MamaStories

Do you think about the future? Do you wonder what it will be like? Or do you live like it’s always going to be the way it has been?

~

I found at least 5 entries like this one, all in drafts, abandoned. As I prepare for the growing season with more resolve and urgency than ever before now that my apprenticeship is over (ha!), I need to line up my motivations like a general does her troops. This is just a declaration, not a proof or demonstration: others are supplying the data much more clearly and comprehensively than I ever could.

~

1. We’ve got problems

I believe that sometime in my lifetime, and certainly in the lifetime of my daughter, life will be changed, drastically. This is because three changes are already happening.

• Peak Oil

(I believe that) there will be a chronic shortage in oil production and thus cheap oil. This year, in 20 years, I don’t know, but in my lifetime. This will not just affect the heating of our houses and our trips to the grocery store, but also the delivery trucks’ trips to the grocery store, and the farm equipment that “grows” our produce, and the factory equipment that put together all those plastic containers for our shampoos, and the pharmaceuticals producing our medicine, etc. (cf. The Oil Drum)

• Economic Depression

(I believe that) increasing debt, decreasing value of money, hyperinflation, the precariousness of globalization and the lie of never-ending growth will soon mean the end of any value to our national currency, the end of imports, the closing of  businesses and banks, rampant unemployment, the end of the middle class as we know it, and the cessation of public services. (cf. The Crash Course)

• Climate Change and Overpopulation

(I believe that) the Earth is changing and that it’s too late to do anything about it (if we ever could), that several tipping points have been already been (b)reached. The effect is the disturbance of the climate pattern upon which our agriculture and settlements developed and rely, and thus a growing difficulty for growing food and maintaining our towns and cities. This means a growing number of climate refugees and massive immigrations of our immense world population.

All three are interrelated. I suspect Economic Depression will be the first step, soon exacerbated by Peak Oil, then, more gradually but much more insistently, Climate Change. (Read also, John Michael Greer’s “Endgame” and Richard Heinberg’s Museletter).

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2.  Collapse

I believe that even just one and certainly all of these events together will lead to collapse. I don’t believe it will be as bad as zombies or The Road, but I foresee some hard times and, at the very least, the end of the way we live our lives today.

I can’t say that it is my hope that this won’t happen. Don’t get me wrong, it would be great if it didn’t. If, for instance, we found some renewable, clean and omnipresent source of energy, freely and democratically available,  capable of powering our fleet of vehicles and our agricultural and factory equipment. Oh, and if it could also reverse the climate change tipping points… Sounds like heaven on earth to me, but I’ll just go ahead and prepare for if that doesn’t happen.

And it’s not like we have a lot of time. Collapse is already happening. Maybe not to me, or you, but to many in this country, in the world, and to whole countries even, to some degree or another. But for reasons that will become clear, here I just want to talk about myself, my family, and my neighborhood.

~

3. Hope

Still, I have hope. I hope that (for myself and my community, at least), collapse will be gradual enough. I hope it’s not a precipice, but a staircase, and that at each step enough people will (have to) take sufficient action to “catch up” on the decline. I hope that we can descend gracefully: without famine, violence, the destruction of culture and civilization…

A funny thing, though, this hope. I hope it’s reasonable (unlike “aw, come on, nothing’s going to happen!”). It will require hard work and sacrifices,  but we could pull it off. And to those who say “forget it, it’s too late, TS is really going to HTF,” I say “I hear you,  but you know what? I have no choice but to hope. My child leaves me no choice.” I must do my best to make my hope, her hope come true.

~

4. Starting descent

How do I do this? We, myself and my immediate family, have already started to power down. For instance, this month, February 2010, is our 16th month of the Riot for Austerity. In the Riot we try to decrease our consumption of oil, water, electricity, and consumer goods, and our production of waste, all to10% of the US national average. It’s tough! We’re almost there with certain things, but not anywhere near 10% with others.

We changed our eating habits: less meat, less food, more bulk, dry goods, and very little eating out. We are establishing a large food garden, with a hoop house for a winter harvest, and hopefully a beehive soon, and chickens. We work on our food storage and emergency supplies. The immediate goal is to grow and store enough and a healthy variety of food to feed two families, and to plant an extra row for the hungry. You can find more details of our lifestyle changes on the “What We Do” page.

Why are we doing this, making these sacrifices in the time and the land that is still plenty? Do I  think it’s going to make a difference to climate change? I’m not that naive.

