All the usual weather changes have gone on for the past month, but with a seeming vengeance. The last week of October was record cold, and the last outdoor market in Los Alamos was an experience I'd rather not repeat. Not without a down parka and gloves, long underwear, and insulated boots, anyway. As soon as Halloween passed, the next week had record highs, so it all averaged out to, well, average. The range, which had finally turned green at the end of September, is back to muted duns and yellows, stitched along the edges with silver winterfat, now rapidly disappearing as the seed heads crumble off or are eaten by the birds.
We've had a little snow, too, but not enough to cause any problems other than the continuing drought--we really could use a storm or two with a foot of heavy snow. We are prepared to be snowed (or mudded) in this winter, with nonperishable food stockpiled over in the shed, but we still need to lay in more bird feed and firewood before the middle of December.
What keeps us busiest right now is doing in turkeys for Thanksgiving. Wendy does most of this really hard work, with a little help from me, our wonderful neighbor Judy, and Wendy's sister Jane, and then Wendy and I will do all the deliveries next week (so let's hold the big snow storms until after that, please). I am also spending a lot of time making my signature rainbow soaps (chunks of transparent colors, glitter, and fragrance embedded in a soft white matrix) for upcoming craft and holiday markets. So we are forever fighting over the sink space, Wendy to clean out the birds and me to lay out soap molds; it's a time of year when the kitchen space is a little too tight.
We are still getting visitors to the farm as well. Last week it was a family from Zuni Pueblo to the west, desperately seeking bronze turkeys for a giveaway. I've known about the the traditional potlatch ceremonies of some of the Northwest coast Indians, in which people give away basically all their wealth, but I didn't know the Zuni people at least have their own equivalent. This woman's father is a member of the Mudhead Society, and every four years the family gives away things of value to each member of the Society--and in this case, that's 400 people! The goods involved are traditional, mostly livestock--horses, cattle, sheep, turkeys--and also blankets, pottery, jewelry and the like. The catch is that these days many of these people are no longer living as traditionally as in the old days, so they end up having to purchase most of this stuff in order to give it away. My brain, raised on western ideas of wealth and prestige, is boggled. In our culture it's the guy who manages to accumulate the most who ends up with the prestige, but with the Zuni it's the other way. It's the person who gives away the most who wins. And the culture itself ends up winning, as wealth is periodically redistributed, and the have/have not gap is narrow, and maybe doesn't even count. Nobody becomes rich, but nobody is absolutely destitute, either.
Maybe this concept is too foreign for our greedy, grasping culture. It seems once we own something we never want to give it up, and the richest of us don't seem to care a lot about how the less fortunate are doing. Right now our government is trying to level the playing field a bit, but I don't expect that to last any longer than the current administration. The vultures have been shoved off the field for now, but they'll be back.
