Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Family life

Slow Summer Living

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Summer is meant to for slowness. Savor it and get outside. #summer #powerslow

Remember those long summers from childhood? My family spent lots of weekends camping each summer – going on hikes, reading paperbacks in the shade, wading in streams, taking afternoon naps, and telling stories around the campfire. Back at home, my sister and I rode our bikes all over town, walked to the swimming pool most afternoons, made mud pies, captured bugs in jars, read dozens of books, and just played.

Recently I stumbled upon journalist Kelly Wilkinson’s blog Make Grow Gather. She’s on a mission to relive one of those slow, lazy summers from childhood.

This summer, I am attempting an experiment. An experiment to take back summer. Like when I was a kid and thought everyday could be warm and empty and mine.

She made a summer to-do list. Here are a few of my favorite things on it:

Walk barefoot • Take a nap outside • Make suntea • Pick berries • Spend time in hammock • Go on picnic • Make herb water • Hang birdfeeder • Grow vegetables • Go to a farmer’s market • Read the Sunday papers outside • Learn a summer constellation • Go camping •  Read a summer book • Pick wildflowers • Blow a dandelion • Watch fireflies • Make lemonade • Watch a meteor shower • Eat a watermelon • Take a walk on a dirt road

In our house, summer is an opportunity for me to work and write a little bit more, since my husband is home more to watch our son. And that works out great, because after so many months of tearful morning goodbyes and refrains of “Dada gonna be home soon?”, they’re both pretty excited to spend more one-on-one time together. But Wilkinson’s inspired me also to make old-fashioned summer laziness a priority in the next two months.

So I’m planning to spend lots of time here…

and here…

and in our other favorite escapes, and to just really enjoy these long days with my family. So I’ll probably be posting a little bit less during the next two months. But hopefully you’ll be too busy catching fireflies, picking berries, blowing dandelions, and gazing at stars to notice.

Living Local

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Living Local #carfree #sustainable

A few years ago, Kurt Hoelting, a wilderness guide and commercial fisherman living in the San Juan Islands in Washington, took an online quiz to calculate his carbon footprint. He was living fairly simply, so he was shocked to find that his carbon footprint was gigantic. The culprit? Air travel. So Hoelting made a resolution. He would spend an entire year only traveling within a 60 mile circumference of his house and using only public transportation, his bike, his kayak, and his feet. He wrote a book about his experience called The Circumference of Home.

In an interview Hoelting said that his experiment made him see the world from a new vantage point. His first adventure was walking a 130 mile circle around the Skagit Basin and Whidbey Island, and he expected a nice, long wilderness hike. But he was shocked at how complicated walking turned out to be, because our world is built for cars, not foot-travel. As Hoelting walked, he noticed “nooks and crannies” of wildness everywhere that he’d been missing when traveling by car.

Hoelting’s experiment made me think about my own walks. I love to walk, and I’ve walked nearly every day for as long as I can remember. Thus for much of my life, I’ve been exploring circles around the different places I’ve lived. Recently I was on a walk in the hills near my house. It was a route I’ve taken dozens of times before. But this time I noticed something I’d never seen before: at the end of a cul-de-sac, it looked like there was a path leading into the trees.

It was a rare occasion where I didn’t have my son or his stroller with me, so I followed the path. I found myself in a city park that I’d never heard of or seen on a map. I only knew it was a park because of the city’s sign, which is lying on the ground in the undergrowth. Trees have fallen across the trail in places. And I’ve yet to see another person there even though I now visit regularly. It’s just as Hoelting described – an unexpected pocket of wild in the middle of a residential neighborhood. And I’m sure I never would have noticed it from inside a car.

I can’t tell you how much visiting this little patch of wilderness has added to our lives. My son and I call it the “forest”, and when we talk about it, my son says, “deer!”, because we so often watch deer grazing there. We also listen to birdcalls and look for different kinds of bugs and just sit together on a log and soak up the forest, which is something I’d missed, because like Hoelting, my family lives a lot more locally these days than we used to.

It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago, we didn’t know this wonderful place existed. What else might we be missing right outside our door?

Living Local #carfree #sustainable

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Celebrate the First Day of Summer!

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live oaks

Summer solstice, or Midsummer’s Day, is June 21. It’s the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere when we enjoy the most sunlight and the shortest night. The sun rises to its maximum height, bathing the Arctic Circle – including parts of Sweden, Finland, Norway, and all of Iceland – in twenty-four hours of daylight. Ancient monuments – including Stonehenge, England; Callanish, Scotland; Macchu Picchu, Peru; Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; and Monk’s Mound in southern Illinois – align with the sun. And people around the world celebrate.

How did people historically celebrate the solstice?

Bonfires. In several countries, including Germany, bonfires were offered to the sun to promote fertility and bring bountiful harvests. Men would leap the flames and run across the embers when the fire died down.

bonfire
Staying awake. People in Japan, Britain, and Norway stayed awake until midnight or throughout the shortest night of the year to welcome the longest day at dawn. A British folk tale claimed that the spirits of those who would die during the next year roamed on this night. People stayed awake to keep their spirits from wandering.

sunrise
Sun Dances. The Native American plains tribes, including the Arapahoe, Sioux, Ute, and Blackfoot tribes, threw elaborate religious ceremonies around the time of the solstice. The celebrations lasted from four to eight days. Many honored the buffalo and included singing, drumming, and dancing, and often fasting, prayer, visions, and acts of self-torture.

