activism « Robin Hill Gardens

In the afternoon I picked a huge salad for a party we’re going to this evening. All of this is from our garden:

Lettuce, mache, minutina, sorrel, claytonia (with flowers), radicetta, kale, chard, lamb’s quarters

Amie will eat only greens from our garden. Yesterday after school she got to go with my friend M and I on one of our adventures, which always seems to involve loading heavy things onto trucks or car roofs, having fun with straps and bungee cords, followed by somewhat-anxious driving and a slew of cars lining up behind us (at a safe distance). We were dropping off the extra totes at the school gardens, so luckily it was very local.

On the way back a grasshopper jumped into Amie’s shirt and it was high drama. M, whose kids are grown up, was quite shaken, I think, though not as badly as the poor grasshopper! Our Amie is cool, though. She refused to squash it and let me free it. Also, her class is doing a unit on community and when he teacher asked who is important in a community, the answers were “fireman, policeman, teacher, etc.” to which Amie added: “Activist!”

What a rush. Wayland’s 2013 Earth Day Weekend, organized by Transition Wayland and the Wayland Green Team (both of which I am an active member), is over. It was a two-day community extravaganza of open houses all over town: people showing their retrofitted or super insulated houses, gardens, solar PV and Hot Water systems, heat pumps, geothermal systems, compost, chickens, bees, rain water catchment and much more.

I ran from one house to the next, trying to go to all of them, which was impossible, of course. But as the organizer I felt (1) that it was only right to shake each host’s hand and wish them good luck and (2) that I should get the maximum of enjoyment out of this event. Last year, when we put up a big fair on the Town Building grounds (400 visitors), all I did was help set up booths, put out fires, and worry that the tents would fly off on us. In any case, I was gone from 9 am till 10:30 pm on Saturday and from 10 am to 6 om on Sunday. But I had a blast and was very heartened.

First of all, we managed to do what Transition is supposed to do and what, having done it, is the right thing: we “gave it away”. Hosts prepared and ran their own events. All we did was come up with the concept and the promotion: a flier, a website, lawn signs. Giving it away was very powerful, both for our initiating group, for the hosts, and for the visitors. Everyone I spoke with loved the formula.

And there were plenty of visitors. At a first guess (we’re still counting), the open houses attracted about 500 visits (not visitors, as it’s impossible to tell who visited which houses). One of the houses, our town’s famous LEED Gold Toaster House, got over 150 (they were open for 12 hours, 9-9). The screening of the documentary Chasing Ice on Friday evening, got over 50 viewers.

Our own open house – the first time we show off Robin Hill Gardens – attracted about 30 people. Amie had a lemonade stand and though the lemons cost $11.50 and she made $4.50 we were all psyched, she most of all, because each cup was, in the end, only a quarter. She was so happy to finally be part of Earth Day after having missed Mama for the whole weekend. DH shared much of the work: I showed the garden, compost, rain water catchment, bees and chickens, he showed the solar PV and Hot Water systems. It was nerve wrecking and fun to do and I felt good about it. Only…

Only, the ultimate goal had been to attract the neighbors. ”If only your five immediate neighbors come, it’s a success!’ is what we had said. Only one set of neighbors came to mine. True, I had a difficult slot, it was the second-last event. But they had seen my sign, got the brochures in their kids’ backpacks, and I had talked to them about it. Even my next door neighbors, who were home and biking around and whom I had invited by personal email, didn’t come. I’m not whining or accusing, just wondering why? Was it timing, messaging? Were there barriers that neighbors felt they couldn’t cross while total strangers could?

Here’s another thought. On Friday we showed Chasing Ice at the High School, and on Saturday one of the hosts, also an active member of Transition Wayland, showed Green Fire, about Aldo Leopold, in her living room. Both movies elicited fantastic conversations. The first (about 30 stayed for the conversation), more intellectual, abstract and contentious (in a good way). The second (7 of us) so much more personal, with childhood stories and emotions gently surfacing. I realized I like the second approach better and am thinking of taking both movies “on the road” in Wayland, showing it in living rooms and talk, talk, talk, get to know each other. For instance, a friend of mine who came to Green Fire was a different person than I usually see (mom of kids who are friends with my kid – those are our usual roles). I loved hearing that intelligent, articulate woman share her amazing experiences so confidently. We need that culture in our town: conversations, not presentations; friendships, not memberships. We must get to know each other, get strong together, before we get to know the facts and start to act.

