I have started the recovery process from my enjoyable visit with my father. We drove to
Erie, Pennsylvania to visit some of my fathers cousins.....a long drive...very nice people. Listening to them talk about life before, during and after the war.........so much suffering and waste.....and it lasts for so many generations. I really wish this suffering was not being inflicted on so many people as I sit and write this..........all that horror.

I did notice that my very gracious host and hostess had a lot of local things; they had Luncheon meats from an Erie company and also delicious rye bread, all from a local grocery store . I wondered if the homogenization (is that a word?) of American food is progressing at different rates in different parts of the country (most of the town was the usual run of chain stores and restaurants that one can find cloned in any American town).

I have continued to feel a lot of time pressure, I get a lot of things done but not reading my co Locavores blogs, which I miss, not getting time to write my own blog or do more research into cool local things (I did drive for almost an hour to the Bolivar, TN inaugural farmers market to discover that there was no one there...oh the vagaries of high gas prices and the locavore lifestyle) or try to do something about my miserably failing garden........I feel too young to fail so spectacularly.

Gas prices are starting to be an issue, I have to drive pretty far to get to a farmers market, I am not connected well enough locally to find people who have managed to grow things despite armadillos (which continue to nightly dig up various portions of my garden) and beetles.

Best wishes, Vera