Sustainable Action

Some ideas from Organic Sister

Cancel extraneous magazines, Bake bread, Cook from scratch, Shop Farmer's Market,Food Not Lawns, Natural food, Preserve foods, Organic homebrew, Compost, Pesticide-free Gardening, Minimize power usage,Energy-Star appliances, Homemade cleaners, Minimal body products, Homemade toothpaste, Natural deodorant, Non-disposable razors, Sew, crochet, knit, Natural materials, Canvas shopping bags, Cloth feminine pads,Cloth toilet paper, Cloth napkins, Recycle, Reduce and reuse, Freecycle, Shop thrift stores,Combine shopping trips, Shop local,Buy in bulk, Drive 55 mph,One vehicle, Minimize water usage, Flush less often, Laundry in cold water, Line dry laundry, Water heater at 120F, Heater at 55-60F

Of these, I am presently doing the following:
Canceled extraneous magazines, Bake bread, Cook from scratch,Food Not Lawns, Natural food, Preserve foods, Organic homebrew, Compost, Pesticide-free Gardening, Minimize power usage, Homemade cleaners, Minimal body products, Homemade toothpaste, Natural deodorant, Sew, crochet, knit, Natural materials, Canvas shopping bags, Cloth napkins, Recycle, Reduce and reuse, Freecycle, Shop thrift stores,Combine shopping trips, Shop local,Buy in bulk, Drive 55 mph,One vehicle, Minimize water usage, Flush less often, Laundry in cold water, Line dry laundry, Water heater at 120F, Heater at 55-60F

Which leaves:
Shop Farmer's Market, Energy-Star appliances (my landlady's province), Cloth feminine pads [while necessary, don't know how long that will be!],Cloth toilet paper

Of these, the last is probably the one most people I have talked with balk at the most. The idea is just grotty to them. I wrote about this in the latest novel, before I realised that people now in suburbs were doing it. I thought it was a homesteading thing. But it makes sense, ecologically and financially, especially if you use a non-electric washer (like the kind for RVs) or have an 'extra small' setting on your electric one, or - novel idea! Boil your laundry (i.e., 'handwash'.)

All this is in addition to oil lamps and candles, making my own soap and cosmetics, which I already do, herbal medicine, and so on.

Getting away from vitamin pills is my next trick, which I may have mentioned. For decades I have thought of using herbal tinctures (homemade) or infusions instead of vitamin pills, not least because pills mostly upset my stomach. I got this idea from Dr. John Lust's Herb Book when I was in my early teens, and it was reinforced by the writings of Susun Weed, Dr. Christopher, and others. But somehow, I never managed to get it together. Now I am. Partly this is because I have empirical evidence that this is a workable solution, so to speak. And partly it is sheer cussedness. I don't want to be a part of the consumer parade any longer.

Step by step, though. Making haste slowly, I go.

Peace and all good!

Seeds of Change

Went to the SF Folk Fest over the weekend, and there danced and sang ang saw many people I knew, from the chantey sing, from contra dancing, and from church. A good time was had by all, but most especially by me. An entire free weekend dedicated to the folk tradition! to labour songs and the history of the industrial revolution (mostly in England) and women (who were also mill workers and pieceworkers and thus related to the last two categories.) It would be really easy to say, as I have as a joke 'I want a mando and an autoharp and a dulcimer and a new bodhran and a pony....' but the truth is, for the nonce, I am happy with my old acoustic classical guitar. The rest can wait until I get my workbench set up for stained glass and jewellery-making in the garage. (And build me a new compost bin from pallets - thank you Freecycle and the DIY guide!)

I am immensely happy moving into this new phase of 'life as I wish it' - of simplicity and gardening and my old folk life. I never thought I would consider being a midwife again (it pays half a mouldy cheese sandwich) or working in the health food shop or making crafts for sale, but I have opened my mind to all those things, right along with building my own wood-burning kiln for soldering, with making oil lamps, all my own everything, saving seeds and all the rest.

I'm letting me out and blessedness follows. Today at work our IT guy was in the kitchen butchering melons got from his mum. He was about to throw away the seeds, but I rescued them and rinsed them off, passing them out to other gardeners on my floor, all the while listening to jokes from him and my boss: "are you going to make some weird kind of soap from that?' "I thought you needed sun for gardening!" We have sun- but yes, I do have potatoes in my garden as well. You can take the girl out of Ireland, but...

I also found a wonderful website today, Life Unplugged , which is a wonderful resource. As useful as the Farmer's almanac, in my opinion.

Peace (and music) my friends!