Gathering plants. In Denmark, women gathered herbs on the solstice, including St. John’s Wort, which got its name because it flowers around the time of St. John’s Day (June 24). If St. John’s Wort was picked and dried at Midsummer, it was said to chase away the winter blues when ingested later in the year.

St. John’s Eve festivals. Many countries, including Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Norway, Finland, and Sweden have traditionally celebrated Midsummer two days after the solstice on St. John’s Eve. Near Helsinki, Finland, modern people gather on this day to watch Finnish folk dances, listen to traditional songs, light bonfires, and participate in rowing races.

What are the benefits of celebrating the first day of each season?

Seasonal celebrations give you and your family the opportunity to:

  • Note the cyclical changes in the soil, sky, trees, plants, and wildlife.
  • Reflect on the uniqueness of each season.
  • Reflect on the lessons each season imparts. The bounties of summer are endless – light, warmth, and lush crops. Nature is at her peak, but the solstice also marks the returning darkness.
  • Read about different celebrations around the world.
  • Celebrate! Seasonal celebrations are affordable, nature-based, and as easy or elaborate as you want them to be.
  • Be grateful for the gifts of food, family, and friendship.

Create some summer traditions this year!

The first day of summer is a great time to start some new family traditions. Pick activities that you’ll want to do year after year, and ones that will make the day relaxing and special for you and your family. Here are a few ideas:

  1. Establish a table-top, shelf, or mantel to display a seasonal tableau. On the first day of summer, replace the spring decorations with seashells, sand dollars, flowers, a baseball, photographs from summer trips, or whatever symbolizes summer in your family.seashell
  2. Collect books about the seasons at yard sales, used-book stores, and thrift shops year-round. Choose a special basket or shelf for them, and change them out on the first day of each season. Or take a trip to the library a few days before your celebration. Some of my family’s favorite summer picture-books are: Before the Storm by Jan Yolen, Summertime Waltz by Nina Payne, Canoe Days by Gary Paulsen,  Sun Dance Water Dance by Jonathan London, Summer is Summer by Phillis and David Gershator, and Under Alaska’s Midnight Sun by Deb Venasse
  3. Place a bouquet of roses, lilies, or daisies in your kids’ bedrooms while they sleep, so they wake up to fresh summer flowers.
  4. Trace each other’s shadows throughout the day to note the sun’s long trip across the sky.
  5. Find a special place outside to observe both the sunrise and sunset. Eat breakfast outside after the sun rises.
  6. Go on a nature hike. Bring along guidebooks to help you identify birds, butterflies, mushrooms, or wildflowers.
  7. Make a summer feast. Eat exclusively from your garden or the farmer’s market to celebrate the bounties of summer in your area. You could also host a “locavore” potluck.
  8. Turn off all the indoor lights, light some candles and eat dinner outside, then play games, watercolor, or decorate the sidewalks with chalk until bedtime.
  9. Read aloud from The Summer Solstice by Ellen Jackson.
  10. Read aloud, watch, or put on your own rendition of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. For kids, check out: A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Kids by Lois Burdett or Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Kids: 3 melodramatic plays for 3 group sizes by Brendan P. Kelso.

Or create your own traditions to welcome summer this June 21. Hopefully you’ll be celebrating for years to come.

Mark your 2010 Calendars

Autumn Equinox – September 22
Winter Solstice – December 21

Resources:

  • The Book of the Year: A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays by Anthony F. Aveni
  • Ceremonies of the Seasons by Jennifer Cole
  • The Summer Solstice: Celebrating the Journey of the Sun from May Day to Harvest by Caitlin Matthews
  • Celebrate the Solstice by Richard Heinberg
  • Together: Creating Family Traditions by Rondi Hillstrom Davis and Janell Sewall Oakes
  • The Creative Family by Amanda Blake Soule

(Originally posted on June 15, 2009.)

Do you observe the summer solstice? I’d love to hear how you celebrate!

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A Study of Family Life

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Credit: Tobyotter

From 2002 to 2005, UCLA researchers videotaped 32 dual-income, multiple-child, middle-class American families for a week. They also noted the family members’ locations in the house and measured their stress levels with routine saliva tests.

The research team, which represented a range of disciplines, spent the next five years pouring over the resulting 1,540 hours of video, coding and categorizing the amount of time parents spend on different activities, including childcare, cleaning and housework, children’s homework, meal preparation, and leisure activities. They hoped to understand dual-income earning families better at the end of it, since their number is on the rise – from 36% in 1975 to 46% today.

