Honey, We Fried the Planet

The guy that I know who goes on and on about mass extinction is not far from the truth.

Ten years ago, when I started this blog, I was very into the idea of ‘peak oil’.  A lot of people were talking about it.  We were also very aware of climate change, but thought that peak oil would hit before any real damage could happen.

I still believe in peak oil, in the sense that there is only a finite amount of oil in the earth and much of it will be out of reach, since it would take more energy to extract than it would give.  So it's been a kind of race between peak oil and climate change. Unfortunately, right now, climate change is winning.

I think a big part of this is our desperation to keep living the lifestyle that we’ve been living for as long as we can. Peak oil folks didn't see how desperate we would get. (The Petrocrats would use the word ‘ingenious’.)  Shale oil, fracking, and oil from the tar sands, along with deep offshore drilling, have certainly bought our lifestyle more time, but they are incredibly dirty ways to get oil, causing lots of pollution. Looking at the figures now, it seems like we still have plenty of available oil, in fact, more than enough to destroy the planet with.

Yes, it would be very possible to live differently and be able to sustain the world, but it seems increasingly unlikely that enough people will choose this path in time to make a difference.

I won't repeat all the awful facts. You can read the news on climate change and see where it's going. You can march and protest and chain yourself to oil tankers and live incredibly sustainable lives and even (but please don't) shoot politicians and CEOs, but unless you can get the majority of people to change their ways, I'm not sure that it will be enough.

Further, I am skeptical and worried about the urgency people approach this with. One of the things I say often is that it was urgency that got us into this mess, and I don't think urgency will get us out of it.

Are we doomed? My optimist says no, my pessimist says yes, and honestly I don't know. (As the saying goes, it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future.)

What I do know is that things are going to get worse, and the first and most important thing that I can think of to do, is to be nice to everyone. Yes, this is another version of being kind.  If we are doomed, think of it as palliative care, and if we get a chance to build a better future, I hope that kindness and compassion will be at the foundation of it.

In the meantime, whatever the future brings, we still have to get through today and tomorrow and spending your time fretting about might or even will happen simply saps your time and  energy that would be better used in getting something done now.

I realize that writing about the destruction of the world and then going on to other subjects feels a little like the newscaster reporting a horrible massacre and then saying, “And in other news…”, but it’s what we need to do in order to do something with our lives.

And, I am not saying that you shouldn't do anything. I am just saying you should do what you think is right, because you think it's the right thing to do, and maybe it will make a difference, but there are no guarantees.

Quote of the Day:  “There are those who are trying to set fire to the world,

We are in danger.

There is time only to work slowly,

There is no time not to love.” - Deena Metzger

Compost Tea

I made compost tea many years back (probably close to a decade ago now), after reading Toolbox for Sustainable City Living by Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew. (See my post on RUST for a bit about the book.)  I was reminded of this a couple of weeks back when I arrived to do an urban agriculture work day and walked into a mini-workshop on compost tea. The woman providing the information gave the best summary I’ve heard for using compost tea.

“Think of it as probiotics for plants,” she said.

Compost tea is derived from compost but it is used differently.   The main purpose of compost tea is to build up life in the soil. And, depending on what kind of life you want to build up (fungal or bacterial), you brew it differently.   All this is explained in the book, Teaming with Microbes by Lowenfels and Lewis.  Both this book and Toolbox have good descriptions of how to brew compost tea.

On the other hand, the method for compost tea described by Stephanie Davis in her book, Composting Inside and Out, (I talked about the book in my last post) doesn't involve aeration and so it creates an anaerobic ‘tea’, what Lowenfels and Lewis call ‘compost extract’.  If you want the right kind of microbes, you need to aerate it. (For a detailed, fussy description of how to brew compost tea, see this page by ‘The Soil Guy’.)  One way to get aeration is to use one of  those pumps that you aerate fish tanks with.   That's what I used, so many years ago.

It's not something you will need all the time, but if you really want to add life to your soil, compost tea will do it.

Quote of the Day: “The simplest definition of compost tea is: A brewed, water extract of compost.

“Properly made compost must be used…  Compost tea is therefore, a ‘cold brewing’ process, allowing growth of the organisms extracted from the compost.” - Elaine Ingham

The Joys of Compost

I realized at some point that most of my favorite things in the world began with the letters C,O,and M--communes and community, naturally, but also compassion and communication, and,of course, compost.

I sometimes joke (but I’m more serious than you might think) that compost is my religion.   I point out that Hindus and Buddhists think that when you die, you are reincarnated, Christians and Muslims believe that when die, if you are good, you go to heaven, and I believe that, if I’m very good, when I die, I will be composted.

I’ve talked a bunch about composting in this blog, particularly in my posts, Compost Happens!  and Waste. And I’ve written about the reasons composting is so important in my post on Thinking in Circles. When we compost, we mimic the way that the world works.  And there are lots of different ways to compost.

In my “Compost Happens!” post I talked about there being two main ways of composting. I wrote that eight years ago, I wouldn't say that now.