History of the Hippies

The foundation of the hippie movement finds historical precedent as far back as the counterculture of the Ancient Greeks, espoused by philosophers like Diogenes of Sinope and the Cynics.[8] Hippie philosophy also credits the religious and spiritual teachings of Jesus Christ, Hillel the Elder, Buddha, St. Francis of Assisi, Henry David Thoreau, and Gandhi.[8] The first signs of what we would call modern "proto-hippies" emerged in fin de siècle Europe. Between 1896-1908, a German youth movement arose as a countercultural reaction to the organized social and cultural clubs that centered around German folk music. Known as Der Wandervogel ("migratory bird"), the movement opposed the formality of traditional German clubs, instead emphasizing amateur music and singing, creative dress, and communal outings involving hiking and camping.[9] Inspired by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Goethe, Hermann Hesse, and Eduard Baltzer, Wandervogel attracted thousands of young Germans who rejected the rapid trend toward urbanization and yearned for the pagan, back-to-nature spiritual life of their ancestors.[10] During the first several decades of the twentieth century, Germans settled around the United States, bringing the values of the Wandervogel with them. Some opened the first health food stores, and many moved to Southern California where they could practice an alternative lifestyle in a warm climate. Over time, young Americans adopted the beliefs and practices of the new immigrants. One group, called the "Nature Boys", took to the California desert and raised organic food, espousing a back-to-nature lifestyle like the Wandervogel. Songwriter Eden Ahbez wrote a hit song called Nature Boy inspired by Robert Bootzin (Gypsy Boots), who helped popularize yoga, organic food, and health food in the United States.

Like Wandervogel, the hippie movement in the United States began as a youth movement. Composed mostly of white teenagers and young adults between the ages of 15 and 25 years old,[11][12] hippies inherited a tradition of cultural dissent from bohemians and beatniks of the Beat Generation in the late 1950s.[12] Beats like Allen Ginsberg crossed-over from the beat movement and became fixtures of the burgeoning hippie and anti-war movements. By 1965, hippies had become an established social group in the U.S., and the movement eventually expanded to other countries,[13][14] extending as far as the United Kingdom and Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, and Brazil.[15] The hippie ethos influenced The Beatles and others in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, and they in turn influenced their American counterparts.[16] Hippie culture spread worldwide through a fusion of rock music, folk, blues, and psychedelic rock; it also found expression in literature, the dramatic arts, fashion, and the visual arts, including film, posters advertising rock concerts, and album covers.[17] Self-described hippies had become a significant minority by 1968, representing just under 0.2% of the U.S. population[18] before declining in the mid-1970s.[13]

Along with the New Left and the American Civil Rights Movement, the hippie movement was one of three dissenting groups of the 1960s counterculture.[14] Hippies rejected established institutions, criticized middle class values, opposed nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War, embraced aspects of Eastern philosophy,[19] championed sexual liberation, were often vegetarian and eco-friendly, promoted the use of psychedelic drugs to expand one's consciousness, and created intentional communities or communes. They used alternative arts, street theatre, folk music, and psychedelic rock as a part of their lifestyle and as a way of expressing their feelings, their protests and their vision of the world and life. Hippies opposed political and social orthodoxy, choosing a gentle and nondoctrinaire ideology that favored peace, love and personal freedom,[20][21] perhaps best epitomized by The Beatles' song "All You Need is Love".[22] Hippies perceived the dominant culture as a corrupt, monolithic entity that exercised undue power over their lives, calling this culture "The Establishment", "Big Brother", or "The Man".[23][24][25] Noting that they were "seekers of meaning and value", scholars like Timothy Miller describe hippies as a new religious movement.[26]

Paul Hawken's Words to the Youth

The Ultimate 2009 Commencement Address
 
Paul Hawken is a longtime friend of CharityFocus, renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, founder of Wiser Earth and author of many books -- most recently Blessed Unrest.
 
Last week, he was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University of Portland, when he delivered this superb commencement address to the class of 2009
 
You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it: Paul Hawken
 
This is the commencement speech that every graduate in the United States should read and absorb for it rings of truth and authenticity and it calls us to the great humanitarian values of human behavior ~ Truth, Beauty, Justice, Love and Faith and wraps them all in the last value, Service.
 
Dr. Paul Brandwein, the renowned educator, has written of this same need for individual courage and moral values. For years, he sought to put " the soul " back into the educational system by a return to the basic values of human behavior ( The Permanent Agenda Of Man / Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovoch / New York 1971 )
" It is a child's ultimate values of truth, beauty, justice, love and faith, which, when fully developed in his understanding, make him not only a citizen, but civilized and human. To the extent man believes in truth, beauty, justice, love and faith ~ to this extent, do we say he is truly man."
Hawken touches on these same themes in his memorable must read commencement address on May 3rd.
 
University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009
 
" When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation – but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.  

Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to de code it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen.

Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true.  Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, re-imaging, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown – Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood – and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe – exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."
 
So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a 20 deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it."
 

Big Brother, Simply Living, and Retreats

I am about to go off to Idyllwild in SoCal, where 30 years ago, I had an epiphany that set the direction of my inner and outer life. This is a very special retreat, at a very important crossroads for me, and has been booked for months.