• But I do it out of principle: to take more than what one needs is to be greedy and bad for the soul.
• I do it because, when I make something myself, with my own time and genius and effort, I take responsibility for it and I take care of it as a thing that I love. When I buy it, I just get the responsibility, like an extra price tag, easily snipped off. I “take care” of it only because it cost me so much - or, more frequently, I don’t take care of it at all, because it cost me so very little. I want to take control, responsibility, and care.
• I want to be prepared - practically and psychologically - for a future with less cheap oil, less income, less security, more manual labor, the need for different kinds of skills, etc.
• I do it to set up a model for others, for when circumstances will force them, too, to adopt such a lifestyle. That’s my next point.

~

5. A model

We take these and many other actions as an average (middle class) family, with an average income and debt. We can’t bring in the big machines to flatten the land and mow down all the trees that shade our vegetable garden. We can’t tear down our 1950’s ranch and put a zero energy house in its place. We can’t buy the $1000 compost toilet, the photovoltaics, the hybrid car. And that’s good, because that makes our place an attainable model for anyone in our quite average situation around here.

As people start realizing they can no longer afford the $300 electricity bill, the $4000 oil bill, or the cable subscription, we can show them that it’s possible both practically and psychologically, for them to descend without hurting and actually even gaining something. For we don’t need television and video games to entertain ourselves, and digging in the garden is better exercise than the gym, and eating from that garden is healthier than take-out. I hope to demonstrate by example that living with a little less at a time does not need to hurt.

~

6. Will that be all?

Do I think that what we are doing and working on - this 90% reduction in consumption of this and that, this 50% (?) self-reliance in food, this reskilling, etc. - will be all that is required of us?

Not by a long shot! But as a first step it’s the perfect preparation for the second step.

Which is? I don’t know. Ask me on a good day, then ask me again on a bad day. All I know is that what my family and I are doing right now is not what will be required, at some point, of all of us, and that after that, there will be even more.

Think of it. When oil hits $5, or $10, or $50 a gallon? When the shelves in the grocery store stay empty? When we are freezing in our houses? When half the people on the street are unemployed, and one third is homeless to boot? When a shift in climate wipes out a major crop? When the majority of us can no longer ignore or evade the situation, because our money can’t buy anything? Now we’re talking collapse.

There are times when I think the worst and that head-for-the-hills feeling flares up. When, in essence, I lose hope. But I squash it. Many reasons make it impossible for my family to pack up and dig in. It wouldn’t work for me to want to live as if collapse has already happened. It would wreck my family and isolate me. That’s not what I’m aiming for.

So if in the eyes of some I take it too fast, and in the eyes of others I take it too slow, so be it. I hope I’m hitting that golden mean, but I also know that mean is sliding down as we speak, until at some point “too much” and “too little” collapse into one.

In the meantime I hope the forerunners can be helpful, by their example, to the masses descending behind them. But if there’s suddenly going to be a whole lot of people barreling down that ever steeper and narrower staircase, it would be good for those who are ahead to install a railing as they go. Or else we’re all going to end up in a big, crushed heap at the bottom.

~

That railing is relocalization, but about that, next time. It takes a lot out of me to write this, and it takes a long time to write, because I know that most of you don’t agree, and I feel I have to be argumentative, on the defensive, and watch my words. While I just want to say it like it is for me, so we know where I stand.

After two weeks of virtually no blogging, it’s lists like these that can get me going again. Yesterday I listed this week’s goals, today I’m looking at the Big Homesteading Plans for 2010. There is some sort of order here, but don’t ask me which.

1. Chicken coop (cob? attached to greenhouse? moat?) and 6 (?) chickens
2. Bee school and beehive
3. New patio and garden path, and small lawn in the back
4. Remove asbestos tiles in basement and create root cellar there
5. Plant bushes and small fruit and nut trees
6. Better fence around veg garden, and gates
7. Better, bigger compost system
8. Small garden/storage shed in veg garden
9. Start on permaculture flower garden up front
10. Front drainage and filtration “creek” ending in wetland/pond
11. Solar thermal collector/glass greenhouse (attached to front balcony)
12. Woodworking shop/pottery studio: this is a big one because it means demolishing our rotting shed, pouring concrete over a larger footprint, and putting up a frame. In our town we are not allowed to do those things ourselves. Also, it would cost a lot of money (this problem could possibly be solved by no. 17)
13. Earth oven for baking bread, pizza and drying firewood
14. Pottery wheel from the engine of our old dryer
15. Double our food self-sufficiency
16. Get serious about our emergency supplies
17. Finish novel, find agent, get published
18. Get serious about Transition in my town

I’m reading Edible Forest Gardens (EFG) again, alongside Holmgrens’ Permaculture. I’m underlining and taking notes in the books and making summaries on a quadrille pad. I’m on volume 2 of EFG, which is the most practical volume of the two, and I foresee a lot of drawing up of plans as I come across passages that apply to my homestead. I’ll let you look in over my shoulder as I “make my mistakes on paper” (the best place to make them).

