The log splitter
Posted: January 30, 2026 Filed under: Portfolio - Elena's work, What is an Art Farm 1 Comment
Growing up in Illinois, a “log splitter” was not a tool but a moniker for the young man downstate who later became the “Great Emancipator.” Honest Abe, known by many names, did in fact work as a young boy clearing fields and splitting logs by hand.
Here in Maine almost half of the homes are heated by wood stoves so log splitters are a tool – not a nickname – used everywhere. My son has learned how to swing an axe, and in homeschooling he has been learning the hydraulics of a log splitter.
The Professor built his log splitter with a hydraulic ram able to push 30 tons, enough to move a semi-trailer. That power proved too strong for a weld on the chassis and so, when splitting a black elder log, the weld cracked before the log split. Black Elder is a hardwood indeed!
The Professor invited my son to disassemble the log splitter; a “shade tree science class” on small engines and fluid mechanics. The math of fluid dynamics gets very complex quickly, so we focused on the basic principles and how hydraulics work.
The motor is a 4-stroke internal combustion engine, which means the piston completes four rotations while turning the crankshaft. The four strokes are (1) intake, (2) compression, (3) combustion, (4) exhaust. The 4-stroke offers higher fuel efficiency, lower emissions and better durability.
To explain how the hydraulics work my son drew a diagram then described the hydraulics like this: “It is like a big rectangle. When you turn the motor on, the hydraulic fluid moves through the lines…around the edge of the rectangle, and then it goes into the piston chamber with a diameter about 5”. As you open the lever, the fluid fills the chamber, where the piston is centered, and the piston begins to move forward, in the path of least resistance. When you toggle the switch back, the piston retreats. It is something like that.”
The process was for my son to reverse engineer the log splitter, taking it apart and carefully numbering every part in the process. The Professor taught my son how to measure the size of a nut by using your finger. My son’s finger is about 1/2”. My finger is about 3/4”. When looking for a socket, you can use your finger as a rough gauge. My son mastered this quickly.
After the chassis was stripped bare, the Professor welded a new metal frame beneath the old chassis. He doubled the strength. He then reassembled the machine following my son’s carefully numbered plan.
In early January we drove to his house, and beneath the shade tree split wood using the log splitter. We had come full circle. And the Professor has split wood to heat his home during this bitter cold winter.
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Credit where credit is due: Lead photo, “Black bird, White snow” by Elena.
the Why Cheap Art? manifesto
Posted: January 23, 2026 Filed under: Art & Healing, What is an Art Farm | Tags: bread & puppet theatre Leave a comment
McSweeney’s Manifesto contains 25 manifestos, two of which were penned in the hamlet of Glover, Vermont. Statistically that is a “non-zero probability” meaning that is incredibly unlikely to occur. And yet Glover, Vermont ranks among the titans of 20th century Manifestos!
Clare Dolan set down “The First Manifesto of the Museum of Everyday Life” which is (a) a theoretical museum, (b) celebrating “…mundanity, and the mysterious delight embedded in the banal but beloved objects we touch every day…the secret, ordinary objects that make up the vocabulary of common lives!” (c) heralds “its mission of glorious obscurity!” while (d) located in Glover, of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
The Bread & Puppet Theatre was founded in 1963 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side kingdom of overcrowded tenements, that housed the dense wave of immigrants during the late 19th and early 20th century. The puppeteers embraced sculpture, music, dance and language as well as baking sourdough bread to share with (to break bread with) their audience. In 1974 the company moved to a 140-year old hay barn in Glover. In 1984 the founder, Peter Schumann wrote the “Why Cheap Art?” manifesto.
Shortly after moving to Maine, I was given a copy of the manifesto, which hangs prominently in our kitchen. For this week, I present the manifesto in its full graphic glory.
Manifesto #1
Posted: January 16, 2026 Filed under: Art & Healing, consciousness | Tags: McSweeneys, Zoe Leonard 1 Comment
The history of the 20th century was declared largely by manifesto: The Manifesto of Futurism 1909; Dada Manifesto 1918; Manifesto of Surrealism 1924; John Cage’s Manifesto 1952; The Russell-Einstein Manifesto 1955; Second Declaration of Havana by Fidel Castro 1962; The Ten-Point Program of Huey Newton (Black Panthers) 1966; The Gay Manifesto 1970.
