Sneaking back into the room.

Ok, I will skip the apologies for forever not updating. Things are busy, but not busy enough to warrant lack of updates.

Things are moving!

Brooklyn Update: My small cottage industry for preserves is has not financed a return trip yet, but I am convinced I am on my way.

National Update:
I attended the National Storytelling festival at the beginning of October where I met a lot of people and was able to get some feedback on my project from people more local to the region (the festival is in Jonesbrough, TN). In particular I had a conversation with one woman who was very excitable, and with Eric Wolf, host of "The Art of Storytelling" podcast, which has been my piecemeal apprenticeship up to this point. What a lovely man! In our short conversation, I was encouraged as well as challenged. He invited me to an eco-tellers conference in April. Really, what a boon; now I have a deadline.

I have been making my way though my "leads list", though not as quickly as I would like. And am hoping for a trip before Christmas. Though, more likely, after New Years. Holidays are busy at the church, and I am not sure that I can really put my coworkers through that. It might necessitate learning some phone recording techniques.

I have yet to launch the local ex-pat call to arms, but I like to say it's because I am waiting on my website to be finished. Like to say, but probably just another excuse.

Just Peachy

I have been sweating buckets in my kitchen the past three days. Between my broken refrigerator and the 86 degree air temp (seriously, I measured it) I have been racing against time to claim those 17 lbs of peaches for the good cause of canning and not rotting.

But, in the heat of it all (yes! pun!) I came up with a new idea, too! I have been try to figure out how to finance future trips back to West Virginia (which will definitely be happening). SO, here what I came up with. Every time I go, I can pick up a ton of fresh produce and then the week after that, can it all and sell that, throwing the profits back into the WV piggy bank. Certain expenses like buying a car might not get paid for in preserves, but gas money, meal money, etc. could certainly get partially covered.

Additionally, I can design the "packaging" to explain why I am selling it in the first place, and explain more about MTR. Wham! Two birds, one stone.

So as of now, I am open for business, specializing in small batch canning from local farmers, my own garden, and stands and you-pick-it farms in the areas I am traveling to. If you have a request for a particular type of jam, preserve, marmalade, juice, etc. file it into comments, but if I make it you DO have to buy at least two jars.

Current inventory is as follows. All half pint jars. $7-9 (anyone want to refresh me on Paypal?)
3 Peach Butter Sauce
3 Spiced Peach Butter Sauce
4 Peach Jam (no sugar added)
1 Peach Cashew Jam (no sugar added)


I am hoping to get to the cherry tomatoes in my garden this weekend as well as put up some rhubarb from the market before we are totally and completely past rhubarb season.


A note on the actual story telling front. I am starting to make my way through a list of names from all over the state. Rebekah over and Christians for the Mountains was especially helpful in that. I am also tossing around an idea about the WV ex-pats peppering the country.

More to come. Buy Jam.

17 pounds heavier upon return

So I made it back!  I am not in a ditch or some where off the side of a mountain.

I got to a certain point in my trip where it was time to focus on a lot of other things, and the travel-blog sort of took a back seat.  But, now I am back and going through a lot of processing of what I saw, and heard, and learned already even.  I am not ready to articulate it yet, you'll just have to keep checking back.

At the end of the day (week?), it was an amazing trip.  God is good, and He is very faithful.

I am doing another type of processing as well.  I bought 17 pounds of peaches at one of those pick your own farms on my way back since I had the truck.  Tonight was my first adventure into canning, and it smelled delicious at least.  Peach butter, and then a spiced peach butter, and then a bit of an experiment with spiced basil peach butter.  I am thinking about keeping this up and using the funds to off set future trips.  Let me know if you want to buy a jar!

Zip: 25812; Coal: 72.8%

Well, I am out of energy.  Even though I slept 12 hours yesterday, tent sleeping on a slope is not the most refreshing.  I was seriously out before the sun was gone last night.  

 

So let me give a bit of a summary post tonight:

Notable anecdotes, no online spoilers, you'll have to ask in person: 

-60's Roadside Attraction Military-style Coup

-Jack Spratt & His Wife, and the Grandkids, and Fifi & Bruiser, and the Jones'

-Grafton Supply and Demand

Miles travelled:  approx. 843  (averaging 18 mpg, which is 3 more than expected, Score!)

Money spent:  Let's skip this one until I look at my bank statements...

Gifts acquired on the tertiary goal of trip, antiquing: 3

New hobby furthered by trip: canning

Tonight I am crashing with the cool kids at Christians for the Mountains at ground zero (or one of many ground zeros) for MTR, in Ansted, WV.   They have already been super helpful in the 2 hours I have been here. 

Right.  Time to crash.

Truth: We can't all be bodybuilder Grannys.