I got out a book from the library called Composting Inside and Out by Stephanie Davis. The subtitle of the book is “14 Methods to Fit Your Lifestyle”.  What's strange is that, even though it also says on the back cover, “Step-by-step instruction for 14 different composting methods”, there is no listing in the book of the 14 methods.  I had to tease them out by trying to look at all the options she provides. As far as I can tell, the 14 methods are:

1. Compost bins
2. Tumblers
3. Three bin systems
4. Digesters
5. Piles or heaps
6. Barrel tumblers
7. Bins
8. Wire mesh
9. Trench
10. Lasagna
11. Humanure
12. Nature Mill Auto Compost Bin
13. Bokashi
14. Worm bins

The first eleven methods are outdoor methods, the final three are for indoor composting.  Also, numbers 6, 7, and 8 cover DIY ways of composting as opposed to several others where you purchase a finished product.

Smiling Hogshead Ranch, where I am now helping out, lists six different ways to compost in their explanation of what the compost committee does (you have to tap on the word Compost), saying, “How much do we love compost? Let us count the ways…”

1. 3-bin system
2. Windrows
3. Leaf mold
4. Vermiculture
5. Bokashi
6. Mushroom composting

(Vermiculture is using worms.  Worm bins basically.)

I’m sure that, even between these two lists, they don't cover all the different ways of composting. The joys of composting are endless.

And, best of all, for me, I get to do a lot of it.

Quote of the Day: “Compost has rewards beyond our imagination. We benefit specifically in our gardens and, less obviously, within our thinking.   … Can composting encourage you to see the world differently? Many compost converts have told me that it has done so for them, and I have to admit it has changed my perspective as well.” - Stephanie Davis

Self Care

I guess we all need this kind of reminder once in a while.   I got mine recently.

The first and most important piece of social change is taking care of yourself.   I’ve heard this as the oxygen mask strategy. When you fly in a plane, they inform you that in an emergency, an oxygen mask will descend from overhead, and when it does, you are to put on your own first before helping anyone else.  Really, you can't work on changing anything or helping anyone if you aren't able to function. You are one of the most important parts of social change--whether you are building a community or out in the street committing civil disobedience--and you need to be in decent shape to do this.

My own reminder came after several hours of working hard with others on a compost project--mostly shoveling compost out of piles and into bags.  Like I said, I worked pretty hard and was happy with the job I did, but the next morning I was in rough shape. For anyone new to this blog, in spite of my name, I am not a young woman, I am an old man.  I’d like to pretend that I am thirty but I am well over twice that. And I don't know exactly what I pulled, but I was hurting.

As I said in my last post, I have stopped doing things like Point A and Commune Life--a lot of which was internet work.   I spent much of the winter reading or on the computer. Now that spring is here, I want to be outside doing stuff. But not having done much over the winter, I think I overdid it.

Usually I get away with things like this because I stretch every morning. So there are certainly things that I do to take care of myself. Obviously I need to do more. I need to slow down and pay attention to how I move when I am working. I have not had a very physical life and now there is a bunch of real work that I want to do, and the only way I am going to get to do any of it,is to be careful and take care of myself.

I often support others in focusing on taking care of themselves, first.  Now I get to follow my own advice.

Quote of the Day: “If I wished to defeat those who wanted to use their lives to make a difference, this is exactly the way in which I would go about it.  Few such people would be tempted from their purpose by fame, or power, or even wealth. … I could use their own dedication against them, driving them to work until they became so depleted and empty that they could no longer go on.  I would make certain that they never discovered that blessing life is about filling yourself up so that your blessings overflow onto others.” - Rachel Naomi Remen

Now What???

Last Friday, at noon, Donald Trump became the president of the United States.

I’m old enough to have lived through Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes--as adult!  I’ve also lived through Carter, Clinton, and Obama.  I now believe (as anyone who reads this blog probably has figured out) that change has to come from the bottom up and there isn’t a lot that the best president possible can do.  But I’ve also come to realize that a really bad president can do a lot of damage.

Unbelievably, at least to me, I was in the boardroom of a large liberal nonprofit a few weeks ago.  The place reeked of money.  We met with the development director who was wearing pearls and a severe skirt and the CEO who wore a charcoal suit and a muted tie.  The CEO looked like he could have been running a successful corporation.  Therefore it was mindbending for me to hear his speech.  Practically his first word was “Resistance” and he must have repeated it fifteen times in twenty minutes.  He talked about the need for liberal and progressive organizations to work together and support each other and not just stick to their individual causes.

Friday was also the day of the J20 Art Strike.  On Saturday was the Women’s March on Washington.  Monday, January, 23rd will be the Student’s Day of Action.  And this is just the beginning.

I’m an old white man and, although I’m pansexual and polyamorous, I’ve been in more relationships with women than men (although currently two of my three relationships are with men).  I could pass for straight.  In the 90s and the first decade of this millennium I was in a couple of long term heterosexual relationships.  Nevertheless, one of my main inspirations was the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.  The strip almost always spoke to the culture we were trying to create.  Alison Bechdel stopped writing DTWOF in 2008.  After the Trump election, she was inspired to see what her characters were up to.   Although these comics were done around Thanksgiving, I just found them as Trump was being inaugurated.  It seems appropriate that they are focused on resistance.

