Category: Romania

  • Small glimpse into human nature

    I parked next to the village post-office. As I got out of the car a ragged old man passed by me and started talking … in Romanian … I though he was talking to himself. We passed each other and I was on my way to the post office when I realized he was talking…

  • Love and Pain

    My grandmother finally parted with her body on Tuesday the 20th of January 2014. She suffered a lot, not just in her last years, but over the course of her life … is it alright to say too much? She was a fighter, a strong woman … and in the end that strength worked against…

  • The Romanian Working Class

    An interesting read about the capitalist attack on Romania. I do not believe that unions, as the article suggests, are at the heart of the matter. Nor do I believe them to be a solution. I believe Romania is, at its heart, a land of peasants (people of the earth) and for any social/economic/cultural development…

  • Local Economies (for when capitalism goes away)

    This article is a pretty good (though not excellent) read about where we are. I definitely agree with the conclusion – hence the title of this post. The following excerpts were selected accordingly: “Economic growth as we have known it is over and done with … If we are very lucky, the global economic expansion…

  • Sacred Economy: Bringing an End to Strip-Mining of Community

    This isn’t the first post in which I’ve mentioned or pointed to Charles Eisenstein … however … this is another one 🙂 Today we finished making another batch of Zakuska (cooked vegetable mash prepared as a winter preserve). We started working outside and got most of the cooking done before a welcome fall-rain arrived. So…

  • As You Wish

  • Cancer, Inequality, Romania

    This is going to be either one of those super-long posts I’ll never complete & publish or a strange short one. I am aiming for the latter. Cancer I prefer to think of disease as a function rather then as a dysfunction. Disease, I believe, is a natural response to an unnatural behavior. For example…

  • Better Gardener, Better Friend

    The gardener is attentive – attentive to the plants, the soil and the weather. The gardener is flexible and opportunistic. The gardener leaves room in her life to take advantage of opportunities. Being a gardener is a different mode of existence. Becoming a gardener changes you fundementally. Before you became a gardener,you might have filled…

  • A Chosen People!?

    Today we attended a funeral … well … to be honest … a funeral practically attended us. We are almost (literally) at an end of a road. There is only one more house beyond us and there lived an old man who died a couple of days ago. Our neighbors, on the other side, informed…

  • Comfort: Apple in China & Potatoes in Romania

    Raymond set me off (again) on a trajectory of thought (which is why I keep in touch with him). He sent out a link to a “green” designer product for growing food in an apartment. I had already come across “the green product” a few weeks ago and I called it out for what I…

  • Defeated?

    A few days ago Andreea told me about a comment that was left on our Bhudeva Romanian speaking website. It was from a Romanian woman who had been following Andreea’s website Feminitate and then discovered Bhudeva where she learned about our life-journey here in Romania. She feels remote, alienated and isolated in her life and…

  • Spreading Destruction

    Over a year ago I started writing a potentially long post that I didn’t get very far with. It had to with money and economics and what not. Yesterday I got fired up about it again (you’ll have to read on to find out what got me started) and so here I am getting this…

  • Country

    I sat down to write this short post and as I did so I thought to open it with a disclaimer. I wanted to open the disclaimer “It’s been a year since we’ve left Israel … ” and then I thought to check the date and found that it is November 8th and at around…

  • Asthma: When I Can’t Breathe

    When I was 3 years old, so I was told, I suddenly developed a severe case of asthma. I grew up with a variety of inhalers and other preventative medication. My asthma looked. to an untrained eye, like I was suffocating (which I was), there was a trumpet like sound when air was drawn in…

  • World Made by Hand

    A few weeks ago a relative (I think he is an uncle … but uncle sounds to generic to me), with whom I’ve connected only in recent years, sent me a book to read. He sent it in a context of a dialogue we were having by email about the direction my life is taking.…

  • 1st Time Traveling in the Romanian Countryside

    Yesterday we took a day off and joined Horatiu (friend and architect of our future home) and his family on a day-trip south-west of Cluj. We moved around in between the counties of Cluj and Alba Iulia. Though we did have long strokes of beautiful sunlight it was a cold day as winter seemed to…

  • Getting Back to Practice

    It’s been almost two weeks now that I’ve been enjoying a fairly regular practice routine – it’s still building, still taking shape but it’s presence is stabilizing. It was interesting for me to observe a cycle over 3+ months as I moved away from and back towards a practice. Practice >> Wanting to Practice >>…

  • Christmas

    Neither Andreea nor I practice any religion. Actually … I religiously stay away from anything religious (I am a bit harsher on these things then Andreea). Yet we do Christmas. It began in Israel when Andreea would get a holiday blues around the time of Christmas. So we got a small potted tree that only…

  • A Snow Covered & Christmas Decorated Cluj-Napoca

    Yesterday and today the snow really piled up for the first time here. Tonight we went for a walk in the city to have a look 🙂

  • My Grandmother’s Homemade Wafers

    It’s been years since I’ve had these wafers in my mouth or on my mind … until these ready-made wafers caught my eye in the supermarket. I spoke to my grandmother and asked her how she made these into delicious wafers. The recipe is simple but a far cry from health food … but so…