Living on One Dollar

Hubby and I just watched the most amazing movie about 4 young college students who went on an amazing adventure to find out what it is really like to live in a developing nation on 1 dollar a day. What they experienced and the story they tell will move you to tears and to action.

Please watch this video. Please share it with everyone you know. One message you will hear in this film is the concept that there are actually more people in the world who are not poor than there are people who are poor. We are often presented with the image of throngs and masses of nameless poor and we feel powerless to help. In this film you will see individuals with faces and names; children, mothers, fathers and grandmothers that you can help. If everyone who can help, helps just one person who needs help, what a wonderful change we will see in this world.

Living on a Dollar (Movie Link on Netflix)

After you have watched the movie please consider visiting their site and making a donation either to help them continue their work (click on the upper donate button) or to make a contribution directly to the community either through micro loans or educational scholarships (lower/ green donate botton)

Here is the link: Livingonone.org

Thank you and Namaste!

Reflections on Giving Tuesday

Today is Giving Tuesday. I think it is wonderful that some folks have come together around the idea that people should take a little time out from their annual holiday shopping to think about folks in need and organizations that could use a hand up. I'm glad that the organizers of this day have made a point that it's not only about giving money, but also about giving of your time and energy. Ultimately when it comes down to it, all that any of us has that is of value is the time and energy that we personally have to give. 

While I think it is a great idea and a laudable undertaking, I also think it might be one more straw on the camel's back at an already busy and stressful time of year. So, how do we fix that? Perhaps we should examine why this is a  busy and stressful time of year. I would like to encourage each of us to examine how we are spending our time, money and energy during this sacred time of year. Are our activities serving our greater purpose? Is there something that we can let go of that could make this a more contemplative and blessed time of year? Perhaps letting go of some of our shopping and parties would allow us to have more energy and funds for blessing others, and we might find ourselves more blessed as well. 

I would suggest reading the book Hundred Dollar Holiday, by Bill McKibben. Whether you are a Christian in practice or not, this book has a great deal of practical advise about bringing the sanity and sanctity back to the holiday. 

To go back to the idea of Giving Tuesday, let us also remember that these organizations that we are ready an willing to support at this time of the year when we are feeling expansive and generous also need our assistance throughout the year. Perhaps this would be a good time to set up a reasonable, affordable, recurring monthly payment to a worthy organization. This is also a good time to recommit ourselves to giving of our time to groups that are building and revitalizing our communities and helping the needy within them. 

However you decide to celebrate your holidays, and whichever traditions and faith your holidays come from during this very holy period of the year, I hope that yours will be more blessed and peaceful this year than in any year before and that they will continue to grow more blessed and peaceful as the years pass. 

I Voted - Now What?

On Tuesday we elected the officials who will determine the course of legislation for our states and our nation over the next 4 to 6 years. In that election just over 1/3 of eligible voters nation wide turned out to make their voice heard and their vote count. Shame! Before the election I heard a lot of people talking about how unhappy they are with our government. I also heard a lot of people talking about "what is the government going to do for me." It is a statistical probability that many of the people who complain about the current state of affairs in our country are the same people who are not turning out to vote. I just want to take this opportunity to remind everyone that, as a citizen of a democratic society, voting is not only your privilege but your duty. It is one way that we can stand up against corporate greed and the power and money they wield to advance their agendas. That said, this is not a post about getting out the vote. It's a post about what we do now that the vote is over, and about what we should have been doing all along rather than sitting around waiting for the government to solve our problems.

Folks we have been far too complacent in our lives. We have been far too willing to hand over the reins of control and responsibility to someone else. We need to start taking responsibility for ourselves, our neighborhoods, our villages, our towns, our counties, our states and finally our nation. In that order. We need to join together in small groups, in medium sized groups and in large movements to create the future that we want to see. We can't wait for someone at the top to do it for us.  They don't have the same goals, and to be honest you can't blame them. They don't come from the same place you do.

We can't wait for Washington politicians to solve our problems. We need to start at home and ask ourselves what can WE do to make our homes a better place?  And we need to do it.  Then we need to go beyond our own doors and look at our neighborhoods and ask ourselves, what can  we do to make them a better place, and who can we involve in the process? And we need to DO IT! If we need affordable day care, access to healthier food, better educational opportunities for our children; then we need to form coops,  community gardens and CSA's and we need to go to school board meetings and vote in our local elections for the people who will sit on those school boards. Perhaps we should even run for local office. I understand that we all work hard, but that does not absolve us of our responsibilities as members of society. If we wonder why our society is broken, we need to stop looking to the people in Washington DC and start looking at ourselves. 

The results of the recent election may be disappointing to many, and there may be many who have given up on exercising their right to vote because they just feel hopeless about the outcome and that it wont matter regardless of how they vote. To both of these groups I say, you now have a unique opportunity to show what you can do when you mobilize on a local grass roots level to bring about the vision that you have for the future of your family, your community, and your nation. As Gandhi once said, we need to be the change we want to see in the world. 