I’m also looking around for a Permaculture course, preferably online, or a local one spread out over nights and weekends, as I can’t afford, time and money-wise, the three-week intensive in Bolivia, or even in Cape Cod. I found an online course given by Dan and Cynthia Hemenway via Barking Frog Permaculture, which I could even monitor at minimal cost. But I missed the entry date. Next year maybe?

***

I’m excited  but apprehensive at the same time. I hope my turning to permaculture again won’t turn me away from Transition. I know the latter came out of the former. Rob Hopkins, the “founder” of Transition, is a permaculture teacher. And he advises that at least one member of a Transition Initiative facilitating or initiator group take a permaculture course for a good reason: the principles of permaculture and Transition are the same, only their domains differ.

Edible forest gardening is one part of permaculture, which applies its basic  principles to the agricultural domain, and which in turn then nestles inside the vast ambition of Transition. It is exactly for that reason that I fear I might lose track of Transition. Permaculture, especially when studied with such selfish motivations as my own (I want to make my homestead a permaculture site), could easily blind me to the larger challenge of Transition.

I feel I need to work on my own place - as a base, as a model - before or while I work on the place that surrounds me. And so my vision contracts and expands, expands and contracts. But when focusing on the ground right in front of my feet, I might lose track of the path. Then when I look up to find it again - or because it calls me - my suddenly telescoping vision might make me dizzy, overwhelmed, and I might turn away again.

I know myself. I am aware, and wary. This is one of the reasons why fellow initiators in my town would be so valuable: to keep me balanced!

During the Transition Training we watched a lot of images and videos of Transition Initiatives, and at first I watched them with mixed feelings of joy and anxiousness. My heart sank because I inevitably thought: “I can’t make that happen.”

That sinking feeling stems from the fact that, though I arrived here over 11 years ago, studied, married, bought a house and had a child here, I still don’t feel at home. Why? Not because of the people around me: I have found each and every one of my colleagues, neighbors and friends - Americans or not - to be sincerely welcoming. So it must be me.

I always assumed children have a natural sense of being at home, for I myself, as a child, felt at home, without ever a shadow of a doubt. But was it because of something a child does or is, or was it because of what my parents did and modeled? Or was it because of the place?

The place was Antwerp (Belgium), a city within half an hour’s drive of the city where my grandparents and aunts and uncles all lived. A place where my family can trace and place our ancestry as far back as the 1700s. And a place with a culture in which “migrating” is the exception. You see, Belgians don’t leave Belgium: the emigration rate is less than a percent. And Belgium is a small country, about the size of Maryland, so children “leave” (for college, or to live) to within at most a two hours’ drive away from their parents. In my family I was the third (out of four now) in the span of two generations to move abroad, which makes my family exceptionally migratory.

Let’s put this in context. The United Nations Commission on Population and Development concluded in 2006 that only 3% of the world population is an international migrant (with most migrants moving from developing to developed countries). The kind of mobility within the United States that makes for big moves, in contrast, is high: the Census of 2000 determined that, within 5 years, no less than 8.42% of its respondents had moved to another state and an additional 2.86% to a foreign country. That number has in all probability gone up in the last couple of years.

So let’s just say that my Amie is seeing a home very different from what I saw as a kid. We see family once or twice a year, not every weekend. Mama and Baba have strange accents - and so does she, insisting on “woh-T-er”. Mama and Baba can’t vote and they don’t know how to negotiate certain communal systems. So I am afraid that Amie will not know what “home” is, or that she will call “home” something that I would call but a weak version of my own rich childhood memory of home.

And so I must ask myself: can I, dare I, make this place my home? What if home means not just the core family of the three of us, not just lengthy visits (visits: that says it all) from grandparents and aunts and cousins, not just local traditions with good, good friends that we see often… but also the wider culture of a hometown?