Derived from the Latin manifestus which means “plainly apprehensible, clear, evident” by the 1640s in the Italian it had come to mean “public declaration explaining reasons or motives.” At its root it is derived from manus which means “hand” and a manifesto arguably is a physical object – words on paper – easily grasped or held, say, nailed upon the doors of a 16th century church or plastered on store fronts or tenement homes of 20th century inner cities.
McSweeney is a nonprofit publishing house founded in 1998 by Dave Eggers. To honor its 25th anniversary, the house published Manifesto, a hard bound compendium of the 20th century as declared by bold forward-thinking authors. The book was given to me over the holidays, a cherished gift, which I am devouring slowly.
The Introduction states, “[Manifestos] are often strange, ill-considered, and regrettable. They are just as often brilliant and pivotal in changing government, art, and the direction of the human animal. But always manifestos are passionate, always they command attention and use language for perhaps its most urgent purpose – the rattling of complacent minds.”
The books presents twenty-five manifestos. “I want a president,” written in 1992 by Zoe Leonard, is strikingly powerful and refreshing, especially in these times where power is exercised as domination, in a culture increasingly split between the Have Much and the Have Nots.
“I want a dyke for president. I want a person with aids for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn’t the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to aids, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president with no air conditioning, a president who has stood on line at the clinic, at the dmv, at the welfare office and has been unemployed and laid off and sexually harrassed and gaybashed and deported. I want someone who spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn’t possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown: always a John and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief and never caught.”
In Memoriam
Posted: January 9, 2026 Filed under: Art & Healing, consciousness 3 Comments
Remembering and honoring Douglas Lee Woodhouse
July 9, 1964 born, died January 6, 2025
rest in peace, Brother.
Oneness
Posted: January 1, 2026 Filed under: Art & Healing, Chronicles of a First Time Parent, consciousness, What is an Art Farm | Tags: anagarika govinda, consciousness, philosophy, science, spirituality, Thomas berry 2 Comments
Having built a whale, we decided to make a movie on the topic “all life is one.”
Having finished the short film, I sought funds from the Maine Arts Commission.
Having to substantiate my body of work as an artist, I referenced “An Art Farm.”
Whereupon, I realized our art farm had been mostly inactive since 2015 and so on 31 March 2024 I wrote “Crossing the Rubicon” about delivering the Whale north to the Wabanaki nation. I did not win the grant, but I did continue to write, and for 94 continuous weeks now I have posted short essays.
In a sense these are weekly postcards to my Mother, a chance to share thoughts that otherwise would not come up in our occasional phone conversations. More importantly, they allow me to mine thoughts that arise at 2am, to chase down loose threads and weave them, as if into tapestries, at best like those of the Renaissance rich in detail and color, telling stories of this strange and troubling moment in time.
An overarching theme seems to be Spiritual Ecology, a field of inquiry of which I only recently became aware. Rudolf Steiner is considered a visionary, having described a “co-evolution of spirituality and nature.” I learned of Steiner back in my Chicago days from a Gaia-centric friend at the vanguard. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, also considered a founder, almost one century ago, wrote of a ”consciousness of the divinity within every particle of life, even the most dense material.” In “The Phenomenon of Man” he foresaw that “Science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole.”
My Mother actively discussed de Chardin in her college days, and within the social circle of her childhood in Clifton of the Queen City, Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as at our dinner table. Father Sullivan, elder of Holy Cross Parish, once described my Mother as a “pantheist;” I suspect he meant that as a criticism but which she rightly took as a compliment! Perhaps, what the Father actually meant was panentheist (God in all things) not pantheist (God is all things), but regardless, since my childhood the tenets of Spiritual Ecology have been laid down as plain common sense.