All this resistance is important.  Hopefully all this will activate many folks.  Still, I believe in a three part strategy.  (See my post on Strategy, 1/24/16.) We need to continue the struggle, but we also need to continue building alternatives and educating folks about them.  I’ll talk more about all this in some upcoming posts.

Quote of the Day:  “You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear.” ― Lauren Oliver

Vision

There are many different visions of what the world should look like.  I think that one of the best sources of possible visions are utopian fiction.  (For more on this see my posts on Why read Utopian Fiction? , 7/12/08,  and An Annotated Utopia, 7/14/08.)   I wrote a personal bit on why vision moves me in my post on Vision, Dissonance, Determination (1/8/10).

But my biggest piece on vision was my series on Simplicity, Equality, Community, and Sustainability, starting with the post SECS (9/22/08) and running through my post on Pulling it together (12/1/08).  (All of this is collected in my second zine, entitled ‘What I Believe.’)  This is my vision of the future I’d like to see: Simple, Egalitarian, Communal, and Sustainable.

But, in some ways both analysis and vision are relatively simple.  You pay attention to what’s going on and you figure out the future you’d like to see.  For me, strategy was the trickiest part.  And strategy is what I’d like to explore next.

Quote of the Day:  “She looked slowly around.  She saw …(sic) a river, little no account buildings, strange structures like long-legged birds with sails that turned in the wind, a few large terracotta and yellow buildings, and one blue dome, irregular buildings, none bigger than a supermarket of her day…  A few lumpy free-form structures overrun with green vines.  No skyscrapers, no spaceports, no traffic jam in the sky.  ‘You sure we went in the right direction?  Into the future?’

“‘This is my future, yes! …’

“‘You live in a village, you said.  Way out in the sticks.  Like if we went to a city, it’d be…(sic) more modern?’

“‘We don’t have big cities--they didn’t work....’”  - Marge Piercy

Yuletide Comes

I missed writing a post on Samhain again this year.  Oh well.  I seem to remember at the winter solstice anyway.

And finally it’s getting cold in NYC.  After a December full of 60 degree days, temperatures in the 30s make sense.  While no one actually expects snow before (or even during or right after) Christmas,  it’s beginning to seem like winter.

The Yule (or Jul as they say in Scandinavia--as Wikipedia points out) is a celebration of winter--or rather life flaunting a ostentatious tenacity in winter--and the transformation of darkness back into light.  And we need it right now.  It’s important to remember that the cold and darkness and snow and ice are all part of the cycle of the year that we in temperate climates like so much and that spring and summer will come again.  And again. And again.  And we simply need to wait and appreciate what we have.

You can see all my other posts on Yule, the solstice, and the darkness and light but looking at what I’ve written in previous Decembers.  I think I’ve written a post on this every year that I’ve had the blog.  And I hope to write about this again next year.  Because we need to keep on hoping, keep on struggling, keep on building, keep on working to make a difference.  Through the darkness and cold, and celebrating through all of it.  That’s social alchemy.

Quote of the Day:  "So the shortest day came, and the year died,   And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world,   Came people singing, dancing,   To drive the dark away…”  - Susan Cooper

Building Urban Communities

I've been talking a lot about the communities that I've visited in Louisa County and in Rutledge and northeastern Missouri.  In my last post (Four R Communities) I also mentioned other communities like East Wind and Earthaven and The Farm.  And last year (right up until this summer) I was involved in a project to create a farm-based community in upstate New York.  All this could give the impression that the most important communities, or all the egalitarian communities, or any 'four R' community, would have to be a rural community.

And it's true that, by and large, most of these communities are rural, but that doesn't mean there can't be urban egalitarian communities or even Four R communities.

I've written about this issue before in my post on Issues in Community: Urban and/or Rural (9/29/13).  I mentioned there that I helped start an egalitarian community (an urban commune, if you will) in the Boston area in the 1990s, that lasted five years.  I also mentioned that there were two urban communes in the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, the Emma Goldman Finishing School and the Midden.  (It now looks like there's also a new Community in Dialogue in the FEC that's in Portland, Oregon.)  And I mentioned the Los Angeles Eco-Village as an example of an urban ecovillage.

I know that the Midden and the Los Angeles Eco-Village are trying to live in a way that's sustainable, if not restorative/regenerative/robust/and/resilient.  There's no question that this is more difficult to do in an urban setting than a rural one.  At the same time it may be more important to do, as more and more people live in the cities and less and less live out in the country.

I also want to point out two very important examples (not communities, but to show things that communities could do) of 4R living in city settings.  In Holyoke, Massachusetts, some permaculture folks (two couples) bought a house with a tenth of an acre backyard which they turned into a flourishing edible urban garden that they have named 'Paradise Lot'.  Looking at their website,  it looks like the latest thing that they're up to is building a bioshelter to grow 'subtropical plants'.  (I've written a post that talks about Bioshelters--8/15/14.) Another example of what you can do in an urban environment is Colin Beavan, who calls himself 'No Impact Man', who tried to live as 'eco-effectively' as he could in the middle of Manhattan. He wrote a book about it and then there was a movie made about the experiment.