The Training helped me realize that I should make this hometown happen, for myself, for Amie, and that it is possible. That this what a Transition Initiative could mean to me, my family, and the people in my community: not just becoming more resilient in the face of peak oil, climate change, and economic crisis, but first and foremost what our trainer called  “becoming indigenous toyour place”: coming home.

{Previously, about Transition: the giving of gifts}

I discovered Rob Hopkins’ book, The Transition Handbook, about two years ago and it immediately struck me as the right approach to our problems - climate change, peak oil and economic crisis (all bound up together, of course) - and to our solutions (grassroots, positive, pro-active, hopeful, inclusive).

It still took me a long time to try to act upon my enthusiasm. I tried to set up a meeting in my town to see who would be interested (and no one showed up, which I ascribe entirely to my awful advertising skills). This debacle did result in making a friend in a nearby town, and he urged me to take the Transition Training. I signed up and attended a training in Boston, led by Tina Clarke, about three weeks ago.

That’s the background. Now where do I start?

~

I’ll start with a conversation I had today with a mom at Amie’s school. It was the first time we talked and we sparked. As the kids played we spoke very passionately and openly about what moves us. From issues at school and global social justice we bounced into… peak oil, climate change, the end of the world as we know it. Only, I didn’t phrase it like that. I called it “this terribly exhilarating and terribly frightful time when we must all be heroes and activists and rise to the occasion of saving the world. Just here, in X [name of our town].”

What was that all about? Where was my usual hopelessness, helplessness? It’s still there (ha, I should be so lucky), but I am rising above it by stepping outside myself into a local community. There I can make a difference: “think globally, act locally”. So I explained:

See, these are the facts, and I laid them all out (my attitude changed, not my brain): oil is in everything and it has peaked, but not in time to stop the burning of it from frying the planet, our health, our spirits, and this economy is just going to get worse. This part took about 1 minute. What took longer was the “this is what I am doing about it” part.

I started with myself: I am taking back my food and my health, by gardening, by buying local, by keeping chickens (soon), by beekeeping (soon), by Independence Days, and I am lowering my consumption, by Rioting for Austerity, by Freezing My Buns, etc.

But that’s not enough: now I want to re-localize my life to within my community, by promoting community gardening and orcharding, or by organizing workshops on how to build with local materials, or by relearning to have fun and make art together, or by helping to retrofit and weatherstrip houses, or by setting up emergency supplies, or by giving frugality and sewing workshops, or by starting a bulk food co-op, or a local currency, etc.

I put it so that, even if my friend didn’t “believe in” peak oil or climate change (terms I had mentioned just that once), she could still find one or two items on my list that would appeal to her (thus the “or”s). She could still see how our town, the place she invested in and where she is raising her kids, would be better for it.

~

That’s what finally dawned on me at the Training. That’s what I think Transition is really about:

• all-inclusive: whoever shows up is the right person
• non-prescriptive, non-directive: give people access to good information and trust them to make the right decisions
• Let it go where it wants to go, which is where the community takes it

As our wonderful trainer said:

Transition happens when someone says: I have a gift (any gift) to give to the community. And the reply is: Be welcome! And thank you! And here is what I can give to you!

As such Transition is a “movement” only in the most basic sense of a change. It is not a “group” but, simply, community. Those who start it and guide it somewhat aren’t “leaders” but facilitators. It is not a “label” in the pejorative sense but only very basically a name, because it is facilitated by an organization that shares its experiences and its tools - free of charge,  run with ‘em and let us know where they are taking you so we can learn from you.

~

This realization was important for me. I abhor conflict. I was scared to be a Transition initiator and facilitator in my town because I foresaw people confronting me on “Peak Oil” and “Climate Change”. “Prove it!” they’d say. How could I? [shudder]. But now I realize it’s not about peak oil or climate change, it’s about Community.

So, you deny climate change? That’s fine, but can you show me how to sew this quilt? Or what are your ideas on a local currency? Or do you know what’s wrong with my lettuce? Or… [trails off having too many things to do to stand around arguing, already!]

Amie has often expressed an interest in my journal - in the book itself (the journalist Moleskine) and in the process. I haven’t been writing in my journal regularly, but over this weekend revived my resolution to do so. This morning I pulled it and she asked if she could have a journal too, just like mine.