On a family road trip west to the Grand Tetons, my Mother handed me a copy of John Muir’s biography. I was enthralled, in the backseat, while crossing the endless great plains. Decades ago I read Thomas Berry, also considered at the vanguard, who emphasized “returning to a sense of wonder and reverence for the natural world.” More than my share of Thoreau and Wendell Berry have I read, as well as David Abrams’ “The Spell of the Sensuous.” Joanna Macy has been celebrated among the Wise Women here at the art farm, while Emergence magazine is on my subscription list, the product of Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, a Sufi trained multi-media maven on topics of a collective evolutionary expansion toward oneness.
But what would be this consciousness of oneness? The Renaissance is an historic example of a shift in consciousness, the “awakening” or “rebirth” of Europe, away from the Church-dominated Medieval era to embrace humanism, scientific inquiry, individualism, a flourishing of arts and culture. Rene Descartes, living at the end of the Renaissance, is considered foundational to modernity, his “cogito, ergo sum” defining the thinking rational self. But “cogito” is only one part of the whole self, and it can easily fall into the binary, mono-dimensional thinking of either-or, rather than both-and.
Newton’s Laws of Physics state an object is either at rest or in motion, but quantum mechanics allows an object to inhabit two states at once. Our logic has lead to AI which is a massive accomplishment, but it might either destroy us or bring far-reaching benefits. The “us versus them” is endlessly argued by politicians, the strongman’s lever using fear to divide and conquer. A spiritual ecology pursued only through the rational seems destined to failure. An expansive and inclusive approach is needed to embrace the breadth, depth and interconnectedness of both the natural world and ourselves.
“Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness,” by Lama Anagarika Govinda, is insightful toward this life-affirming goal. He describes the “one-dimensional logic which…cuts the world apart with the knife of its ‘Either-Or,’” and then introduces “…a new way of thinking, an extended multi-dimensional logic which is as different from the classical Aristotelian logic as Euclidian geometry is from Einstein’s theory of relativity.” He presents this using the coordinates of an x-y axis. “If we regard the horizontal as the direction of our time-space development (unfolding), then the vertical is the direction of our going within, toward the universal center of our being and thus the realization of the timeless presence of all potentialities of existence in the organic structure of the whole of the living universe. This is what the poets call the ‘eternity of the moment’ which can be experienced in the state of complete inwardness…such as happens during meditation and creative inspiration.”
It is no small undertaking, a 21st century renaissance awakening to multi-dimensional consciousness not among the few, but ultimately we, the people, of the planet. Small-minded politicians and capitalists will pursue their goals of domination, and so this seems a necessary path out of the madness, deeper within. It is beyond the scope of one short essay to speak to such fullness, but this seems a direction for our art farm to pursue in the new year.
…and here is a link to the short film on the topic that we are part of the ecosystem, that all life is one, which set this ship – which is an art farm – to sail on this oceanic odyssey:
https://www.picdrop.com/claytonsimoncic/C39UK57ncx
The short film was produced with Anna Dibble. Clayton Simoncic was the photographer and editor.
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Since it is written “the last shall be first,” I shall end this post and honor the Benham Family tradition, that good things come to those who begin a new month, on the first day with the first words: “Rabbit, Rabbit.”
May good things come to all people in the new year.
As Above, So Below
Posted: December 26, 2025 Filed under: consciousness, Little Green Thumbs, Portfolio - Elena's work | Tags: hildegard-von-bingen, mother-trees 1 Comment
Two wise women demonstrate the ancient wisdom, passed down millennia, of the Emerald Tablet: “That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above,”
The “Sibyl of the Rhine” is our first wise woman, the polymath writer, composer, philosopher, mystic and visionary of the High Middle Ages. The Abbess of several Benedictine monasteries, the breadth of her intellect included being a founder of scientific natural history in Germany. A truly remarkable and wise woman was Hildegard van Bingen.
Hildegard’s central theme was Vriditas, a Latin term meaning “greenness” but with added nuance of vitality, growth and lushness; the creative life-giving force of nature and spirit. Simply stated, physical well-being is the “greening power” of Gaia, that relates both to the physical and to the spiritual. As above, so below; all life is one, all is connected.
Her scientific master work is the Book of the Subtleties of the Diverse Nature of Creatures. Divided into two sections, the Physica is a comprehensive treatise and medicinal catalog of plants, fish, birds, insects and minerals, while the Causae et Curae emphasized the causes of disease and their corresponding natural treatments.