Happy New Year Revolutionaries

Happy New Year, and welcome to a new revolution! One year ago today I began One Earth Revolution to see what could be accomplished for our planet in one year along with the help of my family and friends. I will be honest, it has been a slow start. There have been some personal and logistical challenges, but I also have a sense of real progress.  I have seen myself and my family begin to truly live by ethics and principles which we believe will help to sustain our community and our planet well into the future. We have become involved in many groups that are rebuilding the sense of community in our town and are actively working to create a future for our village which is both economically and environmentally sustainable, and not only sustainable but bountiful without being damaging to our ecology. This year has also seen the conversation of sustainability and a post carbon future really making inroads in the mainstream media. While there are still many naysayers and not a few people who staunchly refuse to remove their blinders and see the coming storm, we have begun to see real evidence that people are beginning to awaken  to the real dangers of climate change.  There is so much more to be done!

This weekend Hubby and I have spent two days in contemplation and meditation on our property, on our planet, and on  our personal feelings and goals surrounding both. We spent a day being grateful for the achievements and blessings of the past year and letting go of anything that happened during the past year that we do not want to bring forward with us. We spent today looking forward to the challenges and promises of the coming year. 

This year I finished my permaculture design certification and I'm now saving up for the advanced class. Meanwhile our homestead continues to take shape and we begin to see the real beginnings of the permaculture demonstration sight that we would eventually like to have here. In the coming year we plan to install cold frames, expand the plantings in our fledgling food forest, erect a greenhouse and so much more. Stay tuned for an Indiegogo campaign announcement early in the calendar year. 

And One Earth Revolution? We've got plans for you too. We'll be better than ever with field trips, regular feature pieces on the permaculture ethics and principles, recipe share, farm hacks and so much more. We may even have a podcast in store for you. So stay tuned here and you'll be in the know about everything that's happening on the farm and with The (R)evolution. 

Wake Up America! _ No More Time to Snooze on Climate Change

I've heard some very disturbing things over the past few days that have just made me want to shout, Wake up America! We can't keep snoozing when it comes to climate change. We need to spend our carbon resources on replacing the systems that use them so that we can have a carbon free future.

Following are some news stories from recent broadcasts that have me deeply concerned. These do not include the stories which directly refer to climate change and other environmental issues which are associated with and can be linked to climate change, such as exploding tick populations increasing moose mortality, ocean acidification and sea level rise, just to name a few.

Americans are considering lifting the ban on oil exports. Their primary motivation? Money! Of course. I'd like to hear more stories that stem from someone whose primary motivation is looking to the future of our planet and the survival of our species for the long hall, not just how fast and how much people can line their pockets so they can live high off the hog today and Devil may care what happens when they are gone!

Maine's governor, Paul LePage supports a proposed federal law which would increase federal control of natural gas pipeline permitting and could result in private corporations having the ability to take private land by eminent domain. This is yet another example of short sighted profit seeking in my opinion and likely a result of the impact of corporate money on campaigns and politicians. While Governor LePage claims he is supporting this to reduce the cost of heating for Maine families, he ignores the fact that natural gas is not a truly green or sustainable answer for the long haul and has not put resources and energy behind finding clean renewable solutions that Maine will benefit in the future.

A so called right to farm bill passes in Missouri. This amendment to the state constitution protects the "rights" of big agra business and is one more example of corporate greed finding a way to legitimize itself through legislation which favors large corporations over small independent businesses. It is a step in the wrong direction in the fight for a more diverse, distributed, sustainable food system in the United States.

A drought in California which has been exacerbated by climate change keeps the fire danger high. Forest fires blaze in California as the drought continues. According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, California accounts for nearly half of US grown vegetables, fruits and nuts. This is of grave concern for food security, but also for the environment and for resource management, as with its large population, California is also a top consumer of water resources. In addition to the water woes inherent in having so much of our agricultural capacity concentrated in one corner of the country, this state of affairs also leads to increased transportation costs and a host of other environmental concerns stemming from the construction of infrastructure to the fuel to power the trucks and trains that transport the produce. In addition, there is far more waste in such a system, due to spoilage and damage in transportation; while the food that is produced is not as nutritious as local food because it is picked before it is ripe and then consumed long after it has been harvested. 

I know that this piece sounds like a lot of gloom and doom. And that isn't really what I intend to be. I do believe that there is a lot of hope for our future. We are standing at a cross roads and we have all the tools we need to make a better, brighter more verdant future, if we choose the right path. I had a lot of things to say, but I don't think I can say them any better than Morgan Freeman says them here in this video: (What's Possible) It's more than worth your time.