All this is not simply theoretical for me.  I am just about to spend a little over a week at Ganas, a thirty-five year old community on Staten Island, in New York City.  Hopefully my next post will be about life there.

And starting in the new year I will be returning to Twin Oaks and Acorn to be part of the Point A project, an attempt to create urban income-sharing communities ('communes') along the East Coast of the US, starting with Washington, DC, and New York City.  Part of my reason for going to Ganas is to understand the situation in NYC.

Last year I was involved with a group trying to create a farm based community in upstate New York.  This coming year I hope to be involved with starting urban communes.  To me it's all part of the same plan.  We need to live differently--as I've been saying since my first year on this blog, Simply, Equally, Communally, and Sustainably (see my post on SECS, 9/22/08), and more importantly, as I've been saying recently, a way that is Restorative, Regenerative, Robust, and Resilient.  It doesn't matter if it's in the country or the city, creating communities that model this way of living is what's important to me.

Quote of the Day: "Our project is social transformation and that means changing people and how they relate to each other.  Currently and increasingly the people and their relations are mostly in the city.  ...  What matters is that we're being taken care of and that so is everyone else.  Liberty, equality, community.  By basing our economy on equal access to resources rather than equal distribution of resources we celebrate and support differences and eliminate a lot of paperwork on our way to our post-scarcity utopia." - from the Point A website

Four R Communities

So how do The Four Rs (see my previous post) work in practice?  How does this translate into community building, for example?

Here is my take on where various communities belong with regard to the four Rs:

Restorative Communities: Most true ecovillages go beyond sustainable to restorative.  For example, Dancing Rabbit in northeastern Missouri (see my posts First Week at Dancing Rabbit,5/28/13, Land Use Planning, 5/31/13, and Thoughts as I Leave Dancing Rabbit,6/14/13) has been trying to restore the prairie land that they're on as well as planting trees everywhere (which I mention in my post on Land Use Planning).  Communities like Earthaven and Red Earth Farms (see my post Red Earth Farms, 6/4/13) function in similar ways.

Regenerative Communities: I think that the 'deeper green' communities are the ones trying to figure out how to be regenerative.  In essence, these communities (for example Living Energy Farm--which I wrote about in a post on 12/8/12--and The Possibility Alliance--which I wrote about 6/11/13) are trying to live off the grid and without using any fossil fuels, the way I and they suspect we'll all need to be living in the future, only they're doing it now.  In some ways they are recreating civilization as well as the landscape.  And besides regenerating the land, communities often generate new communities: Red Earth Farm came from a dispute at Dancing Rabbit (they now work closely together and with Sandhill, also in Rutledge), East Wind and Acorn (see below) were off-shoots of Twin Oaks, and the two new communities in Louisa, Living Energy Farm and Sapling, came from Twin Oaks and Acorn.

Robust Communities: Twin Oaks (which I've written quite a bit about, see especially my posts Real Models 1:Twin Oaks, 9/30/10, and Update 6: Life at Twin Oaks, 12/4/12) has been around since 1967--closing in on fifty years--has nearly a hundred people and has a waiting list to get in.  There are certainly other communities that have been around nearly that long (for example, The Farm in Tennessee, founded in 1971--although with a major restructuring in 1983, Findhorn  in Scotland, which evolved from people who settled there in 1962 but became a proto-ecovillage in 1982, East Wind Community, founded in 1973, and Sandhill Farm, founded in 1974--which I wrote about in a post 6/8/13) but Twin Oaks has existed without major changes (although it has slowly evolved, there are no major change points the way it happened with The Farm and Findhorn) and with a fairly sizable population (unlike Sandhill which has never had more than twelve adult members and had six when I visited them a year and a half ago).  East Wind has also simply evolved slowly, to about 60 adults--but it's probably not an accident that the folks who started it came from Twin Oaks.  And, actually, I see all these communities as robust--and proof that the communes didn't disappear when the sixties and seventies were over.

Resilient Communities: There are probably lots of examples of this--Twin Oaks and East Wind have survived fires and deaths and other things, and, as noted above, The Farm has survived a major restructuring, but if I had to choose one major example of a resilient community, I'd choose Acorn. (For more on Acorn, see my posts Update 2: The Acorn Community, 9/14/12, and Update 3: Life on the Farm, 9/23/12.)  I was told that in their early history, Acorn was at one point down to six members and at another down to two.  More recently, last year Acorn had two major fires. (I talk a little about them in my posts on Snow, Darkness, and Fire, 3/13/13, and Issues in Community: Recruitment, 11/11/13.)  When I visited Acorn last March (see Acorn Again, 3/28/14), they were doing fairly well.  What leads a community to do so well in spite of such setbacks?  I asked one person in an early visit how Acorn got through periods when membership was so low.  His reply was that he thought it was two things--one very committed member and the nearby presence of Twin Oaks.  And that was true with the fires as well.  I was at Twin Oaks when the first one happened and people were quickly organizing to help Acorn out.  One of the reasons for the recovery from the second was also that a crew from East Wind (not nearby at all!) drove out from Missouri to help out.  I think one major source for resilience in Virginia and Missouri is when there are groups of communities that can depend on one another. (See my post on Communities of Communities, 6/9/12, and what I wrote about the Federation of Egalitarian Communities in my posts on Egalitarian Communities, 10/22/08, and Acorn Again, 3/28/14.) To my mind what's happening in Louisa County in VA and Rutledge, MO, would be more amazing if it happened even more places. (Twin Oaks' and Acorn's presence in Louisa County, for example has spun off Living Energy Farm and now, a fourth, brand new egalitarian community called Sapling--see what I wrote above under Regeneration.) In fact, regeneration of communities is a major factor in the resilience of communities.