Hildegard closely observed the plants in her monastery’s garden and how – as Babs Mahany wrote – “stem and bud absorbed the sunlight [which] brought the fronds’ unfurling.” Her closely observed empirical observations combined with mystical visions detailed that which is above ground.
The “wood wide web” scientist, the forest ecologist and professor of the underground, is our second wise woman. Dr. Suzanne Simard is a titan among modern scientists, who challenged the conventional view that ecosystems are competitive and forests are simply the source of timber or pulp. Over decades she researched and discovered the cooperative nature of forests through roots and fungal networks, the mycorrhizal, that facilitate nutrient, water, sugar and carbon exchange; a chemical signaling between trees communicating stress and providing a network for communal support.
Dr. Simard identified century old “Mother Trees” that nurture younger seedlings, sending nutrients outward to feed and sustain the weaker, baby trees. Her Mother Tree Project is rooted in the idea that forests are deeply interconnected ecosystems, social creatures demonstrating traits of cooperative civil society.
Soil is not “dirt,” but a vital and complex life source of sharing and exchange, the basis upon which life unfurls. The soil maven Nance Klehm in her book, “The Soil Keepers,” described it: “When we stand on land, we stand on the ones who have come before us. We stand on our ancestors. We realize we have inherited their legacy, the way they perceived land, the way they lived with the ground, the way their hands worked the soil, or didn’t.”
As above there is light, so below there is darkness;
As above vriditas unfurling, so below nutrients and sugars flow;
As above oxygen creation, so below communication and exchange;
As above the lotus flower, so below the mud.
All is interconnected, the cosmic dance of Gaia.
The Emerald Tablet is a foundational text, attributed to the Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, who integrated Greek and Egyptian wisdom into a body of knowledge on the interrelationship between the material and the divine. The teachings influenced both Pythagorus and Plato, formed the basis of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, were key to Renaissance humanists.
The Emerald Tablet was most likely written in the Syriac language of the Fertile Crescent, but the first extant text appeared in the Arabic, during the Islamic Golden Age, written by Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, the “Father of Chemistry.” From the 12th century onward multiple Latin translations followed, introducing the text to Europe and then in 1680, seven years before publishing his magnum opus The Principia, Isaac Newton made an English translation. More recently, it significantly influenced the work of Madame Blavatsky, William Butler Yeats, and Carl Jung.
And two wise women, 900 years apart, exemplify the enduring truth of “as above, so below,” the essence of the Emerald Tablet. Here is the full text in English from the Arabic of Jābir ibn Ḥayyān:
Truth! Certainty! That in which there is no doubt!
That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above,
working the miracles of one [thing]. As all things were from One.
Its father is the Sun and its mother the Moon.
The Earth carried it in her belly, and the Wind nourished it in her belly,
as Earth which shall become Fire.
Feed the Earth from that which is subtle,
with the greatest power. It ascends from the earth to the heaven
and becomes ruler over that which is above and that which is below.
حقا يقينا لا شك فيه
إن الأعلى من الأسفل والأسفل من الأعلى
عمل العجائب من واحد كما كانت الأشياء كلها من واحد
وأبوه الشمس وأمه القمر
حملته الأرض في بطنها وغذته الريح في بطنها
نار صارت أرضا
اغذوا الأرض من اللطيف
بقوة القوى يصعد من الأرض إلى السماء
فيكون مسلطا على الأعلى والأسفل
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Snow here, photos by Elena where marked.
Internal Alchemy
Posted: December 19, 2025 Filed under: consciousness | Tags: consciousness, meditation, mindfulness 1 Comment
Article 36 of the Ecuadorian Constitution states, “Those persons who have reached sixty-five years of age shall be considered to be elderly.” And the elderly shall receive free health care, paid work, universal retirement, tax exemptions and access to housing that ensures a decent life.
The United States has no such declaration. The Centers for Disease Control defines an “older adult” as 60 years of age, but age 65 marks eligibility for Medicare. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1978 ended mandatory retirement and currently it is illegal to force anyone to retire.
