Featuring an article, poem or artwork monthly--see below after events.

Who Will Dust It
Nurturing Awareness in Contradiction
Nurturing All the Creatures of the Earth
The Sustainable Horsewoman
Women Outdoors: Exploring the Backroads of Northern California
Travesty to Sensory Garden Delight
Moon in Capricorn
and much more...!

Current events you can't miss:

Please check our paper for many more listings

'FRIDAY, JUNE 22 — SIERRA NEVADA WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL: A Summer Solstice and World Peace Celebration. Three-day music and camping festival featuring the best in Roots Reggae and World Music. 6/22-24. $125 in advance; camping $50/car, $125/bus or RV. Mendocino County Fairgrounds, Boonville. For info call 916-777-5550 or visit www.snwmf.com.

SATURDAY, JUNE 23 — MEDICINE WHEEL SUMMER SOLSTICE CELEBRATION: A gathering to celebrate and strengthen our light and to deepen our vision using the Medicine Wheel in the beautiful woodlands of Sonoma Mountain. 10am-4pm. Donation. For info email megbeeler@earthlink.net or visit www.earthcaretakers.net.

FRIDAY, JUNE 29 — THE UNTAMED WORD: Outdoor writing weekend. Camp on the Sonoma Coast. Use the flow of the written word and the lure of the natural world to deepen your connection with nature and yourself. Facilitator: Amy Racina (author, Angels in the Wilderness). 6/29-7/1. $220. For info call 433-6686 or email aracina@sonic.net.

FRIDAY, JULY 13 — BORN TO DRUM WOMEN'S DRUM CAMP Weekend: July 13-15 varied master teachers welcome all levels and there will be beginner classes in all styles. This is a women only event. Point Bonita YMCA Conference Ctr., in beautiful Marin headlands. $385 until June 11, $425 after and $450 on site. Call for availability.For info go to www.borntodrum.net or contact Carolyn Brandy at 510-464-5902, Jackie Thomason at 510-332-5998 or see the Announcement in this issue of Women's Voices.

MONDAY, JULY 23 PATTY GRIFFIN — Folksinger. 8pm. $39.50, $29.50; $16.50 standing room only. Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, 50 Mark West Springs Rd., SR. For info call 546-3600.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 7 — 32ND ANNUAL MICHIGAN WOMYN'S MUSIC FESTIVAL: 40 performers with a cross-generational, cross-genre appeal. 3 vegetarian meals/day; camping in an oak and fern forest, numerous workshops, a film festival, sporting events, crafts bazaar, dances, parades, open mics. Also sign language interpretation, child care, first aid, and transportation. 8/7­13. For info visit www.michfest.com.

ONGOING

OCEAN KAYAK PALS. Women with boat and skills who want to share short day trips. Free. (Skill lessons available for fee.) For info call Ruanne, 874-1387.

FAMILY SERVICE AGENCY, Santa Rosa's Community Mental Health Center, located at 751 C Lombardi Court, Santa Rosa, offers the following low-cost or no fee counseling services and support groups for individuals, families, children, seniors, and the LGBT community. Services are offered in both English and Spanish.

MONDAY –– "WOMEN'S SALON." Join women of all ages and backgrounds for discussion, compassion, and laughs in our safe haven to address topics like sex, dating, parenting, divorce, marriage, menopause, etc. Pre-reg. required. Free. 1st Mon./mo. Pleasures of the Heart, 1310 4th St., downtown San Rafael between C and D. For info call 415/482-9899 or visit www.PleasuresOfTheHeart.com.

WEDNESDAY –– NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF WOMEN-Sonoma County meets the third Wednesday of the month at Round Table Pizza, Marlow Center, Marlow and Guerneville Rd. No-host dinner at 5:30pm, meeting 6-8pm. Program for June: Problems Plaguing Our Public Schools. July meeting is a Business meeting. Same time and place.

FRIDAY –– PEACE VIGIL. 5-6:30pm. Courthouse Sq., downtown SR.

SUNDAY — RELIGIOUS SCIENCE Creative Living Center, Petaluma. Ongoing programs include "Women in Conversation" and "Friday Night Potluck and a Movie." Service 10:30am. Primary grades' Youth Program. Petaluma Senior Center, 211 Novak. Rev. Susan Trapnell. For info call 765-1528 or visit www.petalumacrs.org.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Energy of Water

By Martha MaCabe

A riot of color hangs off the clothesline in the corner of the yard. Soft spring breezes aid the solar dryer. There is a second load in the washing machine, just about to start its first spin cycle. I scurry to raise the lid on the machine, stopping the drainage cycle just in time to place the garden hose at the bottom of the tub to start the siphon. It is my own little grey water irrigation system. Trailing the hose out into the garden, I resume the sweet meditative process of nurturing the plants with their elixir of life.

Every wash load delivers about 40 gallons of wash and rinse water to my earthen heaven. It is the only source of water I use on what is left of the green and mowed grasses from mid to late summer. One of the most difficult adjustments I have made is to allow my grass (wild mowed meadow) to go golden in the summer. As I write, it is early spring and I gaze out over a half acre of deep green glory surrounding the house and gardens. There is an intense satisfaction in the emerald expanse. The green suggests earthly abundance, and in the summer it is the color of cool. Our ancestors knew this meant feed for livestock or a healthy new grain crop. For northern Europeans, vast expanses of green around the home were also a sign of wealth. The commons used for grazing and crops were tended elsewhere. Three or four years ago, I was watering and mowing the grasses right up until October. Between the rains this April, it was all I could do to quiet a powerful and baffling desire to set a sprinkler in the grass. I gently excuse the compulsion as an ancestral memory, a cellular reaction to basic survival or to ego satisfaction, or to all of it.