'Out of the blue' today I had 'a very bad feeling' about the car rental (the one associated with a certain infamous football player). I thought it was just the money bugbear raising its head (it is the singlemost expensive part of the trip) - but in truth I have plenty of money, and looking at that in black and white didn't assuage the bad feeling, so I had a chat with one of the reps, who informed me that I would not be able to rent without a major credit card, as security, AND that as I had the bankruptcy in January 2008 I wouldn't pass the credit check for the debit card. But I need a car to drive up to 'the hill'.

So I rang my old friend, with whom I am staying at the end of the trip, and got to talk with her, her new husband, and her Dad, and we solved the matter of 'security' by going with another company they use often. We had a lovely wee chat and everything is squared away: I will pay her instead of the car company. If I didn't have clever old friends thinking up brill ideas, I'd have eaten the meagre cost of airfare and driven the 9 hours to SoCal, making an Alpine start (for those of you who don't speak climbing, that's getting up at midnight or one or two AM.)

All the post bankruptcy sites talk about re-establishing your credit after 18 months or so, with a secured card. But what if you don't want to play the game anymore? And how dare Big Brother demand that I do so? My money, my life, my business.
Yeah Yeah, I get it, they're handing over a $20K object. But I am a good driver, have insurance, have a car which is just shy of paid for, and I am a Third Order religious (duty bound to be honest).

It got me thinking. A friend at work has a fiance who went through a bankruptcy many years ago and does not even have a bank account now, by choice. What would he do? What would the protagonists of my little story ('Idyllwild') do - hippies as they are, living in the woods in 'Appalachian conditions'? Well, they wouldn't rent a car, but that's beside the point.

So I thought about what I did to get there thirty years ago, when I didn't drive, (carpooled to the three day retreat with people from church); and what friends of mine did to get around Europe back in the day (trains, buses, hitchhiking), which is exactly what my young people have done recently in Europe. But what if I didn't have clever old friends or a car of my own to use if needs be? I would have to do a bit more planning and take a bus. Greyhound does go there, if not the Green Tortoise... am I revealing myself too much here?

There is something to be said for such a life of slow travel. It would be a complement to my 'most important and necessary retreat' as my friend called it - which is sans electronics, in a small cabin in the pines. This retreat is intended as both the completion of a circle, and a launching point for a whole new (old) way of living. Big brother can be got round, even now.

'Subvert the dominant paradigm.'

Petition to Nominate Pete Seeger for the Nobel Peace Prize

Sign the Petition, for Uncle Pete, and all he has done to bring peace to our world.

Nobelprize4Pete.org

A Short Intercession

Make your ways known upon earth, Lord God,
your saving power among all peoples.
Renew your Church in holiness
and help us to serve you with joy.
Guide the leaders of this and every nation,
that justice may prevail throughout the world.
Let not the needy be forgotten,
nor the hope of the poor be taken away.
Make us instruments of your peace
and let your glory be over all the earth.

Lord God,
you hold both heaven and earth in a single peace.
Let the design of your great love
shine on the waste of our anger and sorrow,
and give peace to your Church,
peace among nations,
peace in our homes,
and peace in our hearts,
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(from the Church of England website)

Contra Indications

I went last night to contra dancing, and I have not turned into a pumpkin. It is a couple of years since I have been well enough to dance, and while English [country dance] is my favourite, I go to the contra dances more often because they are nearer, more frequent, and there's better parking.

Contra is more boisterous than English - several of the local contra dancers are also Morris dancers. Contra is American by way of England, by way of France by way of England, and simply is the Anglicisation of 'country dancing' (hence, English)- but contra is the country country dancing, such as you might see in Tess of the d'Ubervilles; whereas English you would see in any adaptation of Jane Austen.

There are certain rules to Contra, true to all folk dancing and balls: ladies wear skirts (and it is appreciated if something is worn in the hair, a scarf or ribbon or flowers) - yes it is a very gender-specific world; you do not dance more than one dance with the same person, even if you are married to them; ladies ask men to dance; there are more men than women, very often, so if you say you will sit out a dance, do so, and don't take up the next offer or ask someone else yourself. There are 'personalities' there as everywhere - the gallant, the show-offs, the shy, the sincere. There is harmless flirting, many laughs and good clean fun. Contra is a family affair.

There are usually a couple of waltzes to end the sets, or a polka. I took a ballroom class one time just because I love to dance, and re-enactor events are few and far between. There is nothing like dancing with a man who can lead well - all you have to do is follow and by gob, you're Fred and Ginger. Marvellous. But I won't dance a waltz in such a place as a contra dance or ceili with anyone but a dear one who is now dead - it's too intimate a dance (if that doesn't sound Victorian) and they get the wrong idea.

It is was a good time. Step by step, I am a little closer to that world, back into my folkie life. The chantey nights, and sing-songs with the Folk Club are next.