In Europe, the average retirement age is 65 to 67, although the Nordic countries tend upwards to age 70. It seems entirely possible that Western civilization has radically understated human potential.
Ching-Yuen was a Chinese herbalist, born maybe circa 1677, who died in 1933. He retired from his military career at age 78, and received from the imperial government birthday cards on his 100th, 150th and 200th birthdays. Time Magazine reported on this in May 2012. Ching-Yuen’s advice on longevity was simply: “Keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon and sleep like a dog.”
Baird T. Spaulding’s “Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East” tells of his trek to Persia and the Orient in 1894 where he made contact with “the Great Masters of the Himalayas,” people living 600 or more years. Spaulding explains the central teaching as, “The Masters accept that Buddha represents the Way to Enlightenment, but they clearly set forth that the Christ Consciousness is Enlightenment, or a state of consciousness for which we are all seeking – the Christ light of every individual; therefore, the light of every child born into the world.” He describes acts of higher consciousness, such as walking on water or manifesting food to feed the masses.
Cuie Wenze is a legendary Chinese physician from the Qin Dynasty who reportedly lived to be 300 years old through holistic life nourishment, balancing the physical, mental and spiritual. Gee Yule, another Taoist alchemist, lived a reported 280 years by cultivating the Three Treasures: Jing (essence) Qi (vital energy) and Shen (spirit) through practices like meditation, breathing and alchemy. There are many records of such lives, if one seeks out these stories.
Years ago, while I was learning Qi Gong I was introduced to a practitioner of Chinese medicine whom, I was told, had not eaten food in years, instead existing on the inner Qi he had cultivated. Whether fact or fiction, it was hubris of me to make any rational decision about this. Wisdom, it seemed, was in suspending disbelief and simply observing this man.
From Epicurus through the enlightenment up to our present day, Western rationalism has been materialist. “Food, clothing and shelter” define the basic needs, and given an “us versus them” mindset in competition for limited resources, is it any surprise the 20th century was history’s bloodiest with massive atrocities of human-caused slaughter. Rational self interest is, ultimately, self limiting.
“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind,” Gandhi said. “The unmentionable odor of death” the poet Auden wrote, on the night when World War II broke out. And now, late in 2025 authoritarian strongmen become dominant, consciousness seems curated by algorithms and increasingly by artificial intelligence. This is our choice, not a fait accompli, and so could “beauty and truth” be added to humans’ basic needs? Can we expand our sense of self?
To the materialist rational mind this seems wildly unrealistic, while to the Taoist this is internal alchemy. Sir Isaac Newton, paragon of the rational scientific mind, was also – coincidentally – a leading alchemist of his day. The laws of physics do pertain, while the metaphysics of consciousness – much like quantum mechanics – can broaden our scope, open our minds to new possibilities, an awareness of the subtle energies.
The average U.S. life expectancy has increased to 78.4 years. The trend is positive and allows much room for an expansion of consciousness. What if 65 were viewed not as aged, but as an opening, an opportunity to move inward away from the external pressures of daily life? 10,000 Boomers per day are now turning 65, with nearly 1 billion people over 65 world wide by 2030, and more than 1.5 billion by 2050. An unparalleled force for good could be unleashed if we transform consciousness.
The solstice brings a return of light. May this year’s return be both literal and figurative.
Closest to the Sun
Posted: December 12, 2025 Filed under: consciousness, Permaculture & Home Renovation, Portfolio - David's work | Tags: ecuador 1 Comment
Chimborazo is a snow covered inactive volcano, the highest mountain in Ecuador and the 39th highest peak in the Andes mountains. Located at the equator, its summit is the farthest point on Earth’s surface from the Earth’s center. To the locals it is “the closest volcano to the sun.”
Ecuador’s biodiversity is nearly unparalleled with diverse habitats and a high concentration of species. The Galapagos Islands, a province of Ecuador, inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The Republic of Ecuador’s vast richness was acknowledged in 2008 when the country rewrote its constitution granting citizenship rights to natural habitats, embracing ecological balance, recognizing ecosystems as living entities and allowing citizens to sue on their behalf.
