l 1 --- Unnecessities Oven (I bake on top of my wood stove in a foil-covered pan). TV. Newspapers. Radio. Shampoo (I use bar soap for hair as well as body). Toothpaste (I use water and elbow grease-along with my brush. A little dental pumice every few months removes stains). Deodorant (washing suffices, though if I'm going to be among super straight people I may rub some baking soda under my arms to bolster my self-confidence). Hand lotion. Hair cuts (and razor blades). Pajamas. Aspirin ( and other palliative drugs). Supermarkets (of the myriad items, I purchase only meat, eggs, cheese and produce-if there's no better place to buy them). Professionals (I try to take care of, fix, and make things myself. To learn I read how-to books that experts have written-cheaper than buying their time on a one-to-one, face-to-face basis). Meat every day (once in a while is enough). Bacon 'n' eggs (I don't buy bacon because of additives and I use eggs only when I get a yen for them). Desserts (perhaps once a month; candy even less often). Cavities (I haven't had any in years-maybe I just outgrew them, or maybe it's because of good diet/proper hygiene). October 1980 RAIN Page 13 Julia Suddaby A Typical Day In winter: Mornings I used to sleep late. But now, after some years, I get up earlier, sometimes at dawn. I spend a while lying and thinking (glad my life is such that I have time for that). I lift some weights, do some exercises. Eat an orange. Read. Write. Bake bread. Have lunch-sandwich of alfalfa sprouts, buckwheat grass and homemade mayonnaise. Write and read some more, study geography, a foreign language, rap with my partner. Eat dinnerbeans cooked to perfection in a pressure cooker, corn cooked along with the beans, and a raw carrot. Darkness comes and I go to bed. To converse. To think. To fantasize. To dream. In fall there are apples to pick. Juice to squeeze. Wine to make. In spring there is equipment to make and mend; wild greens to forage. Summer is time to hike, swim, travel. The diet in that example sounded rather spartan and perhaps misleading. Actually I enjoy food very much, but I've come to derive just as much pleasure from simple dishes as from more elaborate ones. Occasionally I like and make more fancy things: pancakes, quiche, tortillas, tamale pie, cheesecake. My activities lean heavily to the intellectual. However, there's a time and season for everything. I'm coming close to exhausting all the books I feel highly worthwhile and I expect I will become more of a naturalist as time goes on, reading nature instead of books. So there you have my life, at least at a glance. I hope it fosters the realization that one doesn't need thousands of dollars and therefore one doesn't need to spend endless hours earning them. Think in terms of variations on a theme. There is no necessity to duplicate the details of my life to achieve the same ends. May we travel in parallel, though perhaps on different roads, towards a more joyous, peaceful world. DO Julie lives in Philomath, Oregon.
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