Lots to think about as we take Transition Wayland to the next stage (giving all of it away), trying to discern and influence the complex fabric of a community. Today I am writing a Letter of Thanks for our local media, watering my garden, and reading Aldo Leopold:

All ethics evolved so far rest upon a single premise:

that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts

The work is always only just begun.

I see it only now, at the end of the day, how much was accomplished: cleaned out the chicken coop, collected four eggs (we’re back to four!), inspected the beehives, painted the last of the signage for our town’s Earth Day, and racked the wine.

Four.

Amie paints her own sign in the new basement Project Room. The Earth Day lawn signs behind her are reused.

The A-Frames from the previous year got a new lick of paint and are awaiting the last lettering on the porch (along with the seedlings, hardening off).

DH racks the Merlot and the Cabernet

Sediment, with some wood chips.

We tasted both, the Merlot, pictured here, was further along than the Cabernet. Back in their cubby they went for the next stage.

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This, dear friends, is a massive apothecary! The beginnings of it. Some of these envelopes hold just 5 seeds. Many hold seeds that need scraping with sandpaper and intricate regimes of warm-moist and/or cold-dry conditions. Some will take years (years!) to germinate. Suffice it to say, these aren’t your average lettuce seeds. Each one is special. Each one is demanding. But if I do right by them, each one will repay me and my community a thousandfold.

As for my silence here, I’ve been clearing my desk just so I can devote the necessary time to these seeds. Today was the day it all came together. I sent off an application to teach a course on collapse (yes, you heard that right!) at Tufts Experimental College. I finished the Solar Wayland Report (a rather technical policy-oriented report which you can read here). I also submitted a grant application for Transition Wayland. What a relief to have all those done! Added up they amount to a hundred dense pages of text, and they have been months in the making.

Earth Day has been a non-stop promotional effort (we have articles in the local media every week, all the way up to the weekend itself: check them our here/here, the write-up of our house here/here, and here/here). I only wrote the one about about our house, we have a great team volunteering for this! The group is also investigating making Transition Wayland into a co-op. And then there are the plans to promote solar hot water. Oh, and on Monday a friend and I are taking a 14-foot truck to pick up no less than eight IBC totes plus some barrels we’re planning to convert into compost barrels…

I’d better be off to my basement now to sow those seeds, before I get sidetracked!

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Holding the edge with a bunch of intrepid friends. A local “rally” in solidarity with our friends marching in Washington DC. We stayed till I no longer felt my fingertips and toes, and my speech became slurred. Then we had hot cocoa.

This is the article I wrote for the local press:

Waylanders Rally for Climate Change in DC and locally

On Sunday, 17 February, a small group of Waylanders stood on the corner of Routes 20 and 27 holding signs with “Climate Change Act Now” and “No Tar Sands”. They were showing their solidarity with the tens of thousands marching in Washington D.C. that day to urge President Obama to move the nation forward on climate.

“I couldn’t make it to the rally in D.C.,” said Anne Harris, “so it was fun to have our small rally here in Wayland. My hope is to keep climate action in the forefront of people’s minds as we ask our leaders to seek solutions to the country’s challenges”.

The freezing temperature and nasty wind in Wayland rivaled the conditions in D.C., where 35,000 marched to make the largest Climate March in US history, according to 350.org.

Wayland resident Sabine von Mering, who was there, said, “To me this march was a great experience because, like Bill McKibben, I had been waiting for this movement to come about for many years. Since I first came to the US twenty years ago I thought it’s impossible that a country that brought forth the civil rights movement and Dr. King, and people like Henry David Thoreau and Rachel Carson, would fall so far behind Europe in demanding environmental justice and action on climate change. Today at this march I saw the real America, the USA that I love and cherish. People who care that our political leaders listen to our best scientists, people who take a two-day bus ride to make sure their voice is not drowned out by moneyed lobbyists. People of all ages and walks of life who join together saying ‘enough is enough. We must protect this planet. It’s the only one we have’.”