The Constitution’s Preamble states: “We women and men, the sovereign people of Ecuador; RECOGNIZING our age-old roots, wrought by women and men from various peoples, CELEBRATING nature, the Pacha Mama (Mother Earth), of which we are a part and which is vital to our existence, INVOKING the name of God and recognizing our diverse forms of religion and spirituality, CALLING UPON the wisdom of all the cultures that enrich us as a society, AS HEIRS to social liberation struggles against all forms of domination and colonialism AND with a profound commitment to the present and to the future, Hereby decide to build: A new form of public coexistence, in diversity and in harmony with nature, to achieve the good way of living, the sumak kawsay; A society that respects, in all its dimensions, the dignity of individuals and community groups, A democratic country, committed to Latin American integration—the dream of Simón Bolívar and Eloy Alfaro—, peace and solidarity with all peoples of the Earth….”
The basic principles include:
- Sovereignty lies with the people…with national unity in diversity
- Ecuador is a territory of peace
- The human right to water is essential and cannot be waived
- The Ecuadorian State shall promote food sovereignty
- The right…to live in a healthy and ecologically balanced environment that guarantees sustainability and the good way of living (sumac Kawsay), is recognized.
- The right to aesthetic freedom; the right to learn about the historical past of their cultures and to gain access to diverse cultural expressions.
- Education…shall guarantee holistic human development, in the framework of respect for human rights, a sustainable environment, and democracy.
- The State shall guarantee elderly persons…Specialized health care free of charge, as well as free access to medicines
- The State shall guarantee the rights of pregnant and breast-feeding women with free maternal healthcare services
- The right to migrate of persons is recognized. No human being shall be identified or considered as illegal because of his/her migratory status.
There is trouble in paradise, though, as corruption is endemic. Ecuador ranked 121st among 180 countries on the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index. That put it among the most corrupt public sectors, and below average among countries of the Americas. By comparison, the USA was tied at 28th out of 180 countries, its lowest score since 2012, and its trend has been negative since 2015.
Ecuador is a hub for smuggling drugs produced in neighboring Columbia and Peru. The police, judiciary and executive branches are linked to crime, drug-trafficking and extortion. The World Justice Project’s 2022 report “The Rule of Law in Ecuador” found that “Ecuador saw the largest increases in the percentage of respondents who believe that some or all of the actors across [law enforcement, the executive branch, and the judiciary] are involved in corrupt practices. Among respondents in the Andean region, on average, Ecuadorians most often [three-quarters of all respondents] felt that top government officials engage in authoritarian behavior.…” The constitution speaks of noble ideals while the government is rife with graft.
Anthony is a young man who grew up on Chimborazo. He is a father of children growing up in the Andes mountains, but because of the gangs and corruption he lives now in Massachusetts. A roofer, he works all around New England, traveling south to Rhode Island or Connecticut or as far north into Maine and Vermont.
Most all of the roofing crews in Southern Maine now are Hispanic. I see them driving their vans, loaded high with ladders and wheel barrows, doing all of the roofing jobs. For one job on the coast, I needed to remove a chimney on a very steep pitch. I asked the home owner to hire that out, and a Spanish speaking crew arrived. They had no safety equipment but climbed up without hesitation. Growing up in the Andes gives them a natural ease on heights.
The crew did not have the correct equipment and so I called the roofing contractor. Not surprisingly he showed up in his big truck, emblazoned with decals advertising his business. Dressed in sandals and shorts, it seemed we had interrupted him from working on his boat. He stood on the ground, looked up, doing nothing. The crew worked quickly and finished in about 3 hours. Most certainly the $1,500 paid to the boss did not include profit sharing. Every carpenter I know has similar stories to share.
We hired Anthony for the Tiny Cathedral, and by-passed the big-truck contractor. He and his cousin arrived, having driven two and a half hours north from Massachusetts. They did the job quickly and well and were paid cash for a full days wage, travel time included. The home owner still came out ahead, we avoided back-breaking labor, Anthony got a good break.
