After the Smoke clears

Well, that last post was a bit dark and angry, but sometimes that is just the way it is.

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Frances Moore Lappe's book, "Diet for a Small Planet", from the library.  A friend at the farmer's market did the illustrations for it way back when,(1971?).  The edition I picked up is the 20 year anniversary edition and includes a great introduction.  Reading it makes my rant in yesterday's post seem even more emotional and less thoughtful.  I am grateful for the timeliness of finding her words.

Earlier yesterday, a friend had expressed to me in an email that "the most powerful thing is an idea".  In FML's intro to "Diet" she states basically the same thing.  Again, I am grateful for both of their words finding me in a timely way.

In her introduction, Lappe speaks to the exact thing that challenges me.  I feel distressed by the lack of participation of the people of our country in deciding how their lives should be.  I am sure people feel a lack of ability to affect change.  I am also sure that many don't even think to try and affect change in their own life.  There are so many things that each of us has sway on in our everyday lives.  Instead of waiting for a government to pass a new law, or for a large corporation to create a new product that will give us a new way, I am desperate to hear and see each of us make our lives right, good, whole and rich.  It is possible.

None of what I write here is really that personal or hasn't been.  These are word and ideas that are out for discussion and dissection and rethinking where it applies.
Now for something personal.
I know 2 people who live lives that when described to others almost always get the same response.  The response is basically, "wow, I wish I could do that".  Both of those people live below what this countries government calls the poverty line.  Both are simple in their wants and pro active in the creation of the life each lives.  They decide how, what, and where, and often this is outside the conventional methods of our society.  Neither has a "new home" or a "new Car" or anything that is under warranty probably, but each has things that most people wish they had, things that would make you think they were pretty well off.  And each is pretty well off.  Not rich, not even moderately so by our societies standards, like I said each makes less money than is needed to consider them above the poverty level, but each is secure and happy with their lot.

I am one of those people.

Money, education, material goods, social status are not what brings happiness in my experience.
enough money, a life of continuous education, and social relations do help me to be happy.

There is more that can be said on the idea but not now, not here.  We each have our path.

Hammonasset, CT 2011

24hrs. of Reality

"24 hours of Climate Reality" is happening right now. 

/http://climaterealityproject.org/

I have watched and watched trying to get the messages to stay in my brain.  I am angered by the people we have allowed to lead us, politically and socially, angered by their greed, self interest, vanity. Their stupidity is insulting, or it would be, if we weren't even more stupid by taking their words as truthful and wise.

Even with out the threat of a changing climate, our world has become a discount shopping store with a blue light special going on at every mountain top, river, oil deposit, gas reserve, ocean, and forest.  The large corporations are the sale crazed shoppers that trample the slower moving people to get to what is left to buy.  They tear at the goods, ripping them from the hands of who ever was there first.  They leave the place a mess when they move on to the next aisle and flashing light.  The governments of our countries are the store managers who keep putting up the blue lights and announcing the next sale.  Your children are not safe, they will be trampled.  The hoarding of resources will keep them poor and hungry and dependent on others.  We have reason to be angry, reason to revolt, reason to change just in the manner that the way the earth, our home, is being treated right now.  The news says a lot about other possible earths out there, about technology that will answer all our need, all the while we shit where we eat.  We foul our world and call it progress, call it a better world.  It is a childish perspective, an irreverent point of view, a short sightedness that makes us seem unintelligent, when we pride ourselves on our evolution of intelligence.  We are becoming the joke that we laughed at.  Have you seen the movie "Idiocracy"?  If it weren't so sad, and true, it would be funny.

When we seek only to serve or save or further our individual selves, we fail to admit our real situation.  In the end we all die and before that we will all suffer.

If we choose to endeavor to serve our collective selves, our race, our ecosystems, our planetary whole, we can affect in a lasting matter, whether it is our children or the offspring of all living things.

If your neighbors house burns, your house too is threatened.  Your neighborhood is now blighted by the destruction.  We cannot live only for our own selfish advancement, and expect the suffering of those around us not to affect us.  We are all connected.

The crime and economic suffering of the countries next to us (in America this would mean Mexico) affects us.  It is in our own best interest that we all help each other and look forward in order to create a sustainable and improving future for us all.

