Brooks throws out a life raft to climb aboard when you are feeling isolated and low saying “Sometimes I feel like I’m in a daily struggle not to become a shallower version of myself.” He continues to list the variables … Read More

I started writing professionally as a journalist for the Aspen paper. Those of you who have seen The Post about the daily life on a newspaper before Watergate, in Katherine Graham’s era in the 1960s, will appreciate the very hands-on … Read More

Connectivity on trails and wildlife corridors for the Upper Susquehanna/Finger Lakes Bioregion Presented by Destiny Kinal, Reinhabitory Institute This presentation was prepared and circulated in the last quarter of 2017 not only for the managers of trails systems, but also … Read More

Sex, Time and Prophecy: why women evolved to envision and how that learned ability can lead us toward a livable future. Prophecy is the ability to learn from time. Social scientists and anthropologists Leonard Shlain, Helen Fisher and Marija Gimbutas … Read More

A number of celebrations heralded the release of Linen Shroud. September 22, 2017 Book Party in East Bay, Salute E Vita, Marina Bay, Richmond, CA autumn equinox. Watching the sun set on autumn equinox over Mt. Tamalpais. Bubbly and heavy … Read More

Delphine Montour metis woman of 55 years French and Seneca/Haudenosaunee (Iroquois.) Born 1810 at Buffalo Creek Interview conducted by Destiny Kinal, author of Linen Shroud DK: Did the boarding school experience at the Thomas School account for your separation from … Read More

In Linen Shroud Destiny Kinal beautifully illuminates how our ancestors approached conundrums similar to the ones we are facing in our time now, with vibrantly alive characters expressing both Native and European values. How does flax—a tough and finicky plant … Read More

WENY News   From The Wellness Arts Network: “Many years ago when I lived in the counter cultural world, a group of people noticed that we have had  – as a species – special relationships with our watershed homelands. Weather, … Read More

I often wonder if it would make interesting reading if I wrote about the indignity of being managed by and for machines. We may have bristled and, on a bad day, may still bristle, but we have been tamed to … Read More

Organized by the New England Flax and Linen Study Group, in collaboration with Historic Deerfield, Flax & Linen: Following the Thread from Past to Present took place on Saturday & Sunday, August 20th-21st, 2016. Flax is a textile fiber with a 30,000-year … Read More

Reinhabitory Institute: I read what you’ve written about your political awakening, but there was a lot going on at the time. So what was it about the Diggers, or they the Digger movement or the free movement that particularly attracted … Read More

Bottlesickness. “A temporary condition (often caused by shaking a bottle) that interferes with a wine’s fruit flavors,…alleviated with a few days rest.” Wine.com Dateline: Taos, New Mexico. One week from completing my six-week fellowship at Wurlitzer Foundation, I woke assailed … Read More

On Shapeshifting: cost/benefit and peril In 1976, I got divorced, left the Digger community I had lived and worked among, abandoned my life in Aspen Colorado, and took my girls home to southern Ohio where my mother lived. Those condensed … Read More

When you’ve grown up in a patrilineal tribe—where your family name comes from the father and ancestry is traced back through your father’s fathers, it’s difficult to imagine another way. Before the progenitors of the sky gods of three major … Read More

“Misinterpretation of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar was the basis for a popular belief that a cataclysm would take place on December 21, 2012. December 21, 2012 was simply the day that the calendar went to the next b’ak’tun, at … Read More

I spent women’s day evening in Tehuantepec, the capital of the infamous Tehuana women, among matrilineal people who speak Zapotec. The legendarily ballsy Tehuana women, from whom Frida Kahlo sprang, had several parades last night: one where hundreds of women … Read More

Co-presentation by Rebecca Burgess and Destiny Kinal in April, 2012 In April, 2012, the Fibershed project and our press hosted a cooperative event and reading on the subject of bioregionalism, fibershed, and appropriate technology. The events were held partnership with two … Read More

Sic transit gloria: And so passes one of the most intriguing, profoundly influential men I have met in my life. I first met Peter Berg in the spring of 1967 at the Digger’s Free Store in the Haight Ashbury District … Read More

My partner in Reinhabitory Institute, Judith Thomas, was visiting the Penn-York Valley from the San Francisco Bay Area. I had told her my valley was a bioregionalist’s dream: in two states and three counties, between the Susquehanna and the Chemung … Read More

A reading of Burning Silk by Destiny Kinal at Riverrow Bookshop in Owego Sunday January 15th, 2011 morphed into a discussion of the Persephone myth, a natural midwinter theme dealing with the maladies of SADD, depression, and loss of community. … Read More