We shared pizza and beer over lunch. Between his broken English, and my pidgin Spanish, Anthony spoke about his roots, growing up in a small town closest to the sun. He described the exquisite beauty and how the ecotourism industry offers only a sanitized view while avoiding the gang and crime-ridden areas. Opportunity drew him north and he had not seen his son for seven years, nor did he expect to return home for another four years. He misses his son’s childhood but sends home money monthly.
That lunch was more than a year ago, and the self-righteous today likely would regard our act of civility as aiding and abetting. Ours is a transactional age where might makes right, where greed governs the strongmen, where earth is rare only in its industrial and financial value, but history is littered with the names of fallen despots, empires that came to pass. King Xerxes held such commanding power that after a storm destroyed his pontoon bridge, he had the sea whipped 300 times with chains, the engineers beheaded, to punish the sea for its disobedience preventing his Persian Army from conquering Greece. Long forgotten he is while daily still the tides rise and fall.
Wisdom endures on the side of “our age-old roots…the Pacha Mama of which we are a part and which is vital to our existence… diverse forms of religion and spirituality, …of all the cultures that enrich us [in] struggles against all forms of domination and colonialism.”
Closest to the Sun is closest to the light of truth.
Tiny Cathedral
Posted: December 5, 2025 Filed under: Permaculture & Home Renovation, Portfolio - David's work 1 Comment
Not long ago we built a tiny cathedral at the top of Meetinghouse Hill. The hill was so named back in 1733 when the Purpooduck meeting house was built. “The old Meeting House was a large, square, two-storied, unpainted building, without a tower, with a porch on the front end which served as an entry. There were two outside doors, reached by two steps which ran the entire length of the porch. It was a great barn-like looking structure. The pulpit was an elaborate affair. It stood on one post elevated about eight or ten feet above the floor. It was reached by a flight of winding stairs.”
Our tiny cathedral was, in prosaic terms, the conversion of a non-conforming 106-year old garage into an apartment for a Mother-In-Law who lives in Switzerland. “Non-conforming” is a term of art of the Code Enforcement Office for a legally established building that no longer meets the current zoning laws. You can renovate but can neither expand nor replace those structures. There was not an inch to spare.
The 106-year old garage had serious issues but exactly one positive: it could provide the Mother-In-Law with the privacy of a 220 square foot bedroom “suite.” We had a chance to make something majestic. In order to effect this transformation we jacked up and moved the building off its existing slab, dug down to excavate and pour new stem walls with footings then used a crane to lift the garage back into place, exactly where it had been.
The Copp Brothers from Cumberland accomplished this Herculean task. For three generations they have been jacking and moving buildings and, like the “Ghostbusters,” the Uncles and Nephews arrived in a converted ambulance filled with tools of their trade. In less than 90 minutes they rolled the structure onto the street and onto the side yard. The crane lift back took less time.
The Professor – who currently teaches my son science by means of welding and small engine repair – was the mastermind of the project. When he showed up we got to work on the carpentry, plumbing, insulation, heating, roofing and siding. The electric work was straightforward, but the plumbing and bringing water to the garage was a challenge. Thankfully, the professor owns every tool known to mankind and has consummate skill using them all. No problem was insurmountable.
Because the space was limited, we added insulation to the outside of the building. The building remained exactly on its original footprint, and we expanded outward and upward, adding recycled foam insulation – 3” to the walls and 6” on the roof – to create a weathertight envelope that exceeded the new energy efficient Code requirements.
The homeowner, a trained architect who makes sculpture, designed the suite to maximize light, by means of windows, sliding glass doors and skylights. More than 20% of the wall space is windows, and that is how the garage became cathedral-like. Titus Burckhardt, a Swiss artist and art historian, has written, “When a Byzantine poet says, of the fullness of light in the vast inner space of the church, that it seems that ’the space is not illumined by the sun from without, but rather the illumination originates within,’ he is expressing an artistic ideal which Gothic architecture also sought to realize in its own way, by the introduction of transparent walls of stained glass.”