What I Did for Mother's Day - Hugel Happiness

My son could not believe his ears. He had to ask me again just to be sure. "You really don't want me to buy you anything for Mother's Day? You're sure?" I assured him that agreeing to help me build a hugelkultur bed was going to be more than enough for a Mother's Day gift. I'm not sure he really believed me until he spent 4 hours in the 70 Degree sun this passed Sunday building my beautiful hugelkultur bed. 

First the base of the bed. In the fall we had laid down cardboard and topped that with our corn and sunflower stalks. Then we added our yard clippings and dried leaves. Over the winter we added our kitchen scraps. On top of all this we laid a lot of wood from standing dead trees that we had to take down for safety. Then we began to cover it with a load of loam that we had brought in. 

We haven't been  working our land long enough yet to have developed a large pile of well composted material for making top soil. My guys were handy carting all that soil. And this is when my son realized just what he'd got himself into. We were about 3 hours into the project at this point. I was in there wielding the shovel and hauling logs too, but I did have to pause occasionally to take the photos.

My Guys! They worked so hard!

In this last photo we are about half done with burying the woody debris. It's not quite finished yet, but we made a lot of progress. It still needs some top dressing with additional soil, compost and a good layer of straw mulch. We are going to plant medium bush blueberries on top of this mound. On the south facing side we will have sun loving strawberries, and on the north facing side we will grow shade loving greens. I can't wait to see what kind of yields we get. This and the fledgling orchard that you may notice to the right of the hugelkultur bed in some of these photos are some of our first steps toward our permaculture perennial food forest and garden. 

I will continue to post photos as the food forest progresses. Until next time - Live Light!

When Will We Learn?

If the spike in fiery train derailments doesn't get us to start seriously rethinking our dependence on fossil fuels, I don' t know what will. Yet another today in Lynchburg, Virginia. So what do we do?

Some steps that we can take (this is only the tip of the iceberg, there are so many more)

• Decreasing our use of fossil fuel generated electricity by: changing to LED lighting, turning down the heat, eating more raw foods, putting lights on timers, using energy efficient appliances, reducing our reliance on electricity by hanging clothes to dry, washing clothes in cold water, and on and on. There are many great websites on reducing electricity consumption. A quick internet search will turn up dozens.
• Converting our electricity production to a non-centralized distributed grid powered by alternative energy sources.
• Converting our home heating systems to non fossil fuel systems. 
• Becoming a one car family
• Car pooling and or using public transportation
• Negotiating work from home arrangements with employers for at least part of the work week or changing employment to something closer to home.
• Reducing our use of products which are derived from petroleum. This takes some effort, research and label reading. As you know most plastics are derived from petroleum, but what some people don't realize is that many chemicals including those in our pharmaceuticals are also derived from petroleum. Other materials that contain petroleum derivatives include clothing, fertilizers, building materials, cosmetics, the list goes on, but one that might surprise you-petroleum by products can even be found in your FOOD! That's right there are petroleum by products in some food preservatives. See a PARTIAL list of products here.

Some of these steps are not easily achieved, but they are worth aiming for and they are worth working toward. Every step we take in the direction of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is a step in the right direction and buys mankind another minute of breathing freely and living well on planet earth. 

Live light my friends!

PS. I don't care what they tell you Fracked Natural Gas is NOT the solution to oil. It is just a different path down the road to destruction. 

Years of Living Dangerously

A new ShowTime series examines the causes and impacts of climate change. While I may not agree with every opinion expressed in this show, I have to say that it definitely gets you to thinking about the impacts of human habitation and activity on the planet's ecosystems. It also examines the social impacts of climate change from poverty to, corruption to war.  And it looks into the future and the further impacts of these changes on our environment and climate as we progress through the current century. Please take the time to watch the premier which is available free online at this link http://yearsoflivingdangerously.com/

I find that I can still be shocked by the unbelievable willful destruction of our beautiful wild places for no better reason than greed! Perhaps worse than the greed is the apathy and ignorance of our own individual daily choices.  We need to examine our own choices and start holding the corporations that supply our daily needs to task for the actions that they take. We need to exercise our votes in the voting booth but also in the market place. We need to be informed so that we can understand what impact our lifestyles and daily choices are having on our potential future and the potential future of humanity as a whole.

Return of Surplus - First Fruits

Today I was going to do a post on movements moving together, and I'll come back to that, because I think it is important but this morning, while feeding the compost, I was inspired to share with you an experience I had a few years ago while picking blackberries.

One of the permaculture ethics is "fair share", also referred to as "return of surplus" both terms imply several things. They imply, take only what you need and, when you have more than you need, share it with others in your community. They also imply that we should give or leave a fair share for mother earth and that we should  share the knowledge of this practice with others. If we only take and take from mother earth and never give back or replenish the soil, eventually it will be unable to produce more food to sustain us. Think of industrial agriculture as strip mining of top soil...but again I digress, we are talking about return of surplus and first fruits (and we'll come to those blackberries by and by.)