So how to build more of these communities?  And, especially, how to build them in the city?  That's the subject of my next post.


Quote of the Day: "We are building a zero fossil fuel ... community that demonstrates that it is possible to live a healthy joyful life without the use of any fossil fuel. ... The most powerful sustainable “technology” we employ is cooperative housing in an income-sharing community. ... We have strong support and involvement from members of existing communities in the central Virginia area, and will continue to network with these groups." -- from the Living Energy Farm website

The Four Rs

As we think about social change, what are kind of change are we aiming for?

One term that many folks use--and I've used it a lot in the past (for 87 posts according to Bloggers label tally)--is sustainability.  (An early post I wrote on this is Sustainability, 10/14/08.)  At this point, I no longer believe that simple sustainability can be the objective.  While it's better to have things sustainable than not, being sustainable is the least we can do.  As one activist put it, "If you have a new relationship and someone asks you how it's going, how does it sound to answer, 'It's sustainable'?  Certainly not very enthusiastic."

What lies beyond sustainable?

1) Restorative.  The world is already degraded.  Do we want to sustain it in its present, debilitated state? Our first goal should be to return the planet back to healthy, thriving ecosystems.  Imagine streams cleared up, soil built back, forests and farmland restored.  One of the keys to restoring the planet is having more plants.  Plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, put more oxygen into the atmosphere, and provide food for animals and fungi.  (See my post on The Most Important Chemical Equations, 11/14/14)  Things like planting trees, growing food, and using green roofs all involve the use of plants and can help restore the air and build back ecosystems.

2) Regenerative.  Here we are going beyond restoring systems to creating systems that are renewing and revitalizing. We are keeping the momentum going, working toward a world that models the way ecosystems work and grow, and keep growing and keep creating new life. Compost is one way to do this. (See my post, Thinking in Circles, 1/6/13) It's important to note that we are talking about growth that's in balance, growing life within systems, not the kind of unrestrained growth of cancer or capitalism.  We're talking about new life, not just more of the same.

3) Robust.  Strong, sturdy, healthy, vigorous.  Not only renewing and regenerative, but capable of dealing with adverse conditions.  If we're talking about going beyond sustainable, we're definitely talking about creating things that are strong.  How do we protect fragile ecosystems?  How do we build systems that not only survive, but thrive?

4) Resilient.  Beyond even robust.   Able to withstand trauma and bounce back quickly from problems.  Here we create things that can be thriving and sustainable even when things get rough.  And, as we know, no matter what kind of world we work for and create, there will always be difficulties. Here we are building to last, and last in a way that supports dynamic, flourishing systems.  While nothing is invulnerable, things that are robust and resilient can take a lot of wear and tear.

Imagine creating a world that's restorative, regenerative, robust, and resilient.  Imagine something that's thriving and flourishing.  Doesn't that sound much better than sustainable?

Next, 4R communities.


Quote of the Day: "Resilience is true security." - Starhawk

The Most Important Chemical Equations

I've become a chemistry geek in my old age.  It's surprising because I hated chemistry in college.  These days I'm busy memorizing the first few lines of the periodic table.

I certainly don't expect most people to share my love for chemistry, but there are two equations that I wish that everyone knew, because all human life and almost all life on earth depends on them.  I have written about the equations before (in posts on Biology 101: Photosynthesis, 5/17/12, and Biology 101: Cellular Respiration, 5/10/12) but this is important, and it's been a while, and I'm hoping this post will tie some of this together.  I also hope to build on this in upcoming posts.

The first equation is the one for photosynthesis: 6 CO2 + 6 H2O (+ sunlight) → C6H12O6 + 6 O2

This means that a plant uses six molecules of carbon dioxide and six molecules of water as well as the energy of the sun to create a molecule of sugar (glucose--C6H12O6) and six molecules of oxygen.  It's an elegant equation.  You can count the carbons (C), hydrogens (H), and oxygens (O) and there's the same number on each side of the arrow.

Basically plants suck carbon dioxide out of the air and (along with water) use it to build sugars--and from there build themselves (plant walls are made of cellulose which is made from long chains of glucose strung together).  When you look at a towering tree, you are looking at something built mostly out of carbon dioxide and water.  On a planet facing climate disruption because there is too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, more plants and more trees are a big part of the answer.

There is a second, equally important equation that explains why we and most life exists.  It's the equation for cellular respiration, which is the process that cells (including our cells) use to function, and therefore it's the process that keeps us alive.  And it's exactly the reverse of the equation for photosynthesis:
C6H12O6 + 6 O2 → 6 CO2 + 6 H2O (+ energy)

What this says is that, in order for our cells to get the energy they need to survive, they use oxygen and food (broken back down into glucose).  This is why we need to breathe and eat.  And the process of cellular respiration gives off carbon dioxide and water (which we exhale and pee out of us).