The following is an excerpt from an email I wrote to a friend today.

........In truth, I feel beaten.  My hope is pretty much gone for the human race to rise up and realize that the direction we have let society travel in,( the excess, the greed...) is not only self destructive, but also self defeating.  We have given those who would stand on our necks the boots they wear.  I have become hopeful that the hurricanes will get stronger and more frequent, that the droughts will be more sustained, that the floods will be more widespread.  I have come to believe that this will be the only way that might make people rise up and wrestle the planet back from the large corporations and the governments that are polluting, destroying the planet and a decent human life.

Life is resilient.  Humans when compared to other life forms are weak, but invasive.  We have done a bit to influence the systems of the planet, but I think what we might have done is to "wake up the giant".  We aren't getting a Hollywood movie version that takes place in 90 minutes, but a real version, that is slower but steady.  You know how long it takes a tanker or barge and tug to slow to a stop or even to effect a turn.  We have started somethings that can't just be turned off instantly.  "Iceberg, Dead ahead".  I only hope.  Truthfully, I hope that the systems that don't recognize income status or political party affiliation, will clean off the virus that is human activity.  Flood, drought, blizzards, hurricanes....Money will protect some, for a while from the affects, but not ultimately.  Historically, humans who have been held down by the corrupt ruling classes have eventually risen up.  When the water gets high enough, the tempers will rise as well.  When people are hungry, they will eat the rich.  When the rich wall themselves off and post armed guards to keep out the common man, the walls will be torn down, and if a hurricane helps, so be it.  The climate will tax our food and economic resources to that point eventually.  When the lie that is this lifestyle that we have been sold looses it's effect people will rise up, first against each other, and then against those who sold it to them in the first place.

I believe it is that bleak, and I hope that the climate/weather/economy/satellites falling out of the sky will bitch slap us hard enough to get people to snap out of there apathetic coma and make some changes in their own lives, take back control and responsibility, and hang the politicians that they trusted and who sold them and their earth to the highest bidder, from the cell phone towers, and power lines.

I think that Gandhi was keenly smart in his ability to lead people in a peaceful resistance.  I think that, like his campaign to have "homespun" clothe, we could find a path by growing our own local food, developing solar and wind or geothermal power on each of our homes, driving diesel cars and making our fuel at home from vegetable oil, and many other ways.  We can disempower the few but powerful greedy and the rich by no longer buying what they have to sell.  But we have to be willing to loose our comfortable, overweight fat and diseased asses and take responsibility for ourselves.  I don't think this will happen and I am not as adept as the Mahatma, not even close, so instead of placing my hope in the peaceful way, even though I will live it, my hope comes in the violent and painful suffering of the bulk of humanity to bring about a meaningful change in the path of humanity.

So, in some ways, to climate change I say "bring it on" , flood the world, starve the crops, make species that our food systems depend on go extinct, give us new strains of disease, WIPE THE F##KING SLATE CLEAN OF HUMANITY and start over.   A few of us will survive, probably not you or I, but some will and for a time they will have fresh in their memory how we got to the horrible place we did and they might just choose a more reasonable path.  But before that happens we have what we have and are left to make our choices, to decide who we are and how we will walk thru the days that we are given.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest?

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it does it still make sound.  Yes, it does.  In the wintertime it crackles and pops in my wood stove.

When a tree is alive and well it captures CO2 from the air and it gives off oxygen.  When a tree dies it stops giving up oxygen and starts releasing CO2 as part of it's decaying process.

To heat my home in the winter I have a small wood burning stove.  To fuel that stove I collect the downed trees from the woods. Each year quite a few trees come down during the storms.  I am grateful for the winter warmth.  It is a bit of work and best if I keep at it year round, that way I don't have to hurry the work, and the wood has longer to dry out.  It has just become a part of my daily work to sustain myself.

This is where I live.  This is part of my effort to be where I am and to live in it as part of it.  I use stones and rock for my building material because there is so much of it right here.  I use wood as my fuel because there is so much of it right here.  I watered my gardens from my water barrels during one week long period only because the rain did it the rest of the time.  I am trying to live where I am, not trying to make where I live into something it is not.

