Dirty Tennis vs. Clean Fuel

Work today was a lot of shoveling, raking, and sweeping. The subject: dirt. Topsoil, really. We were spreading it on the edge of the newly paved road atop which the sod guy will soon spray grass seed. Yes, I've gotten really good at shoveling over the months, as you may recall, but it got old today and quite tiring. Adam and I quit around 4:15, having gotten to a reasonable stopping point.

On my way home, I was approaching Seth (who's in silence this week) and he was expressing interest in playing tennis soon. At 5, we played tennis silently for over an hour until dinner. I found myself uncontrollably groaning a few times when I missed a shot, but mostly I kept the peace. Seth was amazing at sticking to the silent, contemplative, meditative game. We scored by hand with our fingers as much as we could keep track of the score and had a great time overall.

This evening, Shamu gave his seasonal talk about biodiesel to ADAMAH and invited Neshamah as well. Ruhi and I showed. I've heard it before, but it evolves each season; this year, Shamu and Jamie have a new car. They replaced their old VW that broke down one too many times with a 2002 VW wagon whose previous owner had converted it to run on grease. Being a newer vehicle upgraded with a better kit, the veggie oil monitoring system, fuel switch, and general internal setup are much cleaner and sexier. As per usual, I offered relevant feedback a few times during the discussion, including notes about electric vehicles and cellulosic ethanol.

Destruction! (for starters anyway)

This morning, Eden, Anna, Bec, Adam, and I helped Jeff part of the roof of Elm. Apparently, guests have been complaining for months about the smells of mold in the shower room. Well, no wonder, the entire roof was rotting away under the shingles and rubber edging. It was quite gross. Tomorrow, Jeff plans to reshingle it.

After lunch, I sat at home and followed MacRumors' live coverage of Steve Jobs' keynote address at Apple's annual WorldWide Developers' Conference. Someone also made a live audio feed available, so in low quality, I also listened to the show, which was pretty cool. MacRumors continues to provide the best, auto-updating, live coverage of these keynotes.

Steve demoed some previously unseen new features of Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X (10.5) scheduled to be released in October, offered developers a taste of games to come "back to the Mac" from big name developers EA and Id, and released a beta version of Safari … for Windows! With the success of iTunes, particularly since its release for Windows, Apple thinks it can also grow its browser market share significantly, currently holding about 5%.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet, with time spent watering the recently seeded new lawns. Finally, clouds were offering some shade for this, so I didn't feel as guilty as when 80% of the water was evaporating before it drained toward the grass roots. And I helped Tamuz backup her computer and walked her through a few frustrations-turned-smiles. This evening, I helped Annie put the goats to bed and, later, watched the second half of Hitch with Ruhi, having watched the first half a week or so ago.

Even in silence, the food continues to be excellent. Actually, most of the staff are sitting in a room designated for soft talking. As much as I can appreciate silence some of the time, I prefer eating in the company of people talking, even if I don't actually spend much time participating in their conversations.

IF07: Seeking Sharing Through Silence

As Isabella Freedman enters the first of two weeks of silent meditation retreats this evening, I find myself with energy and focus enough to write about some of my recent experiences. In the seven weeks since I last wrote, an annual folk festival has taken place here; I moved into a different room in Brown House, which I shared for a month with Bryan, one of the most peaceful souls I've ever known; our dear rebbe, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Havurah and Renewal movements, spent his first 10 days at Freedman (and he publicly announced his desire to be buried here); and I've transitioned from full time staff to participating in the Elat Chayyim summer internship program, Neshamah. And unhappily, I have gone two weeks in Neshamah without more than a peep to the outside world about my experiences so far.

The first week was hard, with a lot of sitting in learning spaces, not much open discussion nor movement, and not enough free time either. Topics during the week included cultivating sacred community and sharing stories of personal spiritual journeys. This was also the first week of the summer ADAMAH Jewish Environmental Fellowship, as well as the arrival of the first five of 11 summer international staff. So, in about 12 hours, the size of the residential staff skyrocketed from a quaint dozen of us to about 40.

The second week (just past) was much better for me, with more work hours—maintenance and Super Ben, as usual—balancing learning spaces. It was my first summer Elat Chayyim retreat since 1995, when I first and ever visited the old EC property in Accord, New York. I spent a few mornings in Rabbi David Cooper's class, which he graciously scheduled last minute after Rabbi David Zeller died a just few weeks ago. Most interesting to me were his thoughts on God in unity with Universe and all existence, and a reinterpretation of the first line of Genesis, which suggests that if one translates the words in order, God becomes the subject instead of the object of the sentence: "In beginning (with beginningness), it (a universal force/divine energy) created God, the heavens, and the Earth."

I'll keep my post brief for the moment and start logging my daily activities to keep you up to speed. Today, I helped assemble new BackJack chairs, unpacked new yoga blankets (which were far overpackaged for a bulk order, with individual plastic sleeves and fabric ties), and rode back and forth quite happily on our newly paved main road as we moved furniture and yoga/sitting equipment into the correct rooms for the week. The beautiful weather has made for lots of fun cycling. The summer will also be filled with Ultimate Frisbee, tennis, ping pong, billiards, and more! Oh, and since Chef Celena finally has enough help in the kitchen, meals have drastically improved, gotten really creative, and been especially delicious and well presented at every meal. Yay Kitchen!