Notice that plants (during the day) give off oxygen and store sugar which is what we need to survive, and we give off carbon dioxide and water, which is what the plants need for photosynthesis.  It's a perfect circle.  And all of us are totally dependant on plants for oxygen (plants are the reason for the oxygen in the atmosphere) and the sugars (etc) we need for energy.

All the carbon in our bodies comes from plants--directly or indirectly.  Even an extreme carnivore who eats nothing but carnivores is dependent on plants (someone somewhere along that food chain eats an herbivore that eats plants), because almost all animals (and fungi, for that matter) can't photosynthesize and need to get their carbon from plants which can.

So study these equations and thank a plant for your life.  Plants are what make the world sustainable.


Quote of the Day: "We cannot cheat on DNA. We cannot get round photosynthesis. We cannot say I am not going to give a damn about phytoplankton. All these tiny mechanisms provide the preconditions of our planetary life." - Barbara Ward

The Functions of Sex

Every so often, as I cover every subject I can think of in the belief that everything is connected--and everything is related to social change and community--I occasionally come to the subject of sex.  I've mentioned several times that I am pansexual (I used to use the term bisexual--but that implies that there are either only two sexes or that I'm only interested in two of them) and polyamorous.  These days I sometimes think of myself as panamorous--I'm learning to love everybody and everything.

I'm very aware that sex is only one way (out of perhaps zillions) of loving another person, but it's a very important one and one that's quite lovely to me and many other folks.  I'm also very aware that this isn't a useful way of loving for some people and actual talking about it upsets some folks, so I don't talk about it much.

I am also not surprised, and can understand it, when certain religious people claim that the only function of sex is for procreation.  I am much more surprised, and rather dismayed, when I hear that claim from more science-oriented folks.

In my last post (The Body's Wisdom), I reviewed Sherwin Nuland's book The Wisdom of the Body.  I really liked it, as I said in the review, and want to point out that he covers many of the body's systems in some detail: the circulatory system, lymphatic system, the nervous system, the hormonal system, the alimentary (gastrointestinal) system, and the reproductive system.  And I learned from and enjoyed almost everything he wrote, except when he was writing about the reproductive system.

Here is a condensed (and, I think, representative) sample of what he wrote:

"Our reproductive organs... contribute nothing to our survival.  ... they contribute everything to our ability to reproduce ourselves.
"...The entire female reproductive system exists to serve the needs of the ovary.  The whole complex of uterus, tubes, vagina, and external genitals has as its sole function to ensure that the ovary's primary product, the ovum, is properly cared for. ...
"The ovum's blind quest... is one of the most powerful primordial forces in the creation of what we call human nature. ... We know that the urge to reproduce is a prime mover in all other animals--why not ourselves?  Were it otherwise, our species would die out.
"... We seek a course toward  reproducing our own kind through the maze and morass of contradictory drives... The complex and uncertain journey is not made one iota easier by ... being directed toward what is ultimately, under its many-layered raiment of sexuality, the simple need that an ovum be fertilized."

There is no question that one of the main functions of sexuality is reproduction.  For many creatures, from earthworms to aardvarks, that may be the sole function.  (Although I strongly suspect that earthworms, not to mention aardvarks, enjoy the process.)  I don't believe that's true when we are talking about primates.  Sex has a whole bunch of functions for human beings and even for our closest relatives, the chimpanzees and the bonobos.  (For a bit more on this see my post Bonobos and Chimpanzees, 7/30/08.)   As primatologist Frans de Waal once pointed out, "Chimps use violence to get sex, while bonobos use sex to avoid violence." No one who studied bonobos would believe that their only use of sex was for reproduction.

I want to look at three of what I think are the main functions of sex for human beings.  (I suspect that there are others, but this is what I want to focus on.)

And, yes, the first is reproduction.  If we didn't have sex and reproduce, we would, as Sherwin Nuland pointed out, die out.  The Shakers are an interesting example of that.  On the other hand, what Dr Nuland and many other advocates of sex as reproduction fail to observe is that we are now in a situation of population overshoot. We don't need to always reproduce--in fact, increasing reproduction may also cause the human race to die off.  (For more on controlling population see my very early post Five Simple Things You Can Do to Reduce Population, 8/21/08.)

This also fails to observe how important sex is for same sex couples and even heterosexual couples that don't want children--or couples who have had children and don't want more or are beyond the age of child bearing.  (Not to mention for people who engage in non-couple sex like masturbation, threesomes, etc.)  This is one of the main reasons heterosexual people practice birth control--they want to have sex without reproducing.  And I've never heard even religious groups say that couples beyond their reproductive years have to stop having sex.  Sex must have a purpose beyond reproduction.

Here's one.  Pleasure.  Sex is pleasurable and there's nothing wrong with that.  In fact, I think that one of the nicest functions of sex is to give another person pleasure.  Yes, we ourselves get pleasure from sex, but what a gift it is to give pleasure to another person--hopefully making them very happy.  I think this is a wonderful function of sex.