I know I hold an ingrained suburban cultural assumption that untended brown grass yards conjure up lack of pride in home and garden. I am working on a new cultural imperative: brown grass is a sign of a responsible relationship with the environment. My addict self knows this part of recovery, and that one day the compulsion to water the grass with potable water will be lifted. In the meantime, every summer is another opportunity to be in the discomfort while I shift my awareness of how to live in mutually beneficial relationship with the earth. She wants to go golden in our California ecology, so I will not exert my human influence to satisfy a selfish need. Each spring, I will continue to convert several more square yards of grass into natural habitat, vegetable rows, and drought-resistant gardens.

All of this musing is taking place while I move my grey water hose around the young vegetable patch. I gaze at the water stream, and imagine its cycle. Ocean evaporation seeds clouds that rain down on the west county and fill the springs and aquifers. The well in the corner of my yard is drawing this water directly from the earth, first to the washing machine and now to the herb garden. I feel a profound sense of connection with the entire cycle of the water itself. I am no longer in the act of "saving water," I am saving myself. I am transcending a sense of separation from the natural world and fall into a deep sense of gratitude for the water, for the garden, and for their life-giving energy. I am greening myself. Visionary Deep Ecologist Joanna Macy calls this co-extensive connection with other beings (water, soil, plants, animals) our "ecological self-identity." My sense of self expands and I am vitalized with a sense of belonging to the web of life.

Immersed in contemplating the source and cycle of water, my wandering mind rests on the electricity my well pump uses. There is an inextricable connection between energy and the delivery of water. My experiences of backpacking in the mountain and coastal wilderness and vision questing in the desert have taught me to collect, purify, and conserve water by my wit and inspiration. Much of the daily routine and energy expenditure in the wild revolves around where the water is located and how to obtain a potable supply for my survival. Returning my thoughts to the grey water hose, my daydreaming turns to a thoughtful and intellectual pursuit of understanding water-related energy consumption. I birth an insatiable quest for knowledge so I might remember the connection. Energy moves water. Water moves energy. It is all connected.

I decide to go to the Internet to harvest these facts: According to a 2005 report from the California Energy Commission, water-related energy use consumes 19% of the state's electricity, 30% of its natural gas, and 88 billion gallons of diesel fuel. Every part of the water conveyance system requires an intensive use of energy, from pumping and treatment technologies to sewage disposal. A San Diego study concludes that simple domestic water conservation measures can save enough energy to provide 25% of the household electricity. Americans consume more water than any other people on earth, at an average of 500 liters per day. Most Europeans use less than half that, and worldwide consumption is 75% of ours. It takes a thousand tons of water to grow a ton of grain and fifteen thousand to grow a ton of cow. A billion people on the planet spend three hours per day fetching and carrying water. By their own human energy, the conveyance of water consumes more calories than all other domestic chores.

My acts of catching dishwater in a pan in my kitchen sink and a bucket in the shower take on a whole new meaning. I am humbled in the activity of capturing the three gallons it takes to heat the shower tap. In the rainy season, fresh and grey water is collected and used to flush the toilets, bathe the dogs, fill the teapot, water indoor plants, and anything else I can think of to save and revere the water. It never occurred to me to consider my own human energy output in these endeavors. It is a labor of love and of luxury. By simple deduction, I know saving water saves electricity (when the power goes out, so too does my water) but I was oblivious to the magnitude of the facts. Compared to most Americans, my life is on a "green" trajectory. I am still awed by how much my civilized (separated from nature) environment keeps me ignorant of the connection between water use and energy consumption. I am grateful to the garden for the remembrance.

We are not so far removed from the days of washtubs, outhouses, and laundry coming fresh off the drying line. My grandmother's well had two hand pumps, one at the site and one in the kitchen. The only other plumbing lines in the house were the sink drains that went directly to the vegetable patch. Little by little, act by act, I am closing in on the enormous gap that exists between my grandmother's world and mine. It is a metaphor for the cultural separation of western and industrialized humanity from the earth. In a sweet reclamation of my life's connection to the earth and her waters, my answer to the editors' question of "how do I nurture the earth" is this: I allow her to nurture me.

* * * * *

Martha McCabe is an adjunct faculty member at New College in Santa Rosa in the
Consciousness, Healing, and Ecology concentration, described at www.healingecology.com.

_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________

by Lilith Rogers

Waiting for the store to open
I slip through a hole in the fence
and sit at the base
of the dried anise stalks
in the field next door.
Above my head
the heat of the spring sun
releases the sharp odor
of thousands of tiny seeds.
I am awash in scent.

I nibble on the yellow sticker-burr flowers
around my feet.
Their tangy taste
zips me back
to a huge bed of clover
another waste place
so far away.
I am five years old
lazing in the sun
of Galveston
looking for four leaf clovers
in the back yard
of our new house--
so new my mother hasn't tamed it yet
with stiff St. Augustine grass
and pink oleander bushes.

I have always preferred waste places--
lots "vacant" of houses and lawns
they mean when they say it.

Like an "undeveloped" country
a "primative" culture
They assume nothing is here
if they are not.

But we--
the tangled grass,
weed seeds and wild oats,
the ants and chiggers,
spiders, toads, sparrows and I--
we see this field
quite differently.
For us
it is a priceless place
a precious free space
in an increasingly costly world.