Today the United States of America has inaugurated a new president.  I feel excited, proud, fearful.  The process/progress of change triggers excitement in me… as well as fear.  What is to come?  Who knows who knows?

I remember last year in Mexico reading the BBC World News coverage online of the race for the democratic seat–  I thought that I was so far away from it all…I even thought that I would not be here to vote.  To see the change happen.  and here I am today.

Watching cnn online and listening to Aretha Franklin sing “my country ’tis of thee”

Amazing how things change.  The season on Henry’s Farm was profoundly related to politics— there existed a continual stream of National Public Radio from the time I woke and prepared breakfast and brushed my teeth, until we were washing squash at the shed, until lunch, until weeding in the greenhouse, until shelling garlic in the basement until dinner and night and rest.  Until our conversations about the world, about the presidency, about food and agriculture.  Learning and learning and thinking and talking and listening and learning.

And so here we are on what may be a brink of change, and I do not know if change happens or when change happens or what change happens.

and hopeful, I am.

And I recently read an Associated Press article about Mexico and the drug cartels, comparing Mexico to Iran, and potential instability, potential governmental, national collapse.  They write of beheadings and mass murders and kidnappings.

I was aware of these things when I was in Mexico.  But there was this sense of safety as well in el rancho.  Maybe because everyone was Daniel’s cousin.  Maybe because life seemed simple and challenging and new.  Because there was a different pace and breath in Mexico.  Because I seldom encountered what I perceive to be the intensity I associate with the United States and/or danger (I do not mean to indicate that I always associate the perceived intensity of United States with danger).

and the world happens as it does.  people do what they do.  Things will change.  I do not know in what ways.  I cannot predict the future.

Today I make pizza with stored veggies from the farm, and venison sausage courtesy of Brady who makes Henry’s biodiesel.  I wear pink and celebrate change!