And here's another.  Connection.  Sex is one way (but hardly the only way) to help people feel closer.  It literally can be a way to connect very closely with another human.

There are many, many people using sex for pleasure and connection, as a way of being loving with another person (or with themselves) who have no interest in using it to have children.  While reproduction is important (and problematic as well) it is hardly the only function of sex.


Quote of the Day:  "Sex is for pleasure, a complete and worthwhile goal in and of itself. People have sex because it feels very good, and then they feel good about themselves." -  Dossie Easton and Catherine Liszt

Resilient Farm

Ben Falk's book, The Resilient Farm and Homestead, has, like Darrell Frey's book (see Bioshelters, 8/15/14) and Sepp Holzer's (see Permaculture--Austrian Style, 8/5/14), a little bit of everything.  The subtitle hints at how much is in it: 'An Innovative Permaculture and Whole Systems Design Approach'.  In fact the farm that Ben Falk runs is called the Whole Systems Research Farm.

If he has one focus to the book, it's to encourage others to be regenerative and resilient.  In the appendix to the book he includes a test to assess your own resiliency.

While the book covers the gamut of what he does on the farm, including extensive sections on food crops, animals, water, soil, fuel, shelter building, and the design process, one of the things he includes that I found particularly useful was that he listed 72 'Resiliency and Regeneration Principles'.  Some of my favorites include: "Biological Complexity, Technological Simplicity" ("Resilience is greatest when living aspects of a system are complex, diverse, and connected, while the nonliving aspects of the system are simple"), "Two is One, One is None" (things always fail, it's important to have backup systems), and "Solutions = Alignment" (solutions emerge when you are aligned with natural forces),   A lot of the principles seem obvious but are helpful reminders: "Simplest Solution Is the Best Solution", "Increase Diversity, Don't Reduce It", "Good Design Always Empowers", and "Storage Always Runs Out".

A good bit of why I find Ben Falk's book useful is that he's writing about doing permaculture in Vermont--and I've lived my life in New England and came close to being part of a farming community in nearby New York that would operate much like the Whole Systems Research Farm.  Permaculture started in Australia and, while I got the principles and how useful they were, many of the applications that I first saw were for hot or, especially, dry climates.  In New England, there is water everywhere.  If you leave a patch of land alone for more than a few years, a forest will grow out of it.

Falk's book (like Frey's and Holzer's) is permaculture adapted to a cooler, wetter climate.  As I said in my post on Holzer's book: "the application of permaculture be different in each place."  Almost everything in The Resilient Farm and Homestead is applicable to the land that I live in.



Quote of the Day:  "This book is not a rehashing of information found elsewhere but only of direct experience. ... It is written with the hope that people all over the world will find value in it as they take back control over some measure of their own lives, empowering themselves and their families in the pursuit of resilience and regeneration and revel in the health, freedom, and fulfillment that is a natural outgrowth of such a life."   - Ben Falk

Bioshelters

The first half of the book, Bioshelter Market Garden, by Darrell Frey, is your standard tour around a permaculture farm.  (In fact, that's the subtitle, "A Permaculture Farm".)  It isn't that different from  Sepp Holzer's book (see my post, Permaculture--Austrian Style, 8/5/14) or the book by Ben Falk that I hope to review next, except that Sepp Holzer's farm is in Austria and Ben Falk's farm is in Vermont, USA.  Darrell Frey's farm (Three Sisters Farm named after the Native American and permaculture 'guild' of squash, beans, and corn growing together) is also in the US, in what he refers to as "northwestern Pennsylvania".  He seems reluctant to give a more exact address, probably to discourage unwelcome visitors.

But what makes this book stand out is what he focuses on in the middle of the book, the bioshelter of the title.  Bioshelters were developed at the New Alchemy Institute, which ran for twenty-one years on Cape Cod in Massachusetts (1971- 1992).  According to Frey, "A bioshelter is a greenhouse managed as an indoor ecosystem.  ... they represent a synthesis of energy-efficient architecture and ecological design."  The bioshelter is the centerpiece of the farm and book has two chapters devoted to 'Bioshelter Defined and Designed' and 'Bioshelter Management'.  It goes on to chapters on 'Compost and Biothermal Resources' (both within the bioshelter and outside of it) and 'Chickens in the Greenhouse' (a part of their bioshelter ecosystem).  He also includes an interesting chapter on 'Permaculture for Wetlands'. 

There's lots and lots of useful stuff in this book--especially if you want to learn about bioshelters and how they could be helpful for commercial farming.  I'd strongly recommend it.  About my only complaint about this book is that for some reason the author included the exact same picture that he took of the "Composting greenhouse at The New Alchemy Institute in 1988" three times in the book--twice with the exact same caption--something that's odd but doesn't negate anything in the book.


