So lots of folks who are usually suspicious of big government conspiracy panics are perking up their ears lately and taking action regarding an impending bill that's currently in committee: H.R. 875, The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009. The bill threatens, in the name of "food safety," to subject small farms and even garden hobbyists to the same rules as large agribusinesses, making organic and heirloom methods extremely difficult, if not illegal. Farmer advocate Alex Tiller (yep, that's his real name) has a good explanation of why this bill is significant, with links to LeaveMyFoodAlone.org, a web site set up specifically to explain the bill's dangers and help mediate our response to government officials through a petition. You can also read the full text of the bill and vote "yea" or "nay" at OpenCongress.org. Whether you do or don't support the bill after doing some of your own research, this is an issue worth looking into as individuals and as communities.

I've been appreciating Thomas Lynch's essays in The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, working my way through slowly, usually one-essay-at-a-time before bed. His reflections resonate not just with recent news of deaths, but with my affection for Three Rivers, another Michigan small town not unlike Lynch's home of Milford.

This morning, a paragraph from "Mary and Wilbur" had so many synapses firing at once with recognition and connection, I had a hard time getting through it. It wasn't that I had a one-to-one correlation for Wilbur in mind, but that it captured such an aura of small town experience:

Wilbur Johnson knew everyone in town. It was his style. For seventy years he's worked in the produce section of the local market, proffering welcome to newcomers and old timers over heads of lettuce and ears of sweet corn. The market first owned by his father and then by his brother had changed hands a couple more times since Wilbur's youth. But Wilbur always went with the deal--an emblem of those times when people came away from the market with more than what they'd bought. Once known by Wilbur, you were known. Unafraid of growth and change, he thrived on the lives of those around him from children in shopping carts, their young mothers, husbands sent to market with a list, bag boys, and cashiers. His own life, perfectly settled--he never changed jobs or wives or churches or houses--gave him an appetite for changes in the lives of others. He kept an open ear for the names of newborns and newlyweds, news of setbacks and convalescences, the woeful monologues of the jilted, the divorced, the bereaved. He remembered the names of children, visiting in-laws, friends of friends. He had a good word for everyone and everyone knew him. Nowadays we call this "networking" and the store of information Wilbur kept on the lives of others, a "data base." But Wilbur called it "neighborly"--the attention we pay to each other and each other's lives.

I think of two young women who wandered in our shop just the other day who were surprised to find something of interest in such a small town, even though I would guess they were only from Kalamazoo--a small city of about 75,000. I asked them if they were just in Three Rivers just to hang out and they politely scoffed at the question: "There's not much to do here. We're just waiting for a friend to get off work." I wish I'd had a clever retort that would have opened their eyes to the unique wonder of rootedness in time and place, of readily accessible "wilderness," even of the endless possibility of empty storefronts. I wish I could have introduced them to one of our Wilburs, who might just have gone beyond simply charming them with his small town ways to giving them a sense of being known that perhaps they were missing in their pseudo-cosmopolitan lives.

Well. If we end up being rooted in a place, as I hope we will be, I have many more years ahead of me to cultivate such responses, such ways of being. Maybe I'll even become a kind of Wilbur myself. And in addition to personal application, Lynch also makes me reflect on how our work with *culture is not optional might not be so much "networking" as simple "neighborliness"--not so much a strategy for organizational success by some corporate definition, but day-to-day faithfulness in making connectios among the people with whose knowing we are entrusted.

It's kind of fun to hear that the Obamas will be planting a vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House.

One of the things Rob and I really like to do is make connections among people and organizations who are doing good work, so we were pleasantly surprised when having lunch last week to see a CRC coffee blend with Higher Grounds in our hosts' kitchen. The CRC's Office of Social Justice is doing some amazing work to connect congregations with information and action for all-of-life shalom. We're glad *cino and World Fare may have played a small part in connecting the folks over there to our favorite Michigan fair trade coffee roaster. Way to go everyone!

It seems things are moving much more quickly on our renovation now that we have professionals involved (more photos here). This week, Steve and Mike (our carpenters) finished framing the bathroom and utility room, framed the front wall, and removed the rest of the staircase in the back of the store. We now need to do quite a bit of work to make the back corner of the store presentable (plaster repair, building a railing, painting, etc.):

Our plumber, Scott, installed all of the supply lines and drains this week. Below, you can see the rough plumbing for the bathroom sink, the toilet and (in the background on the right) the tub.

We hit a bit of a snag with our tankless hot water heater, though. We were planning to use a Stiebel Eltron electric unit, but the power company told us that the maximum load required would be too much for the infrastructure on our block--which seems pretty incredible to me, but there it is. We've already purchased the unit and can't return it ... so, if you know anyone who's interested, send us a line.

Instead, we'll probably go with a tankless gas model, most likely a Bosch. There are a few negatives with a gas model that we were trying to avoid: 1) gas tankless water heaters are more expensive initially and, 2) they require venting (which increases installation cost). This changes our plans a bit, as we need to figure out where to vent the unit, but I think we can figure things out in the end.

I also got up onto our roof for the first time ever, in search of two spots that seem to be leaking. I think I found them and I'm pretty certain I was able to patch them with some nasty black goo. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take the camera with me, so we don't have any photos from or of the roof. Maybe next time!

NPR's Live in Concert from All Songs Considered podcast recently featured 74-year-old Canadian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen, who is currently on his first U.S. tour in more than 15 years. It's beautiful and provocative ... Cohen's (now) bass voice is richly set in the lush texture of a great backing band and he works his way through a variety of well-known songs from his vast catalog. His lyrics cover a gamut of topics--spirituality to sexuality, politics to music--and are always engaging, often catching the listener off-guard with their playfulness and wit.