Yesterday, I was praying while driving and, I began with, "God, what the hell am I doing?  What is it that I am looking for out here?"  I feel so distracted, when there are all these things I should be doing for this project.  I should be talking to anyone I can about their opinion on and relationship to coal.  Instead my attentions are stolen by daydreaming and judgement.  That led me to my common recited prayer of "God fix A, B, & C that are drawing my focus away from the vision you have given me."  I was racked with guilt about my inability to concentrate on what I thought should me my primary focus.

Then God threw the brakes on.  The message He gave me yesterday was very plain: "Quit fussing."  It was a hard one to hear for me.  A friend in college told me "Jenn, guilt is from the Devil, conviction is from God."  I will take it a step further and say, "Conviction is from God, guilt is from separation from God."  I was definitely feeling guilty, not convicted.  For the sake of you guys who suffer the same self-demand, let me lay it out.

"Quit fussing."   What if I am not broken as I think, or in the way I think?  God made mankind in His image.  All of me.  Those root parts of my being, beyond the superficial layers, the things I really know about myself, they are in one way or another a reflection of God.  Some of my traits might not look like a reflection of God after sin comes into the picture, but the foundation just might look a little like the Lord.  

Anger is not condemned in the Bible, it is just restricted to righteous anger against injustice and defamation of the Lord.  God sees and loves where the stubborn comes from.  He loves and knows the character traits that have resulted in my over-obsession with details.  I am not saying that our human developments on all these things are right or good, but "in the beginning" it was.  

Asking God to "cure" my stubbornness restricts his room to move.   It's like those stories of Granny's lifting cars off little kids; we wouldn't be so amazed if we knew all the Granny's were bodybuilders.  Paul gives this account in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, 

"To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."  

In our weakness He is strong.  Not, how I have always read it, "in our weakness He will make us better to show His strength."  Just as God does not promise an easy life, He does not promise to take away our thorns, but promises to use the very things that vex us.  It makes me smile.  One of those exhausted, "okay, fine, you're right again" kind of smiles.

By constantly condemning all the things I think are wrong about me, I have restricted God's room to move.   So much time in prayer is spent praying for my "thorns"  to be removed instead of being drawn closer to God.  But then I remember Julian of Norwich's exertion that our prayers would be best spent simply praising and glorifying God, that the only true petition we need to bring before him is, "God, let your glory be shown."  His promises of clothing us more than the lillies, of never abandoning us, those promises are enough.  When we know them way deep down, as a part of our base understanding of how God works, how our lives work, we don't need to petition God to take care of us.  We already know it and can instead sing praises for the work he is already doing.

Jesus promises to open doors when we knock on them.   He promises, and to say, "Well, it depends if I am at the right door.  And He might not want to open it right now, anyway," is a plain cop out.  You can drive yourself in circles trying to answer these types of questions.  I know; I do.  Instead, I am trying to cling to the truth and promise of Matthew 21:22, "If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."

God promises to be an active presence, and I believe that He already begun, that He is moving and realigning the desires of my heart to match His own.  Without believing it has begun, at least to some extent, I am left confused and scared about when will it start, and maybe He is waiting for me to be ready, and what about making a living?  The truth is, it's not about my timing; my timing sucks.  I will never be readied for God to come begin His work through me.  God's timing is better than ours, and they rarely seem to match up.

Believing God is already active in me means trusting myself more.  I am led more by intuition than anything else.  And you know what?  I think that that's probably okay.

Blogged from Java Joint, Charles Town, WV-  Zip: 25414; Coal: 72.8%

Zip: 25425; Coal: 72.8%

Here's my profile for tonight.

Well, yesterday was my birthday, and today was the first day of the rest of my life.   Maybe not nearly as dramatic as that.  After driving off and on for 12 hours, it's a slow start, but a good one.

The quick update for the night follows; more tomorrow morning, I promise.

Middlesex, PA for lunch where I tried scrapple for the first time.  I debated if I wanted salty or sweet, and went with french toast on the waitress's (Tamra's) suggestion.  The scrapple was so salty, which might be normal, that it took care of any savory cravings that I might have been looking to satisfy.  Grossly salty, Dan, just gross.  Papa, you might like it, though.

Driving south west after that I saw a sign for Home Depot, where I picked up a few loose ends. 

Gettysburg Apples

Pulling out to hit the highway again, I saw a sign for Gettysburg in the other direction.

Momma had suggested I go, and frankly, I have the time so left it was instead of right.  Two antique markets later, Gettysburg is 6000 acres of "intense" combined with tourist.  Some of the memorial statues were "refreshingly honest". 

Gettysburg, 3rd day battlefield

Then Shephardstown; now Harpers Ferry (not possessive "s") for internet machine and sleeping  by the blessings of a game of 6-degrees to Kevin Bacon.

Phew.

Good to know.

Foiled by the Chicago short "a" again. My apologies.
It's not Apple-aye-chia; It's Appa-latcha.




...I think.


Appal-ay-shun?