The group at the corner of the Cochituate and Boston Post Roads also had the blowing snow to contend with and, admittedly, not that many bodies to stay warm, but all that didn’t seem to matter. That the day was a typical winter’s day wasn’t all that ironic to Andrea Case. “A snowy winter makes people question ‘global warming’,” she said. “But intense weather, whether blizzards, hurricanes, droughts or repeated record high temperature days, are all harbingers of climate change.”

Asked if this was a successful event, Kaat Vander Straeten, said, “Yes! Look, there were only seven of us, but there was no place I’d rather be. Hundreds of people driving by saw our message, and that wouldn’t have happened if we had stayed home.”

Back in DC, von Mering noted, “There was clearly a somber note to the gathering, because we all know that our chances of winning this fight are pretty slim. Which is why it was so important to see so many of us. Every single person I met today understands what’s at stake. This was a gathering of smart people who care and who want to turn things around. People who are willing to risk a lot for everyone’s sake. I was proud to be with them. I feel greatly encouraged for the future.”

So I asked myself that: So what? So what if I feel that I need it or that I somehow deserve it?

The dream of childhood, of what we were “promised”: a happy life that can only be better, faster, bigger than what came before. A world where problems (ecological degradation, economic shortfalls, social injustice, health problems) and inconveniences (having to get water or grow food, or having to wait more than a second for an internet connection) will be solved by technology, science and reasonable action. That is what humans do, isn’t it? Thanks to us, life will always be better, faster, bigger. It goes without saying!

No.

That was a dream so taken for granted, sustainable only thanks to several delusions, chief among them the delusion that no one, human or other, had to suffer for what I felt was rightfully mine. How desperately I clung to that, thinking that if they suffered, it was their bad luck but not my good luck because luck had nothing to do with it, right? Even when I feared that yes, luck does have something to do with it, I had a way out: I’d be a fool not to take it, I actually can’t but take it, because here it is, given, and anyway if I don’t take it, somebody else will, or it will go to waste. And anyway – round and round I went – I worked for this, or my parents did, and now I deserve it, somehow.

Was it a crisis of the imagination? For I could not even imagine that it could all go away, that there could be problems – even problems of our own making – that could not be solved: predicaments. Despite the thousands of stories and images of those who dreamed just like me but who had already lost it, the dreamer clung to her vision of the future as one where the problems will all go away, or it won’t be so bad after all, or it won’t affect me… It became harder and harder to keep that up. I can’t pinpoint the moment, quite a few years ago, when the last straw punctured the bubble. Suddenly I imagined it, that my luck was running out, and I realized it was possible, that all this could be taken away from me. A lot of what you can read on this blog is the result of that realization.

That was not the end of it. When the bubble bursts the bottom falls out as well and instead of round and round you get to go down and down. It took me a while to figure out that what was going on was not just the fear, anger and grief that come with this new vision or the sheer logistics of preparing for a new future, but another, more serious crisis that was yet to be resolved: a crisis of gratitude.

The Thirteenth Moon

Even if you have lost heart
She puts a tide in you
Even if you have lost heart
You will be moved
You will be all lined up
The soil has tides
Bedrock has tides
The horizon heaves
She will drag even you

“That turns out to be a place where it’s just it and me.“

When I wrote that, it occurred to me that that is how – in solitude – many seek their god(s) and that that is how I used to experience spiritually during rich introspective times in my life, before all this came down, before Transition. Why had I lost sight of that? This is why: I forgot it in my sudden rush to act, which soon turned into a full-blown desire to save the world, which meant, of course, coming out of my solitude.

It turns out that what I thought I had to do (save the world) is not my role. These last few months, I have been letting go of the wish to save the world. Being the committed activist that I still am, and still a seeker of joy-even-though-I-have-considered-all-the-facts, and still a believer in my power to change things, there can be only one thing that could make me give that up: I let go of the hope that the world is, at all, savable.

