harvest time

Yes indeed. Do you feel the change in the air? the balancing of light?
Time for fruition ...

As I pluck the delicious apples off my tree out back, receive the last offering of pole beans, tomatoes and greens, I'm accepting how, Just like the ripening of fruit, this project is taking time to ripen.

Still though, I'm getting closer to having a final audio program and it is very exciting.

I've sifted through the 28 hours of audio, grabbed the juiciest quotes, whittled them down and down again and am finding the narration to weave them together into a story. I thought this would be a medley of your voices with very little of my own, but have learned that my story is needed to weave them together, and there is a craft to that which I am in process with.

My friend Jack Vad, the sound engineer and producer for the San Francisco Symphony has been fathering the project along with me. We meet Sunday to work on mastering the volume, do more subtle editing than my final cut express program allows, and bring it closer to a program that I can post and pitch and hopefully find a taker for to air on public radio.

This may well be only another phase of the project. I still have so many women I haven't spoken with and want to. There are so many other directions I would like to go in: While I don't want to suggest that I think women without children need nurture and give their love to the earth and its other sentient beings (or ones already here) I feel strongly that the earth needs more love (not more people) and I do want to hear from and focus in on women who are consciously not having children for environmental reasons (Lisa Hymas writes frequent articles on this subject on GRIST - check it out!). I also want to open this up to men, because it is definitely a parenting issue, as much as a mothering issue. And I'd love to speak with more older women about life 10, or 20 or even 30 years later. As well as my younger sisters who are really looking at this for the first time.

I see a much more interactive website in my future with discussion topics and an interactive blog, as well as more travel and circles. Mostly though I look forward to sharing my fist baby - this audio piece.

Stay tuned and thank you so, for your stories and voices. I'm ever grateful.

Caroline