I know many people who live in a dry hot part of the country.  To me, they don't seem to live in that region, but rather in spite of it and they exert a lot of energy doing so.  Cafe's are out of doors and they use misters to keep people cool, the water evaporating before it falls onto the skin.  Yet, most people use clothes dryers that run on electricity or gas instead of hanging their clothes outside for an hour or so.
In that same place an open canal carries water across the desert to the big city, losing a staggeringly large amount to evaporation.  Meanwhile, that source for water has dwindled to the point that it no longer reaches the ocean as it once did.  All over are open swimming pools and golf courses that use a lot of water.  Once houses were built of adobe for it's cooling properties, now all are built of wood and use electricity to cool them.

I don't mean to pick on one place but this is what I personally have experienced, so I relate it here.  There are ways that we can live in the place that we find ourselves.  We can be more reasonable about what we ask of our surroundings, of the earth, of each other, of ourselves.

I sometimes stand at different places where I live and just look around.  I try to see what is here, where I am.  I try to see what I am not seeing, what I take for granted, what I look past.  I then try to see how I fit into this place, how my plans for my gardens, for my buildings, for any of my projects might be better thought out to make them fit into this place.  Sometimes, I realize that an idea I have had has no real place here and I have to come at the goal of my desire from a different angle so as to get at what I really want to achieve without forcing it upon the situation.  I have to find a more reasonable way of being in the place I live.

Water

When it rains, it pours.  When it pours, the creeks run.  When the creeks run, everything seems to come to life.  Between our home and the one next to us, about an eighth of a mile, these 2 creeks have been running.  They reshape the mountains, move rocks and did up the roots of trees, eventually pulling the trees down.

The sound of running water is the foundation of all sounds while the creeks run.  Wet is everywhere.  Hopefully some of this water is going to trickle down into the soil and eventually down into the aquifer that our wells all pull from.  It is a long process and it takes a bit of water to make it happen, but we have a lot of water.

Next summer, at this time of year, all of these woods could be dry with a lot less foliage.  It was like that our first year here.  That was what prompted me to establish rain barrels to catch water for the gardens.  They seem a little silly now, in someways.  But when the power was out after Hurricane Irene came thru, we had gravity pressurized water from these barrels, even though our well pump was out.  So I guess they make sense.

Many farms in New England have been either damaged or had entire crops lost due to the flooding.  How do I adapt to this cycle of life?  What do I see as my oppositions to this natural flow and how can I move with it.

The establishment of regional/local agriculture in every region or locale can create a food security by giving support to neighboring areas that go thru crisis.  When we get all of our eggs, or veggies, or meat, from one basket, then we make our selves vulnerable to the changes or hardships where ever that basket is.  We also become vulnerable to interruptions in delivery systems of those goods if they come from far away, and are delivered by only a few.

For us, the storm and being cut off from travel away from our home was novel, and a bit nice in it's quite and seclusion.  But, we were prepared.  For some it was not so good.  I suppose this is true of many situations.

Cedar Flats Island

The crest of this patch was 3 hours ago, and much higher!

     The road that passes in front of my house is named Cedar Flats.  Flooding from hurricane Irene turned the creeks into rivers and those rivers cut a couple of paths in the road, one to the north, one to the south, about two miles apart.  Cedar Flats became an island.
     The two temporary rives where running fast and wide.  Big standing waves made rafting down the water flow come to mind and then immediately the realization that it would get you killed.  Those waves were everywhere, born from stuck trees and lifted roadway.
     I did get a good feeling as I walked along our island.  It reminded me of the good feelings I have had while visiting real islands, Martha's Vineyard, Block, the Florida Keys.  I think is came from having my area of living reduced to a manageable size, "A reasonable Size."
  