As I write this, I am amazed at how easy it is to say that. It wasn’t easy coming to accept it.

Here, ask yourself: what is it that you most cherish, that you most want and might even have? Ask yourself: why won’t I give it up? Because you made it or worked for it? Because you deserve it and it makes you happy, maybe even makes you you? Consider any of those reasons, and any others. Then ask yourself:

So what?

Do you dare to test

the endurance of your hope

To take it to that far place

where still it refuses to leave

or maybe not.

Where, regardless,

it turns out to be

not what you wanted,

but what you need.

I feel like I’ve gained some clarity in the last few months, but it has been hard to write about it. Every time I sit down to start, the task seems impossible. So let me break it down into pieces – events, insights, decisions, changes in plans.

The first evening when all of my thinking and reading actually “came together” was the evening I decided to leave my church (Unitarian Universalist). I can’t remember what came first in the process: the sudden flare of insight (this is what it all means, this is how it all hangs together), the insight that leaving the church is one of the things I need to do because of this new insight, or the very act of emailing the people in the congregation I care most about – good friends, fortunately, also outside of church – and taking the step. All I remember was the immense empowerment of seeing an insight emerge out of many strands of thought, feeling and soul-searching, and acting on it. Sadness too, that this newly emerging insight meant that I had to give up something that I cherished (and that it wouldn’t be the last thing I will need to give up). And, lastly, awesome too, because I had felt uncomfortable with this cherished “membership” for while, and now here it was: the reason why!

So, as to the reason why.

I work with a vision of our predicament all day long. All my thinking, reading and writing are related to it, and my activism, and nowadays also every act of mothering, shopping, cooking, doing laundry-you name it. I am now at a stage that I carry this vision with me at all times and nothing escapes it. It is empowering, frightening and often exhausting. It is not a comforting vision, though it does allow me or actually inspires in me, a kind of joyfulness. I call this Joyfulness Notwithstanding.

I need a place where I can keep my Joyfulness Notwithstanding alive and cultivate it. How? Not by retreating to a place where I can forget that vision for a while, but on the contrary by actively stepping into a place where I can look at it clearly.

That turns out to be a place where it’s just it and me.

And so a place where I do not have to discuss/justify the vision and where I am not confronted with circumstances that I feel are part of the problem and that automatically bring out the activist in me. Working to eliminate paper cups during coffee hours is fulfilling work for me as an activist, and as an activist, I want to keep working with the congregation on these issues. But it greatly muddles my spiritual clarity.

I am part of a group that seeks to “green” our church (UU). At the last meeting only women came, five of us. One of our discussions revolved around single-use paper cups during coffee hour and Sunday school. We have many mugs and we figured out how to put them back to use. The major obstacle is, of course, inconvenience. Will people go into the kitchen and rinse their mugs or put them in the dishwasher? What kind of mess will that make? Can we ask the (volunteer) coffee hour hosts to take this on? Should we help the coffee hour hosts deal with the dishes?

To us it was self-evident that we should do this: we avoid plastic bags and single-use bottles, bring our own containers to restaurants for leftovers and to the deli to avoid the baggies. But we were well-aware that others, even in our liberal church community, would not welcome this. Their lives are busy and difficult enough as it is, why add another inconvenience?

As we talked this through, I realized that, though I take on some of these measures because they are “green” and, even deeper down, principled, I also like the fact that they add effort to my daily life. I actually think it’s a nice bonus!

You see, as an unpaid part-time work-at-home mom, I gradually realized that the daily running of the household was so easy as to be meaningless, worthless. Yes, it is wonderful not have to scrub the laundry and one’s hands in cold water, not to have to go out to the pump to draw water, to have dishwashers and automatic furnaces and a car to go get all the food we want from the supermarket. But what was left, but the flicking of switches from on to off to on again? That demands no respect. The respect goes to the money-earner in the house who bought the machine, the engineer who designed it, the “civilization” that made it all possible.