Here are some of their findings:

  • Mothers usually returned home from work first.
  • Mothers spent 27% of their time on housework; fathers spent 18%; children spent 3 %.
  • Mothers spent 35% of their time one-on-one with their kids; fathers spent 25%
  • Mothers were more likely to watch TV during their one-on-one time with the kids; fathers were more likely to play in the backyard.
  • Mothers spent 19% of their time talking to family members or on the phone and 11% occupied in leisure activities.
  • Fathers spent 20% of their time talking to family members or on the phone and 23% occupied in leisure activities.
  • Husbands and wives were together alone in the house about 10% of the time.
  • The entire family gathered in one room about 14% of the time.
  • Families spent very little time in their backyards.
  • Mothers’ stress levels plummeted when talking to their husbands at the end of the day; fathers’ stress levels tapered much more slowly.

In a New York Times article about the study, Benedict Carey writes:

After more than $9 million and untold thousands of hours of video watching, they have found that, well, life in these trenches is exactly what it looks like: a fire shower of stress, multitasking and mutual nitpicking.

Carey quoted one of the researchers, post-doctoral fellow Anthony Graesch, as saying that the study was “The purest form of birth control ever devised. Ever.” (Graesch has two children.)

I found the study intriguing, although it’s hard to imagine that 32 families could represent 46% of American families in a country as diverse as the United States. And, although the researchers insist people got used to the cameras, it’s hard to imagine my own family acting as usual with cameras rigged all over our house and teams of researchers trolling around noting our locations and collecting saliva.

On the other hand, the findings don’t surprise me. My husband and I both worked outside the home for the first year of our son’s life, and it was definitely the most stressful period of our lives to date. (Of course working at home has its own share of challenges, but our lives are more sane now in many ways.)

One thing I came away with was how important it is to explicitly divide household labor and childcare duties in a household. The researchers noted that stress levels were much lower in families who agreed upon their divisions of labor than those who took a more casual approach and tried to figure it out as they went.

What do you think of this study? Do the results surprise you?

How Walkable is Your Neighborhood?

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I’m a huge fan of walking. I wrote about why I love it here. I take a walk at least once a day, rain or shine. And every time I wheel my son’s stroller out to the sidewalk in front of our house, I am grateful that we live in a walkable neighborhood.

So what makes a neighborhood walkable? This is how the folks at Walkscore.com define it:

  • A center: Walkable neighborhoods have a center, whether it’s a main street or a public space.
  • People: Enough people for businesses to flourish and for public transit to run frequently.
  • Mixed income, mixed use: Affordable housing located near businesses.
  • Parks and public space: Plenty of public places to gather and play.
  • Pedestrian design: Buildings are close to the street, parking lots are relegated to the back.
  • Schools and workplaces: Close enough that most residents can walk from their homes.
  • Complete streets: Streets designed for bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit.

My neighborhood only scores 63 out of 100 according to Walkscore’s criteria and earns their rank of “Somewhat Walkable”. I checked some of the other addresses I’ve lived at in the last six years. Most of them earn a higher score, because they were closer to downtown, which means they were closer to bookstores, restaurants, and other amenities.

But I think my neighborhood has something going for it that can’t be easily quantified – a culture of walking. Many of my neighbors are home during the day, many of them have young children, and they are often outside and out walking themselves. So my son and I invariably run into people we know when we’re on a walk. Occasionally we even go on walks with our neighbors. So we’re getting to know each other in a way that I’ve never experienced in a neighborhood, even those closer to more amenities.

My neighborhood is also safe, which I think makes a big difference to walkability. Sadly in a few of the other neighborhoods I’ve lived in, including a few that Walkscore deems more walkable, I didn’t feel comfortable walking alone at night. Especially when I lived alone, that meant the neighborhood was only walkable during daylight hours. And there just aren’t many of those in the winter.

So while I love Walkscore’s ranking system and would like to see urban planners put walkability first when designing or retrofitting cities, I’ve discovered that some of what makes a neighborhood walkable just can’t be easily measured.

If you’re curious, here are Walkscore.com’s most walkable cities:

  1. San Francisco, Walk Score 86
  2. New York, Walk Score 83
  3. Boston, Walk Score 79

And here are the ones they rank as least walkable:

  1. Charlotte, Walk Score 39
  2. Nashville, Walk Score 39
  3. Jacksonville, Walk Score 36

You can find out how your neighborhood scores here.

How walkable is your neighborhood? Do you agree with Walkscore’s rating?

The Sun Will Come Out

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It’s been raining for two days. Then this afternoon, the sun came out. I grabbed my camera and raced for the door. But just as I got outside, the wind kicked up, the sky turned black, and rain began pelting down. This exact chain of events happened three times today, which may tell you a little bit about how my week has been. We’ve had long work days, a ferocious bout of illness, and just the normal to-do lists to contend with. It’s been challenging, I must say.

But we’ve had some ups too. My son was amazingly cheerful throughout his first stomach ailment. And there are the spring flowers. I just can’t get enough of the stretch of time between March and June in Oregon. Plus, our very first seeds are sprouting in the garden.

So, yes, it’s been a bit like a rain storm, with just enough sun breaks to keep us going. I was hoping to share some photos of sun-dappled leaves or a rainbow perhaps, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe tomorrow….

This post is for Steady Mom’s Thirty Minute Blog Challenge.