So…

Several hours later:

I told her what I write in my journal: what my day was like, what I wished my day had been like, what I plan to do, TO DO and other lists, all kinds of information, drawings and photographs, etc. And I showed her the baby journal I kept for her all too briefly.

I proposed she write it herself but if she gets tired of that, she can dictate and I will write it down (literally) for her. When she does choose to write it herself, I help her with the spelling whenever she asks, and if she proposes her own (phonological) spelling, I don’t argue.

I hope she will get as much joy out of journaling as I have over the years.

…

Over the weekend I attended a two-day Training for Transition - during which she was constantly on my mind. I learned so much, and am still exhausted, it was so intense. Will report on that soon (oh, add it to the list).

Okay, I’m warning you. This one’s (perhaps) on the edge for this blog, but it was inevitable. It’s about our toilet flushing habits. So if you’re here to read about Amie’s drawings or how the carrots are doing (badly), proceed at your own risk.

This is the one aspect of our homestead that I don’t discuss with visitors to our home, even family and good friends.  The garden and the rain barrels always go over really well, the Freeze Your Buns and short showers are at the next level (where “different” creeps in). But this one… Even on the Riot Group the idea of toilet cloth drew some comments.

At some point I plan to put forward our homestead as an example of suburban sustainable living and low energy consumption. I foresee the awkward moment when it becomes clear to what lengths one has to go to get an 80-90% reduction of the US national average…

So it’s nothing short of a coming-out issue. Here goes.

…

Given its daily and frequent use, toilet flushing consumes the most water in a household. Drinking water.

Here at our place we’ve been struggling with ways to minimize this waste. At first we didn’t flush after little job, but that left mineral stains in the toilet bowl, which necessitated more cleaning (albeit with all-natural products). Sometimes it smelled. Also, it wasn’t practical when we had guests or visitors. I found myself thinking each time the doorbell rang: “Did we flush?”

Then we hit upon the idea of “collecting nitrogen,” a euphemism for peeing in a container, the contents of which go on the compost heap. To deal with the toilet paper problem (we don’t want it in the compost), we decided to use toilet cloth (after little job), which takes up very little volume in the laundry. That minimizes the use of yet another disposable. The compost heaps and bins get daily bursts of fire.

{Update, in response to comment} The toilet cloths are saved with table napkins, hand and kitchen towels and underwear to be washed in hot water with a minimum of chlorine bleach - I wash everything else in cold water with bar soap, washing soda and borax, and I line-dry everything, of course.

But for big job we were still flushing all that drinking water down the drain.

Then we installed our rain barrels. One of them is not within reach of the garden - it overflows into one that is -  but it is close to the back door. So every morning Amie and I go there to fill two 25 gallon buckets, which we put in a corner in our bathroom (lids on). We use that exclusively to flush the toilet.

Easy peasy: no smells, no yellow water and wads of toilet paper in the bowl, no wasting drinking water.

Several weeks ago a neighbor gave us an old rain barrel he was going to toss. It’s a large metal barrel that he painted green, and some of the paint on the inside bottom is peeling. I asked him if the paint contains lead and he couldn’t remember what kind it was, so we didn’t install it along with our food-grade rain barrels. Instead  we will put it on the last available gutter pipe, also conveniently close to the back door, and will use that water for flushing. At some point we might even figure out how to hook that barrel directly to the toilet water tank.

…

I asked DH if I could post this, and he said “I don’t get it,” as in, what’s so risque about it? I’m not so sure: this still seems to me as one of the things we do that sets us quite apart from anyone I know personally and the culture at large. Unless we’ve we all been hiding our toilet-flushing habits - which would only prove the point. Your thoughts?

Enough of this vacillating and lamenting! I’ve placed a notice for a Meeting on the Transition US and Transition Massachusetts websites, and will send it to several sustainability and Permaculture Meetup groups I know of. I’ve got one speaker already and plan to invite many more.

Join us to discuss resilience and sustainability for our communities (Wayland, Lincoln, Sudbury, Natick, Weston, Framingham, Concord, Ashland, Newton, etc.). Connect with others interested in transitioning our communities past fossil fuels and creating resilient systems for local food, energy, transport, housing, etc.

Present will be Jared Rodriguez (Emergent Energy Group), who has assisted Transition Towns with initial phase renewable energy projects. We are inviting more speakers and guides – if you think you can contribute as one, don’t hesitate to share your experience. Bring your questions, ideas and enthusiasm.