You should really give it a listen.

After officially receiving permission to spend funds--which took a bit longer than we last reported--things are (finally) progressing quickly. We are very, very excited to see things taking shape!

We decided to contract out some of the framing we had planned to do, in part because we needed to jump-start the project if we were to move forward at all before summer--though the very reasonable bid we received certainly helped. This week, our contractor lifted up the sagging floor in the bathroom, framed in the bathroom and utility room, removed an extra door to the shared hallway, removed part of the stairway from the second floor to the main floor, and installed a floor where the stairway had been.

Repaired floor joists:

Bathroom/utility room framing:

New floor:

A lot can happen now that the bathroom and utility room are framed in. First, all of our plumbing lines can be run--which should actually be happening later this week. Second, we can have a gas line run for our furnace, dryer and stove. Third, the electric from the new meter outside to the panel in the utility room can be installed. Finally, our furnace and ductwork can be installed. Seeing as all of that work requires expertise, we'll be hiring various contractors to complete it. And that means that a lot of this could be done in the next month or so. How exciting is that?

If you're interested, you can see more photos on Flickr (scroll to the end for the most recent photos).

So it's really been hitting me lately how many people we know personally who are around our age and taking hold of Wendell Berry's poet farmer vision by both horns (or sprouts or branches) and putting down roots on farms. Fortunately for us, they've made the very un-Berry decision to post artifacts online so we can keep up with their inspiring stories. Moving from west to east...

• After a very cool tour of Mennonite churches to reinvigorate congregations' peace ethic and conversations, Matt and Elizabeth are pondering starting a CSA in Matt's hometown of Shickley, Nebraska.


• Dan, Julie and Harper just bought a 20-acre farm in Demotte, Indiana, after being involved with Victory Acres for a few years.


• Rachel, David and Henry are in Three Rivers, Michigan. We're looking forward to getting to know them better when we move back, but have already enjoyed their goat chevre.


• Steve has just moved to Franklin Farm, an urban agrarian intentional community in Grand Rapids.


• Mel and Steve and their brood are exploring infinite possibilities on a plot of land in Columbiana, Ohio (and they're looking for summer project participants!).


• Sarah, Henry and Moses have started Field Sparrow Farms in Cameron, Ontario.

And let's not forget our friends at Russet House Farm in Cameron and our friend Karla, founder of the Three Rivers Sustainable Food Group, who's in the process of naming her land, reclaiming her neglected farmhouse and envisioning possibilities for half a dozen outbuildings. I'm really excited to see how these projects go--and to have such neat people and places to visit!

I had a dream the other night about standing up and yelling in a church. As I sat down, I felt equally conspicuous and convicted about what I had to say in an attempt to "wake up" the congregation to its hypocrisies. But then I stood up and interrupted the speaker again, to let him know that I loved him, or that I was trying to love him, and ask if he would like to sit down for coffee with me after church. I needed to be prophetic, but also to create a humanizing connection.

It was a dream about a particular church for sure, but also, I think, about dancing and about telemarketers.

I'll save the dancing interpretation for another time, but I did want to put some of my questions about telemarketers "out there" to see if anyone has any words of wisdom. We've been receiving a lot of telemarketing calls lately--more than usual. My hunch is that it has something to do with the flailing economy; either a company recently sold off our information or companies are investing more into getting themselves into our homes in a desperate attempt to stay afloat.

I don't feel badly hanging up on an automated voice or hanging up after the pause and before I hear the click that automatically puts my answer through to someone's line. However, I am troubled by the nature of interactions with very real human beings on the other end.

I have never, ever responded to a request to purchase or donate by phone. Even when my credit card company is trying to offer me "free" credit protection, I politely decline. And decline. And decline. The other day, I had refused credit protection twice, but the woman on the other end just kept talking, she just needed to confirm my information to be able to send out the packet of materials and enroll me in the program. And it wasn't a language barrier. So I changed my approach.

"Look, I understand your situation. This is your job and you have to try to sell me this thing, but I'm really not interested. I've gotten burned on a program like this before."

"I just need to confirm your information. Do you still live at...?"

I hung up. I can count on one hand the number of times I've hung up on anyone, telemarketers included.

Now, I'm sure telemarketers hear all kinds of things, including personal attacks, in the course of a day, so my hang up probably just rolled right off her back as the lights started blinking for the next call. But what if it didn't? What if she went home seething about the smart ass who "understands her situation," and yet refused to just enroll in the dumb program and cancel within 30 days so she wouldn't be charged anything?

There are several obstacles to showing love in these circumstances. The calls happen so quickly, and if we say something we regret, there's no opportunity for reconciliation because the calls are also anonymous. It's also very difficult to make a human connection in a situation which is inherently dehumanizing. On one end is a person who's been charged to make as many calls and sales during his or her shift as possible as a computer keeps relentlessly shuffling numbers along the assembly line; he or she would be replaced by a machine if possible (and often, they are). On the other end is someone whose sense of privacy and home is being violated in some foggy kind of way. (In fact, Rob and I often tell white lies for each other--"she's not available right now. Can I take a message?")

Because of the dehumanizing nature of the situation, some might argue that we're not under any obligation to try to transform it into something other than what it is. And yet, this is a small circumstance which seems to bear unrecognized possibilities. And I'm not talking about Jerry Seinfeld's snarky response: "I'm busy right now, but if you give me your home number, I can call you back later."

Am I taking this too seriously? Has anyone found an imaginatively kind way to deal with telemarketing calls or is politely declining the best recourse, even in a situation when someone is robotic-ally persistent?