Quote of the Day:  "Biodiversity and environmental quality are not just nice things to learn about on cable TV or in magazines.  The natural world is the foundation upon which we all depend.  Stewardship begins in our yards and gardens, and it extends to the choices  we make in what we consume.  The decade or two ahead are critical.  Humans have managed and impacted bioregions for tens of thousands of years.  But the choices we are making now have a stronger and longer-lasting impact on the planet than at any time in human existence." - Darrell Frey

Worldwide [R]evolution

Charles Reich's The Greening of America was published in 1970.  Marilyn Ferguson's The Aquarian Conspiracy came out in 1980.  Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest was published in 2007. In my post in 2009 on The Great Turning (11/15/09), I critiqued all of them.  It's easy to see mass social movements--but what becomes of them?

Not quite a year later, I said something that I didn't see connected all of this at the time.  I ended my post entitled From the Ground Up (9/20/10), talking about how various social movements were "pointing us toward something. Something new and radical, something that guides us in an alternative direction, toward a different kind of world. A blueprint, if you will, for building a new way of living. From the ground up." 

For my Quote of the Day, I chose lines from Chellis Glendinning, including:  "This urge to wholeness is with us still; ... Many of the social and cultural movements of the twentieth century are expressions of it: Gandhian nonviolence, the worker's movement of the 1930's, the kibbutz, Martin Luther King, Jr., the anti-war efforts, the hippies and yippies, the women's movement, the human potential movement, back-to-the-land, natural foods, Earth Day, permaculture, bioregionalism, the men's movement, voluntary simplicity. So too is the vast arising of passion for spiritual pursuits: Tibetan Buddhism, drumming circles, wilderness quests. And then there are today's social and psychological uprisings: the call for democracy and environmental justice, ... the rising of indigenous identity and self-empowerment." 

Another way of looking at this is to see Reich's, and Ferguson's, and Hawken's work as ongoing documentation of what Chellis Glendinning is calling that 'urge to wholeness'.  There is something going on outside the mainstream press, with many failures, but continuing on.  I've been documenting some of it in my posts on communities. 

Recently, I've read a bunch of books that look at permaculture related things, some in the form of communities and some as farms or other projects.  My next few posts will review some of these books focusing on attempts to create permaculture stuff around the world.  I want to begin with a book that focuses on these projects all over the globe.  The book is called Sustainable [R]evolution by Juliana Birnbaum and Louis Fox.

It's subtitle is 'Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms, and Communities Worldwide'.  The most notable thing for me about this book, which covers sixty projects, is how many amazing communities and projects that I know of that it doesn't cover.  None of the projects covered in the next three books that I plan to post on are covered in this book.  Neither is any of the communities in the Federation of Egalitarian Communities  (see my posts on Egalitarian Communities, 10/22/08, and Communities of Communities, 6/9/12) listed.  Nor are what I think of as two of the top eco-villages in the US, Dancing Rabbit (also see my posts on First Week at Dancing Rabbit, 5/28/13, and Thoughts as I Leave Dancing Rabbit, 6/14/13) and Earthaven. And one of the most amazing places outside of the US as far as I'm concerned, Gaviotas  is also not mentioned, although another place in Columbia (the Atlantida Ecovillage) has a listing.    At first I was disgruntled about all that they didn't include, but on second thought, I'm excited.  They have sixty projects and don't even include all the ones I just mentioned.  Maybe there is a ground up, worldwide [r]evolution happening.

There are a bunch of projects that I know of listed, although I wouldn't think of some of them as top tier.  Some of the better known include The Farm (in Tennessee), the Lama Foundation (in New Mexico), the LA Ecovillage (in California), the Ecovillage at Ithaca, New York, Growing Power (in Wisconsin), Findhorn (in Scotland), Tamera (Portugal), Damanhur (Italy), the Dead Sea Valley Permaculture Project (Jordan), Auroville (India), the Ladakh Project (India), and Melliodora (Australia), which is the farm run by David Holmgren, one of the founders of Permaculture.  I had also heard of most of the other North American projects, which included OUR Ecovillage (in British Columbia), the Bullock Homestead (in Washington state), City Repair (in Oregon), the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (in California), and the Greater World Earthship Community (in New Mexico).  (Actually, I'd heard of the Earthships more than the community on that one.)  However, the entry that really surprised me was for The People's Grocery in California.    I've been there and blogged about it (see my post entitled Update 4: Eco-Oakland, Riveting Richmond, and Groovy SF, 10/18/12).  It's a great place and doing really important work, but I didn't think of it as being well known at all.

The book also includes a useful introductory section that goes into basic permaculture concepts and some points about how the book is organized.  I got it out of the library, but if you want to get a taste of what seems to be a growing worldwide movement, this is a good book to get.


Quote of the Day:  "At the time of this writing, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have completed permaculture design courses, and the network continues to expand on the original ideas through thousands of related trainings, publications, garden projects, and internet forums.  There are projects in at least seventy-five countries in the world, and during the period we were doing the research for and writing this book, the number of these projects grew exponentially.  The approach is being used to design new sites, both urban and rural.  It is being applied by individuals and communities in existing towns and cities on every scale.  Permaculture design initiatives have achieved inspiring results, restoring degraded landscapes, reversing desertification, and creating self-sustaining food systems.  It includes hundreds of strategies that together begin to mitigate climate change, some directly drawing carbon out of the atmosphere through healthy soil-building cycles, no-plow farming methods, and tree planting." - Juliana Birnbaum