For a time we had a small bowl on our dining room table. Before a meal each of us would place a small offering from our plates into the bowl. We would also pour a small amount of our water or juice into the bowl and we would mention one thing that we were feeling thankful for that day. After the meal we would be take it out and poured it on the earth as an offering and a thanks. I miss that bowl. I want to bring it back. It is a connection to our earth that we too easily forget and it is a good reminder of thankfulness practice, which is so important in our hectic day-to-day lives. It is also a reminder that we need to think about serving the earth BEFORE we think about serving ourselves. And this brings me back to those blackberries. 

Several years ago I was out picking blackberries. There were some amazing, large, delicious, juicy fruits. I wanted to eat them all. But then I got to thinking, if I eat all of the very best berries then it will be the small, bitter and pour producing plants that reproduce and after some years all that I would have on my land would be nasty little berries that no one would really want to eat unless they had to. Now blackberries being so prolific and birds being what they are, there isn't really a very great danger of that happening too quickly, but the principle still applies and more so with other more tender, less prolific plants. And this is when I had the Aha! moment. I realized that many scriptures and folk wisdom advocate giving back the first fruits. The first fruits would be early ripening, they would also likely be some of the best. It makes complete sense. If we are going to save seed, we choose the best fruits so that we propagate the best of the specimen that we want to preserve. So seed saving is also a way of giving fair share back to the earth. But the idea here is that we need to think of giving FIRST and that we may need to make some sacrifice, but that whatever small sacrifice we make will be more than paid back by the continued fertility and fecundity of the earth. 

Grrrrr.... I'm going to rant, so just be warned.

from http://www.calyouth.org/hey-youth-vote/

Ok, so while this is not strictly what you might think of as a One Earth Revolution post because it is not exactly about the environment or social movements, it IS about our society. It's about this business of campaign finance and the insistence of our Supreme Court to be complete imbeciles when it comes to the interpretation of our Constitution. I've got a BA in political science, so I think I've got some right to rant on this and anyway, any American with at least a rudimentary understanding of the English language has a right to rant on this. And here is my issue; Spending money is not speech. I don't care how creative they get with their definitions, handing over a wad of cash is not speech and is not a protected right under our Constitution. In fact, allowing a bunch of rich fat-cats to hand over a whole lot of money to purchase the right to be the only one that a congressman will listen to is both not speech and has the very detrimental outcome of effectively silencing the free speech of ordinary Americans who don't have the means to buy themselves a congressman! No one however seems to be concerned about the abridgment  of our right to free speech or this squelching of our voices. 

Speech is speech people. It means that you have a right to say what you believe. It doesn't mean that you have a right to pay people not to listen to the opinions of other people, which is basically what this comes down to. We have the right to speak our minds, whether that be on a soapbox in the public square or on national TV. We also have freedom of the press which allows us to put into print what we want to say. That's freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

We have to stop the buying of our Congressman and there is only one way to do it. We need to mobilize the vote. We need to start letting OUR voices be heard over the voices of those with the money. We don't have a lot of money, but we all have one vote. Maybe if we all start using our votes the money wont be quite so important. Do you realize that in off year elections less than 50% of us exercise our most fundamental right as citizens? And in presidential election years it is little better, hovering around 60%. We also have the right of free speech and it is time we stop feeling like we can't do anything about the issues and start using our voices and our pens. Write to your newspaper, email your congressmen, put a sign on your front lawn. If we don't exercise our rights as citizens, we should be little surprised when we find them slowly and then more and more rapidly being stripped away from us. 

Transition- A Reprise

Totnes, Devon, England: a transition town

In a post in December I mentioned the US Transition Movement. I recently came across a couple of great videos done by the founders of the Transition movement, which I will share with you at the end of the post. But first, what is "Transition"? What's all the hype? and why is it important? Transition is a grass roots movement of people taking action toward affecting positive change in our communities and our environment surrounding the most plaguing problems addressing the world and our societies today. Problems such as access to good healthy food and quality healthcare. Issues such as community development and of course climate change, peak oil,  and economic sustainability. These initiatives have been mobilizing and unifying communities around the world for the passed 9 years. Transition groups are taking action where action is needed, at the local level, without waiting for government intervention or government funding. This is exactly the kind of action we need in order to achieve the change necessary to rebuild, reshape and reform our societies and our economies into functioning systems that will be stable and sustainable over the next century or more as we deal with the end of cheap fossil energy. 

I hope that you will enjoy and be inspired by these videos. And after you have seen them a challenge you to answer this question? Transition New England anyone? How about Mid-Coast, South East, Mid-West, South Central, North West, South West; or how about just the town, block or street where you live? Every movement starts somewhere. Why not right there, right now, wherever you are?