entrance to the Parkway, the stream is to the left

  This area is populated with a few multi-generational families.  That kind of changes the feeling of the area.  Familiarity, and longevity breed tolerance and compassion, or so it would seem.
     The lack of motorized vehicles and the site of people walking and looking at the place where they live was very different.  Most days people drive by, fast, listening to radios, talking on cell phones, texting, but not looking at the trees, creeks, their environment.  Though people were taking pictures with cell phones, they were looking at the place where they lived.  We talked to and met some people we hadn't known.  We even met a couple who owned our house 30 years ago.  They moved a mile and a half away when they inherited their Grandmothers home.
     I had fantasized in the past about what it would be like if our road where cut off, usually on days when the cars or motorcycles came thru on mass, and at speed.  Thanks to Hurricane Irene, I got to experience it. It was good.  I am sure that long term, I might get challenged by getting things from the "outside world" transported over the water, but for the time, island living was a step down in pace and a step up in quality of life.  The quality came in the form of being able to walk the road with my dog and not worry about speeding cars coming around blind curves and threatening us.  It came from getting to know our community a little better.  It came from direct attention to our environment, local environment.  It came from the deep appreciation of the help we get from electricity to pump our well water and cool our freezer, though we got on fine without it.
     The 4 square miles of island that was Cedar Flats Island for a day was a small gift, a vacation, a disconnect from the faster larger world.  It was a day and an island of a reasonable size.

A Glass half full of Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

It's all about perspective isn't it?  The rule of the Jungle is "Eat or be Eaten."  The reality is that we Eat and are eaten.  It isn't a competition but a collaboration, a dependance, a relationship and an undeniable truth.
     In America, we seem to have embraced competition as our driving force.  Our economics are based on it, our recreation is steeped in it, even our educations are now ruled by it, and sadly our religions seem to be of this mind too.  The only problem I have with this is that in competition there is always a loser as well as a winner.
     If the rule of the jungle is the standard by which we operate, then how do we justify the simple fact that we all die eventually.  One way might be to step back and take a wider view, to look at the success of the race as opposed to the individual.  Ahhhh, now we are getting somewhere.  Our race has progressed and now the lions and tigers and bears, (oh my!) are moved down the food chain, though we don't really eat them, but they are threatened by man and man's technology.
     The wider view would also have us see that the advance of man and technology has allowed us to be at the top of the food chain, it has also threatened the other links on the chain, lions, tigers and bears included, and that with out those other links, it ceases to be a chain.  We do not, have not, and cannot as far as we can tell, exist independent of the rest of the natural world.  What we do unto it we do unto ourselves.  It will take a wider, more patient view, a less egotistical view to see this but once it becomes apparent, it will be as if we suddenly stepped back and where only then able to understand the scale of that thing we were standing next to.
     The reality is we are not in a competition with the rest of the flora and fauna of the planet, or with the rest of creation.  The reality is that we are in league with the rest of creation and dependent on it for the sake of all creation.
     For ages man has been working to remove himself from this undeniable fact of being a part of something greater than ourselves.  From taking our bodily wastes, our household waste, and our own bodies, after they have served us,  out of the system, we have desperately attempted to separate us, from the rest.  In the end, in a longer measure of time than just one human life, even those things that we have directed away from the natural cycles will eventually be reunited with the rest of the decay and rebirth, life and death that is our reality.
     When we have attempted to work around, or outside, or in spite of the reality of the cycles of nature, we have always created some kind of problem for ourselves and others.  The problems always seem to be greater issues to resolve than the original one that spurred our "innovation".
     One example, an easy one, is transportation.  The cheap fossil fuel that we use has created a huge problem that can be seen in the health of the air, earth and water as well as in our own personal health.  The previous methods of transport, horses, sail boats, human locomotion, all worked.  Their impact was not threatening to the life as a whole and in some ways supported it.  But, we wanted faster and farther.  Never grateful, never satisfied, never happy now.
     If one of us suffers, then we are all less for it.  True progress would not come in the way of faster, and farther for some, but might be more inclusive of all.  Isn't that what the foundations of our beliefs say?  Equality for all.  All are loved by God.  Doesn't the law of the jungle just reduce our existence to something like a football game for the Creator to watch?  Haven't our beliefs in the nature of God's creation been more like that of an artistic work rather than sporting event?
     We live and die and after us there is other life.  This is what we know, what we can witness as reality.  The scramble to compete becomes an uninformed and pointless path when seen with a lens that looks beyond our personal existence and realizes our connectedness to all things, before, now and in the future.

Foundations

Thomas Jefferson, who in turn shaped the way many nineteenth-century American homesteaders understood ownership of their farms. Jefferson wrote in 1785 in a letter to John Jay that

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, & they are tied to their country & wedded to its liberty & interests by the most lasting bonds.".