafting: LIttle Bug Faeries -- A Waldorf -style Pcket Doll
Spring brings showers, flowers, and faeries back into our gardens! These cute Little Bug Faeries are great for entertaining little ones during story time, while riding in a car, or waiting to see the doctor. They are so easy to make, you’ll find yourself making one in every color of the rainbow!
Peace, Love, and Cows
There is a feeling of peace in the cowbarns at Goloka Eco Experience in Maybee, Michigan. The farm air feels crisp as it enters the lungs—unequivocally more clear than city air. In this moment, the gentle thud of a heartbeat or thwap of a tail against the ground is one’s only soundtrack against the world. Soft, big brown eyes peer out from underneath impossibly-long eyelashes, begging for pats on the head or scratches at the nape of the neck. Goloka Eco hosts an experience one simply cannot find among the hustle and bustle of regular everyday life--an invitation to be present. To come sit. To forget about time for a while. To cuddle a cow, as volunteer Karunasindhu Nitai Gaura Dasa says, is to form a “meaningful relationship.”
Kindred Conversations: Maurice Archer and Anne Erlewine
The center of Maurice Archer’s big vision starts with dance. He’s known around town as the premier break dance performer, teacher, producer, and owner of A2 Breakdance. He has been bringing his unstoppable energy and expertise to classrooms, after school programs, rec and ed offerings, private parties, intensives, local festivals, and street fairs for years. If you’ve seen the linoleum unroll and a simple boom-box set up for a crew of kid and adult dancers to step in for six step, windmill, kick-up, flare, or a bunch of impressive acrobatic dance moves, then you have seen an A2 Breakdancers’ cipher. A cipher is a circle of dancers, jumping in to share a small mobile dance floor with their handstands, back spins, and fancy footwork before the next dancer tags in.
A Good Crop of Mental Health: A Conversation about Animal Assisted Therapy with Laura Sanders
Laura Sanders, LMSW, ACSW, has been practicing in the Ann Arbor area for 34 years and has been teaching as an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work for 26 years. Her approach to therapy utilizes a wide variety of evidence-based and creative therapies, including trauma recovery methods, art and play therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and relational approaches through Animal Assisted Therapy.
Conscious Parenting: Ele's Place Ann Arbor--A Home for Healing Arts
Ele’s Place Ann Arbor is a healing center that provides peer grief support for children, teens, and their families in Ann Arbor as well as the surrounding southeast Michigan area, free of charge, for as long as a family needs. Ele's Place Ann Arbor is the only nonprofit in our community dedicated solely to helping children and teens work with, and through, grief in a peer-based setting.
Field of the Five Horses
I’d been given some gourmet coffee for Christmas. It was late at night. I’d have to work in the morning, but, feeling impelled to give it a try, I brewed the rich dark potion.
The next day I remembered a night when I was eight years old. I was living in the tropics with my family, where heat thins boundaries and can induce fertile dreaming. I’d been allowed to drink a caffeinated beverage just before going to bed, a one-time occurrence. As I lay wide awake, the aquarium music from Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals played in my brain. It got louder and louder. My room faded into green mist and shoals of golden fish swam through it from various angles and directions, hovering and then dissolving. Having gone to school opposite one of those old, gothic mental hospitals, I was frightened I might be locked up in it when we returned to the States, and I clutched the sheets until the vision dissipated.
Out of My Comfort Zone: Stretching Out of My Comfort Zone
Generally speaking, my comfort zone is not small. I have lived in foreign countries, trekked in the Himalayas, paraglided off a 5,000 foot cliff, flown in teeny tiny planes over the Amazon rain forest, stood on my head on various mountain tops, and held a giant anaconda around my neck (that one was mostly for the photo op). But when asked to write an article about stepping out of my comfort zone, I immediately knew what I’d share. And it turns out I am not alone in this fear. In fact, it comes in at number two on the list of people’s biggest fears. It is of course, the fear of public speaking (in case you’re interested, fear of death is number one on the list).