This first is Rob Hopkins, the founder of the transition movement, speaking about the Transition experience of his home town of Totnes, at TEDxExeter. If that gets  you excited about the Transition Towns Movement, please what "In Transition 2.0" a more lengthy, but very worthwhile video which goes more deeply into the movement and the "Transition" process.

Cheers.

Start Up Nights - A Smash Hit

This week Hubby and I attended an event put on by a terrific new local business Leaven Beer and Bread House and the group Seacoast Local; a group that encourages people to shift their shopping to products that are local, green and fair. The event was called Start Up Nights and, like the graphic above suggests, it is a competition of great local innovative ideas. Events like this are really bringing fun and creativity to the localization movement.

It all starts with the pitch. Everyone is given a "pitch plate". You write out your idea for a business and try to encapsulate what it will be, why it is important (what is its niche),  how it will be funded, how it will function and profit. You then have 30 seconds to pitch your idea and the three best ideas are selected by voice vote of the crowd. The winners of the initial pitch contest get to select teams to help them develop their idea into a down and dirty, back of the napkin business plan. There are a series of challenges designed to help you refine your idea and it all wraps up with the judges selecting the winners and awarding prizes(but that is secondary). The real prize is the collaboration and camaraderie that develop throughout the evening. 

What really impressed me was the number of pitches that centered around local food, and all of them had a strong element of giving back to the community. There was not a single pitch that was purely individualist or profit driven. This event seemed to be a great example of the types of community and awareness building events that are vital for launching a transition town movement in our local area. I hope to see more events like this cropping up (pun intended). 

We definitely plan to attend the next event April 17th at 7pm. Hope to see you there!

A Little Dose of Inspiration

Photo from the lexicon of sustainability

For those of us who have been struggling through a long and difficult winter, and I think that is most of us, a little dose of inspiration sounds pretty good. I came across a great video on YouTube this morning that I will share with you. I also got an email from Hubby with a link to a Mother Earth News article about urban community gardens. I know you've heard urban community garden before, but this one is different. For those of you who are actually living in an urban setting this article is definitely a good read, but those of you living in the burbs or in the country should not disdain to read it as well. I live in what might be termed burban country (lol, yes you read that correctly,) and what really impressed me about this article was how much stronger the community ties became as a result of this project and how much more content and secure the people involved felt. They were actually building community where there had been one in name only, but not in reality. 

Click here to read the Mother Earth News Article

In the video "Permaculture, a Quiet Revolution" we are taken on a journey to the 8th International Permaculture Convergence in Brazil, where over 200 permaculture design course graduates and their mentors from over 43 countries have gathered to learn and to share their experience in order to prepare for and mitigate the looming global crisis. Their goal, to create sustainability now through self reliance. The only way this goal succeeds is if we all join the (r)evolution and share the message with as many people as possible as often as possible. I hope that you will be inspired and that you will catch the permaculture bug and spread it wherever you go.

Live light! 

For further reading and a helping of Link Soup

Sorry I missed you all yesterday. I was doing the final run through on my presentation and packing up all the things for the farmers' market. The market was a huge success and we even had a few people turn out for my talk on permaculture. Thanks to all those of you who were there. I'm just back from the talk and as promised I'm putting up my suggestions for further reading and links. Since I had already scheduled a serving of Link Soup for the post for this weekend I will append those additional links along with this and that should all come together quite nicely. Just the thing for relaxing in the easy chair with on a blustery Sunday afternoon. 


So here you go:

Suggestions for further reading:

–            Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability – David Holmgren
–            Introduction to Permaculture – Bill Mollison
–            Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture – Toby Henenway
–            The Resilient Farm and Homestead – Ben Falk

I should also add (though not strictly permaculture books): Deep Economy by Bill McKibben and Radical Simplicity by Jim Merkel

Link Soup:

–             Resilience Hub & Portland Maine Permaculture

–             SeacoastPermaculture Meetup

–             Whatifwechange.org

–             350.0rg

–             Sustainableme.me

–             One Earth (R)evolution (You are here)

-             Appropedia

-             Zones and Sectors Efficient Energy Planning

I'm updating this post to add  this great link that Hubby sent me. It gets you thinking.
-             What are we putting in our bodies?

So there you have them folks. Enjoy and I hope to see you all at a permablitz real soon. 

A Day in the Life

Intersection repair. Community building event with Portland, OR City Repair

I''m going to walk you very briefly through a recent day in my life, in order to illustrate some very hopeful things that I see happening in my community and which I believe are starting to happen in many communities across America. Well it's really more like 28 hours, but I know you will forgive the artistic license in favor of a more catchy title. "28 Hours in the Life" just doesn't have the same ring to it. 