Then I started carrying take-out boxes around and eschewing plastics and single-use anything, and began to divest our household from supermarkets through gardening, keeping hens and bees, and began building things with my own hands, hanging laundry to dry, and switched from oil heat to a wood stove (we buck, split and stack our wood and gather and cut kindling ourselves). I did all this for environmental and resilience reasons, out of the principle to take only what I need, and partially also as a way to contribute financially by generating savings. And I found that the inevitable inconveniences were welcome, because they put effort and thus meaning back into the daily chores, making them empowering again.

Later on I talked about this with a friend who is a full-time (and then some) career woman. She took exception to my line of thought. She is stretched so thin that adding any of these inconveniences would just make her snap. Of course, we all make different choices. She chose to get her empowerment mainly from her position, her pay check. She pays others to do the household chores for her, so all she has to do when she gets home after a long day of work is mostly flick switches (she has outsourced everything but cooking, which she loves), so she can spend her precious free time with her family. I chose to aim for a balance between household/homestead and activism (not found it yet!). I get some of my empowerment from my activism, but I too want a fully meaningful life, and so I welcome it in my household life.

That is why this morning I got up way too early, having gone to sleep too late after working on solar in my town – what was that about balance? I shrugged into my winter jacket and sneakers and grabbed the wood basket and went outside. The freezing wind and slushing snow woke me up good. The hens were yelling at me to be let out of the coop, and then I replaced their frozen water. Back in the porch I filled my basket with firewood. I took it in and made breakfast and lunch while shouting to DH and DD to get out of bed! Then I sat down in front of the stove and lit the newspaper, which lit the fat wood, which lit the kindling, which lit the firewood. While others were still waking up, having breakfast, commuting to work, waiting to get somewhere empowering, I had already worked. I was already powerful.

Well, things are picking up. With Sandy and then the election I am galvanized into action again. Plans, ideas are revived. I see new ways of making them possible. We need to start doing more climate change outreach, right now when it is fresh on people’s minds and even the politicians are talking about it. We need to plan that Great Unleashing, that big party that draws the community together around the resilience challenge. We need to see that solar co-op happen, for those here who wanted solar but were shaded out, with perhaps a component that allows those with excess kilowatts to sell them on a “local solar market”…

I caution myself to be careful here. Perfect is the enemy of good and Rome wasn’t built in a day and one step at a time! I need to stay sane, and calm, and not overwhelm myself and others. I need to fit my ambitions to my capabilities.

I’m always looking for new ways to put this to myself.

A week ago I discovered Stephen Jenkinson, who works with dying people. There is an interview with him here in which he speaks about the death of loved ones as well as of the culture. The message is that the culture is dying and that, instead of running away, we should be present at her death bed just as we should be present at our loved one’s death bed. The whole interview is worth your attention. But there was this one line which spoke to me loud and clear:

“You have to decide that maybe the crazy place you find yourself in could use a little sanity that’s got the approximate shape of you.”

Jenkinson adds that you should risk arrogance. I don’t see arrogance in this, not anymore. I think only those who are still hiding their lights under a bushel, for whatever reason, see arrogance in it as a way of judging and justifying their own inaction. Those who have accepted that the world needs work and that “if I’m not going to do it, who else will?” see that line, on the contrary, as a caution. Yes, there is a space there for me to fill. Yes, I shouldn’t leave it empty and I shouldn’t fill it halfheartedly. But also, I also shouldn’t overfill it, stuff it to bursting so there is no space to breathe, so it explodes and takes others down with it.

There is just that one space with that particular shape, my shape. I want to honor and serve and love it. If I do too little, that space and the world around it will let me know. If I do too much it will nudge me, if need be push me, back in line. As long as I let it.

There. Earthed again (*).

(*) Because the word “grounded” has bad childhood connotations.

Robin Hill Gardens

Be joyful though you have considered all the facts

Category Archives: activism

Eating from the Garden Again and the Little Activist

Thoughts on Earth Day 2013

Other Goings On: Racking the Wine, Painting Earth Day Signs

Medicine Garden

My Weekend: Holding the Edge, With Friends

Clarity, In Pieces (iii)

Clarity, in Pieces (ii)

Clarity, in Pieces (i)

Powerful Householding, or How to Stop Flicking Switches

The Approximate Shape of You

Solar Production