We did not use stained glass, but the amount of light filling that tiny suite is simply majestic. The story is told in detail here: https://npdworkshop.com/the-mother-in-law
The tiny cathedral represents one solution to the housing crisis. In 1850 the average American home was 888 square feet for 5.5 people. By 2015 homes had ballooned to 2,496 square feet for 2.5 people, on average. McMansions average 4,000 square feet, can grow upwards of 6,000 square feet, housing an average of 2.5 people. The trend shows a culture drunk in our profligacy.
The State of Maine needs 84,000 new housing units by 2030 to meet demand and to support the workforce. Maine’s median household income is approximately $90,730, while the median home price is $355,000. Affordability clearly is a major issue. The “supersize me” culture needs to wake up, and rather than build larger, we need to build smaller and smarter.
In Maine H.P. 1224 – L.D. 1829 was recently passed as “An Act to Build Housing for Maine Families and Attract Workers to Maine Businesses.” The law both increases housing density by 2 1/2 times while decreasing the lot size to 5,000 square feet per unit in areas with public water and sewer. This means smaller homes on much smaller lots, which makes the Tiny Cathedral a herald of things to come.
Well dressed, on the Porch
Posted: November 28, 2025 Filed under: Art & Healing, consciousness, What is an Art Farm 1 Comment
In early September, during our Language Arts class, two young Christian women came to the door, dressed in their “Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.” To avoid disruption, I hopped up to answer the door.
They politely asked, “We are doing volunteer work and wonder if you would like to hear some good news from the Bible?” I replied, “That is worthy but I am not interested now. I am homeschooling my son. But I ask you this question: what is the true understanding, the meaning of John 14:12?” They thoughtfully began to open their Bibles and I stopped them, saying “Do not answer this now but consider this as you go.”
Two months passed and recently one of the women returned with her father (younger than me), again dressed in their best clothes. The daughter wore the fashionable full length “Little House on the Prairie” style dress with burgundy flats. The father wore a tad-too-bright blue suit, crisply starched white shirt and a natty woven – not silk – tie. They were radiant in their wholesome goodness.
Standing on the front porch, we discussed grammar of the Bible passage: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.”
I explained that “…because I go unto my Father…” is a subordinate clause. They did not see it that way. But grammatically it simply is subordinate to the independent clause, “…the works that I do he shall do also; and greater works than these shall he do…”. I focused on the verb “do” which they exhaustively counseled meant “to preach.” I countered that it referred to actions such as “raise the dead, walk on water, multiply loaves and fishes.” Flabbergasted, he laughed. Who ever heard of such a thing?!!
He opened his tablet and read from the prepared script that missionaries having gone to the ends of the earth – traveling farther than that street preacher ever could – and having reached countless millions of people means the “preaching” is “greater than.” I respectfully averred that the inverted sentence structure is complex; the object “greater works than these” comes first while the subject “he” comes last. But both the demonstrative pronoun “these” and its antecedent “works” are plural so more than just preaching is going on here.
I discussed Isaac Newton – paragon of the rational scientific mind – who also was an alchemist. He (the father) had never heard of alchemy. His daughter remained silent. We were heading into uncharted territory but my point was the deeper insight is needed, not the narrow rational. In fact, alchemy arguably is a symbolic language of higher consciousness, “base metals” turned into gold a perfect metaphor during the time when alchemy was considered heresy, punishable by death. Higher consciousness clearly does threaten the orthodox, and the street preacher – who was an avatar of consciousness – is revered not because he preached but because of what he did, which includes – as the story is told – raising the dead, walking on water, feeding the masses. Later that evening I asked my Daughter her thoughts and she readily said “works means accomplishments.” Preaching may be one of the accomplishments but “greater than” clearly speaks to something far more substantial.
We spoke about translations – from the Aramaic, to the Greek into Latin and now English; multiple languages over millennia – but he said “God guides all the translations” thus “the word is sacred.” An interesting point, but which renders the grammar moot. Even if the word is sacred, our understanding is not automatic. We need to think for ourselves, with grammar the means to insight; “these” is plural.
We briefly discussed Buddhism, which is to say alternate paths to wisdom. “All roads lead to Rome” is the saying but they held firm in their belief that the “King of kings and Lord of lords” reigns supreme.
Alas, our porch chat came to an end. They asked if they could return and I said, “Of course.”
an Art Farm 