On Wednesday evening I attended a meeting of approximately 16 local artists. At this meeting many things were discussed including: coordinating with the local farmers' market to offer an art show in conjunction with the market, as we have been doing for the past couple of months, the opening of a new gallery and function space in a neighboring community which many of our artists are getting involved with and will be showing at, the establishment of an artists collaborative at the home and studio of one of our members which will help her to maintain and utilize the space and will give several artists space to work and to show their art, and.... It was a very productive and energetic event and it was great to see the network of relationships that is building between the folks in this group and how they are building a community within a community that helps and supports each other. Rather than competing for resources and customers, they help each other and generate buzz in the community which will attract enough customers for all.

Directly after the meeting, which was held in the public library, I spoke with the librarian and booked my second Lexicon of Sustainability popup art show! It will be at the Berwick Public Library during their 2014 Earth Day celebration. The event day has not been determined. It will either be on Earth Day (April 22) or it will be the Saturday before Earth Day. Stay tuned here for more details. I will also be giving my second introduction to permaculture presentation at that same event. 

On Thursday evening (we are now into hours 26-28) I attended a meeting of the Berwick Sustainability Committee. We had a guest speaker who came to talk with us about water protection. The meeting was very productive and we left with more knowledge about the need to protect our ground water and with a plan for how to go about starting. We are looking into resource protection ordinances of course, but we are also looking into community outreach, education and information. We plan to engage local businesses to begin rainwater collection and control projects which will set an example for the town and all residents and we already have our first test site chosen and the approval of the business owner. We will be installing a rainwater collection system and small permaculture herb garden for a local business which we can use as an example when we approach other local businesses. I'll keep you posted in the spring and share photos of the projects as they progress. Oh yes and we'll be involving those wonderful B.A.A artists in this project as well to help us design creative rain chains and other rain directing features and sculpture. So the community network grows and branches and a vibrant and active community begins to fruit and flourish. 

It is a good day ...28 hours.. to be alive and living in Berwick, Maine. I hope you see signs of a new sense of community where you live as well. 

Leverage Points

http://www.math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Lever/LeverIntro.html

As some of you may know I am currently taking my permaculture design certification course. As part of the course pre-work, we were asked to read "Leverage Points, Places to Intervene in a system" by Donella Meadows. Meadows wrote this article in response to things she heard while attending a conference on the new world trade system. A system by the way, which should scare the pants off you. It is a meaty article but well worth the read.  I have excerpt a few bits here that I felt summarize the heart of the issue.  

"There was this subdivision of identical houses, the story goes, except that for some reason the electric meter in some of the houses was installed in the basement and in others it was installed in the front hall, where the residents could see it constantly, going round faster or slower as they used more or less electricity. With no other change, with identical prices, electricity consumption was 30 percent lower in the houses where the meter was in the front hall...

A more recent example is the Toxic Release Inventory — the U.S. government’s requirement, instituted in 1986, that every factory releasing hazardous air pollutants report those emissions publicly every year. Suddenly every community could find out precisely what was coming out of the smokestacks in town. There was no law against those emissions, no fines, no determination of “safe” levels, just information. But by 1990 emissions dropped 40 percent. They’ve continued to go down since, not so much because of citizen outrage as because of corporate shame. One chemical company that found itself on the Top Ten Polluters list reduced its emissions by 90 percent, just to “get off that list.”

Both of these examples demonstrate the power of information feedback. We live in what has been called the "information age". Let's take advantage of the power that information gives us in order to affect positive change. What are some ways that we can establish information feedback loops in our own lives? Are there information feedback loops missing from our neighborhoods, communities and schools that could help improve how those institutions relate to each other and to the environment?

Meadows goes on to say,  "Missing feedback is one of the most common causes of system malfunction. Adding or restoring information can be a powerful intervention, usually much easier and cheaper than rebuilding physical infrastructure...It’s important that the missing feedback be restored to the right place and in compelling form. To take another tragedy of the commons, it’s not enough to inform all the users of an aquifer that the groundwater level is dropping. That could initiate a race to the bottom. It would be more effective to set a water price that rises steeply as the pumping rate begins to exceed the recharge rate. Compelling feedback... Suppose any town or company that puts a water intake pipe in a river had to put it immediately DOWNSTREAM from its own outflow pipe. Suppose any public or private official who made the decision to invest in a nuclear power plant got the waste from that plant stored on his/her lawn. Suppose (this is an old one) the politicians who declare war were required to spend that war in the front lines."

And here's the rub: "There is a systematic tendency on the part of human beings to avoid accountability for their own decisions. That’s why there are so many missing feedback loops — and why this kind of leverage point is so often popular with the masses, unpopular with the powers that be, and effective, if you can get the powers that be to permit it to happen (or go around them and make it happen anyway)."

And here we come to the crux of the issue. The rules of the system, the strength of those rules,  who defines them and how they impact our lives and environment.   