As a spanking new press with one publication–Burning Silk, my first novel in the Textile Trilogy–and another in the pipeline, going to Europe to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair would have been a case of the intent of our grasp … Read More

In the month that I am here in Europe, between three countries–Holland, France and Germany–half is dedicated to research and to writing on my second novel in the Textile Trilogy, Linen Shroud. I follow Carole Maso’s dictum that form should … Read More

Luckily, a sign at the beginning of the museum explained something I would have had to deduce from the entire display: In 1941, the Dutch were divided about the German occupation, most complacent as the Germans made a great show … Read More

Wednesday was going to be a sunny day, the weather projections forecasted, and so we planned our trip to Zaanse Schwanz [sic]for that day. There, the brochure promised, we would find a village which had been an industrial center with … Read More

We were greeted by a beautiful friendly woman in a flowered headscarf and taken through our options. She and I each spoke a little French and so we communicated this way. We chose a program from the middle of the … Read More

This was a difficult day I am not going to write about. Into every holiday, a little rain must fall: a failed fast, a silenced bell tower, a closed Portuguese synagogue, time in pharmacies, aching feet…..

Today we took a canal boat to three museums, a lovely way to view the city. A ticket allows you to get on and off at any of a dozen stops on the loop. The tour of Ann Frank House … Read More

My friend Judy from Findley Lake, our family’s home, arrived around noon and wanted to head right out. Directional coordinates are difficult in a semicircular city where street names change often. And so we promptly got lost which– as every … Read More

Todd and Barbara’s canal house has a footprint of approximately 16 feet square. Land is at a premium in Amsterdam; houses were taxed on their footprint so thrifty Amsterdammers built up. My room is under the roof beams, up a … Read More

I begin to suspect the train has crossed the border from Germany to Holland by the resemblance to landscapes and homes found in Flemish art: the pitch of the roofs; dirt road through an esplanade of poplars. I knew that … Read More

In fact, I STILL didn’t know what my novel was about, after completing it in Taos NM at the end of 2005, dazzled by the compelling eroticism. The journal I kept named the tribes I passed through, Hopi, Navajo, and … Read More

A good friend and writer who will remain unnamed commented on the steamy sex in Burning Silk. “I have been reading your book. I am a bit embarrassed by the sex scenes between the two women. Does anyone else feel … Read More

Hello editors, I am an Erie PA native, living parttime in Berkeley CA and parttime in Western NYS–Chautauqua County and in the Penn-York Valley south oMy first novel in the Textile Trilogy was just released a month ago from sitio … Read More

Today I had an extraordinary encounter with a foremother, an ancestor who stood firm in her vision during the years when deals were being struck and friendships betrayed. I was first attracted by Sally Roesch Wagner’s book Sisters in Spirit … Read More

I’m attending a week’s certification course in Literary Small Press Publishing at Emerson College in Boston MA with a dozen other small press entrepreneurs. Yesterday, Jason Wright of Oddball Magazine interviewed me about my recently released book Burning Silk, doing … Read More

In response to the article in the April 28 issue of East Bay Express airing the controversy about the value of Alice Waters inspired Edible Schoolyard at King Middle School, Caitlan Flanagan writing in The Atlantic misses the essential point. … Read More

In case you wondered… What makes Burning Silk a Reinhabitory Novel? I had been waiting for someone to ask the question. David Simpson did. What makes Burning Silk a reinhabitory novel and further, what makes the book ideal to introduce … Read More

Autumn equinox 2009 My grandson Rowan is weeping. I wonder: Am I too late to this wake? We’re not going to make it, I suddenly realize. My grandson, nine years old and a nature buff, recently spent a half day … Read More

Autumn equinox, 2008 A Humanifesto To those of my friends and family who are still undecided about this US Presidential election of 2008. I believe that your vote in this election will determine the future of this country and the … Read More

Lazarus pricked his ears, then hand-signaled to Threadneedle: You circle to the right. I go left. The two men, father and son, moved quietly, in random patterns to avoid detection, starting and stopping as the leaf trembles in the wind … Read More

The first two novels of the Textile Trilogy, each based on a fiber, are fused style to substance, silk being sensual and electric, linen being difficult to process but long-lasting. The theme and style of each novel reflects the substance … Read More

Intermezzo Strawberry Full Moon, 1839 It was only much later, months after Lischen was born, that Catherine discovered how her sister and niece had spent the Strawberry Full Moon that came right after MidSummer. She found the recipe sitting at … Read More