 "The rules of the system define its scope, its boundaries, its degrees of freedom. Thou shalt not kill. Everyone has the right of free speech... If you get caught robbing a bank, you go to jail. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR and opened information flows (glasnost) and changed the economic rules (perestroika), and look what happened. Constitutions are the strongest examples of social rules. Physical laws such as the second law of thermodynamics are absolute rules, whether we understand them or not or like them or not. Laws, punishments, incentives, and informal social agreements are progressively weaker rules.
To demonstrate the power of rules, I like to ask my students to imagine different ones for a college. Suppose the students graded the teachers, or each other. Suppose there were no degrees: you come to college when you want to learn something, and you leave when you’ve learned it. Suppose tenure were awarded to professors according to their ability to solve real-world problems, rather than to publish academic papers. Suppose a class got graded as a group, instead of as individuals.
As we try to imagine restructured rules like that and what our behavior would be under them, we come to understand the power of rules. They are high leverage points. Power over the rules is real power. That’s why lobbyists congregate when Congress writes laws, and why the Supreme Court, which interprets and delineates the Constitution — the rules for writing the rules — has even more power than Congress. If you want to understand the deepest malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the rules, and to who has power over them.
That’s why my systems intuition was sending off alarm bells as the new world trade system was explained to me. It is a system with rules designed by corporations, run by corporations, for the benefit of corporations. Its rules exclude almost any feedback from any other sector of society. Most of its meetings are closed even to the press (no information flow, no feedback). It forces nations into positive loops “racing to the bottom,” competing with each other to weaken environmental and social safeguards in order to attract corporate investment. It’s a recipe for unleashing “success to the successful” loops, until they generate enormous accumulations of power and huge centralized planning systems that will destroy themselves, just as the Soviet Union destroyed itself, and for similar systemic reasons.

Sadly, I believe, many of us feel powerless in the face of these rules.  I want you to remember that we are not powerless. One person can make a difference. Many people can make a great difference. It is clear that the rules need to change. It is clear that the time for change is NOW.

Synthesis; from "Speed" by David Orr

Photo from Hindustan Times

When we struggle to define a problem it is difficult if not impossible to solve it. A good definition can give as a picture of the issue which begins to point us toward solutions. I his article "Speed", David Orr sums up one of the major issues of modern society in this way:

"Water moving too quickly through a landscape does not recharge underground aquifers. The results are floods in wet weather and droughts in the summer. Money moving too quickly through an economy does not recharge the local wellsprings of prosperity, whatever else it does for that great scam called the global economy. The result is an economy polarized between those few who do well in a high velocity economy and those left behind. Information moving too quickly to become knowledge and grow into wisdom does not recharge moral aquifers on which families, communities, and entire nations depend. The result is moral atrophy and public confusion. The common thread between all three is velocity. And they are tied together in a complex system of cause and effect that we have mostly overlooked."

There is an appropriate velocity for water set by geology, soils, vegetation, and ecological relationships in a given landscape. There is an appropriate velocity for money that corresponds to long-term needs of whole communities rooted in particular places and the necessity of preserving ecological capital. There is an appropriate velocity for information, set by the assimilative capacity of the mind and by the collective learning rate of communities and entire societies. Having exceeded the speed limits, we are vulnerable to ecological degradation, economic arrangements that are unjust and unsustainable, and, in the face of great and complex problems, to befuddlement that comes with information overload. 

I couldn't have said it better myself, so I will leave you with that and with this link to another Orr article that addresses this issue of the velocity of our society.  Take your time with it. Really let it sink in....

Variations on a Theme and The No Waste Home

Thanks to: http://www.newphilaoh.com/html/recycling_program.htm

Waste is an excess output of a system which has not been put to beneficial use. When waste reaches extreme levels it becomes pollution. Let's look at one scenario. If you have 2 acres and you have a cow or two, those cows will produce manure adequate to fertilize the soil. Now if you put 20 cows on those same two acres you are going to have way more manure than you will use as fertilizer. The manure will pile up and rot and create methane gas and when it rains the water that runs off  your property and into the nearest stream can lead to excessive algae growth and low oxygen conditions in the water. This same principle of waste becoming pollution applies to far more than just manure. 

Permaculture attempts to design integrated systems in which the output of one element of the system becomes the input of another element ultimately creating closed loops which feedback on themselves and generate no waste. The goal of eliminating waste from our systems is one of the primary goals of the One Earth Revolution. With this in mind I would like to suggest that you have a look at the blog of a family who have been living the no waste life in spades. They've done it and they are doing a great job sharing the message, so there is no need for me to reinvent the wheel. I'm just going to share their link here. 

Enjoy. I hope it will inspire you to embark on a no waste adventure of your own. Whether it be your home, your office, your home school group or girl or boy scout troop. No attempt is too small and certainly none is too large. Your church, your school, your neighborhood, your village....... Take it as far as you like, as far as you can. 

One Man's Journey - Ben Falk TEDx Talk

Ben Falk's journey to a sustainable life takes an all too familiar route from growing up in the suburbs to some eye opening experiences in college and finally to a small farm in Vermont  were he is learning and teaching the use of  permaculture principles in creating a sustainable ecosystem on his 10 acre hillside lot. 

Ben's TEDx Talk takes you through those experiences and shares some of those eye openers. They are the reasons that we need to get in front of the movement for change and really start making some decisions in our daily lives that can have a positive impact on where things are going. It's not enough to just recycle a few things. It's not enough to car pool once or twice a week or take public transportation instead of driving. We need a radical cultural shift in the way we live and consume.

Please listen to Ben's talk and really let yourself hear the message. Don't take a jaded view or simply look away when he shows you pictures of the devastation wrought by factory farming and livestock feedlots. When you see pictures of tanks in the desert and when he talks about the desertification of the fertile crescent stop, really stop and think about what you are putting on your table. Think about your daily activities and about the things you buy. Think about the energy and resource demands that you as an individual make on the planet. I think many of us who are trying to be more environmentally conscious think "well at least I'm not as bad as that one. He's driving a huge SUV and lives in a 3000 square foot house." Well that may be true, but I would have to guess that the greater number of us could be doing way more than we are to make this a more just, healthy and equitable planet to live on. 

On God and Oil

The eye with which you see God, is the same eye with which God sees  you. (Adapted from M.  Eckhart)

I started out on this journey by saying that we need a revolution in ecology, economy, community and faith. I've touched a good deal in this blog on the ecology and the economy part. I've scratched the surface when it comes to community, but I don't think I've even skimmed it when it comes to faith. That has to change because this is a major area of concern in our current spiritual world climate where people are killing each other over questions of faith or using faith as an excuse for subjugating, disenfranchising or discriminating against others.  

While it is not my intention to offend anyone,  I have to speak to my convictions and my beliefs. I'm just going to lay this out there the way I see it. Everyone is free to make of it what they will and take from it what they will. So here it is folks. We need to wake up and realize that we are all like blind men fighting over the appearance of an elephant. Each one "sees" what he believes to be the whole, but his perception is limited and he does not see all. A comparative study of major religions will find that, on the key points and principles, there are more similarities than there are differences. While one group worships many gods, they see that these gods are all aspects of one God. While another group sees God as one, they recognize his roll as protector, redeemer, one who sustains you through your trials, avenger of wrongs, guiding light.....etc. and so on.  And we take it further, to the point where those who believe in one God must fight with each other because they disagree on how he should be worshiped. Have we completely missed the point of the message? When you boil it all down, isn't the message of all faiths that we should love God and love our neighbor as ourselves?  If  you truly believe that, how can you degrade, subjugate, disenfranchise, discriminate against and God forbid... harm or kill your neighbor? 

The truth is that while we hear that people are killing one another over their faith, this is only partially true. They are killing each other over power and access to power and much if not all of that is driven by wealth or access to wealth which in turn is driven by our oil saturated economy. This oil saturated economy is a global phenomena, so I feel justified in using "our". Demand for oil's outputs (fuel, fertilizer, plastics, clothing, food.....it seems like everything we touch these days is tainted with oil) may be highest in developed countries, but the negative impacts of this oil greedy culture are felt the most in the oil producing developing nations.

How many beauty pageant contestants and essayist have dreamed of "world peace". If so many people really want world peace why haven't we achieved it yet? Because we are putting the cart before the horse. Because we are treating the symptom rather than the disease. We have rampant poverty, social stratification and wealth disparity, between the first and third world and within each of these. We are not going to have peace while a minority of people grab power for themselves and step on the necks of everyone who gets in their way. We are not going to have peace while we continue to fight over an ever dwindling pool of resources. We are not going to have peace while some of us continue to take more than our fair share. 

So what can we do about it? We need to STOP and reassess our personal consumption habits. we need to do a true needs assessment and learn to live within our means, and I don't just mean within your personal household budgets. I mean we need to realize that on this finite planet there is a finite amount of everything that must be shared among all of us, and we need to look at what we are consuming and ask ourselves if it is really needed and if we are taking more than our share from the resources which belong to ALL of earth's creatures, not just to the ones with the biggest bank accounts and the most guns. We need to wake up to the fact that everything in our daily lives is saturated in fossil fuels, particularly oil, and we need to start looking for alternatives. It might help to stop and remember that we have been exploiting oil in the current fashion only for a little more than a hundred years. For the ten thousand years of recorded human history before that we survived and even thrived at times without it. And we need to remember that we will have to do so again, in a future that is far less distant than many of us think. Let's revive some of the tried and true method of human survival and invent some new less energy intensive methods to see us through the next ten thousand years.

Walk lightly, live lightly, shine brightly!