Depending on the response, we can hold this as a Lecture Series, an Open Space event, a Fair, or simply a meeting to see how much interest there is in our neighborhoods. We’ll keep posting here as we get a better idea and plans unfold.

The place is TBA. Please send this invitation to anyone you think may be interested.

I have no idea how many speakers and listeners will show up, and so where to hold the event, or what format will fit it, but it’s going to happen come hell or high water! It will at least show me how much interest there is in the various towns in my neighborhood, in the generally populace as well as for potential Transition steering groups.

I’m brainstorming now about discussion topics, where else to advertise, formats for this event, etc. Any ideas?

So exciting!

Confluence:

1.

Derrick Jensen’s thought-provoking article in Orion Magazine, “Forget Short Showers” (July/August 2009):

The second problem [with wholly personal measures such as taking shorter showers, which Jensen finds "utterly insufficient"]—and this is another big one—is that it incorrectly assigns blame to the individual (and most especially to individuals who are particularly powerless) instead of to those who actually wield power in this system and to the system itself. Kirkpatrick Sale again: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”

The third problem is that it accepts capitalism’s redefinition of us from citizens to consumers. By accepting this redefinition, we reduce our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming. Citizens have a much wider range of available resistance tactics, including voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting, and, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.

2.

This article in Scientific American (via the red mullet) about Phosphorous depletion:

Land ecosystems use and reuse phosphorus in local cycles an average of 46 times. The mineral then, through weathering and runoff, makes its way into the ocean, where marine organisms may recycle it some 800 times before it passes into sediments. Over tens of millions of years tectonic uplift may return it to dry land.

Harvesting breaks up the cycle because it removes phosphorus from the land. In prescientific agriculture, when human and animal waste served as fertilizers, nutrients went back into the soil at roughly the rate they had been withdrawn. But our modern society separates food production and consumption, which limits our ability to return nutrients to the land. Instead we use them once and then flush them away.

3. The poll I posted many months back: “Why do/ don’t you simplify/reduce/prepare for a Peak Oil/Global Warming future?” The results (voters could vote for more than one option):

62 votes for “I do”

a) 11 (18%): because I think if we all do this, we could turn this thing around

b) 6 (10%): I don’t know if we can save the day, but I simplify to prepare, in case it’s bad

c.) 12 (19%): It’s going to get bad, so I simplify to prepare (e.g. to get used to living with less)

d) 25 (40%): I simplify out of principle (e.g., take only what you need), regardless of the future

e) 7 (11%): I simplify because it saves me money

f) 1 (2%): Other

1 vote for “I don’t”

1 (100%): The problem is real, and the future bad, but my simplifying won’t change that

4.

Jay Griffiths’ great article in the same Orion Magazine, about the Transition Initiative.

A WHILE AGO, I heard an American scientist address an audience in Oxford, England, about his work on the climate crisis. He was precise, unemotional, rigorous, and impersonal: all strengths of a scientist.

The next day, talking informally to a small group, he pulled out of his wallet a much-loved photo of his thirteen-year-old son. He spoke as carefully as he had before, but this time his voice was sad, worried, and fatherly. His son, he said, had become so frightened about climate change that he was debilitated, depressed, and disturbed. Some might have suggested therapy, Prozac, or baseball for the child. But in this group one voice said gently, “What about the Transition Initiative?”

[...] Many people feel that individual action on climate change is too trivial to be effective but that they are unable to influence anything at a national, governmental level. They find themselves paralyzed between the apparent futility of the small-scale and impotence in the large-scale. The Transition Initiative works right in the middle, at the scale of the community, where actions are significant, visible, and effective.

[...] Many people today experience a strange hollow in the psyche, a hole the size of a village.

5.

I recognize that child. When I was around the same age (12) I watched The Day After, a movie that will, unfortunately, haunt me forever (I wrote about it before). Oil (and phosphate and…) depletion, global warming, economic collapse, famine migrations: they are the new nuclear threat - worse, they are fact, not threat - on top of the old nuclear threat. The well-informed twelve-year-old and this particular 29-year-old fall into despair.

So why do I do what I do? Why do I grow my own vegetables, make compost, line-dry my laundry? Why do I take short showers, close waste and energy loops on my “homestead”? Why am I on the lookout for a wood stove, a solar battery charger, a high pressure canner? Why am I drawing up plans for a root cellar and a chicken coop, and skimming through catalogs for fruit trees and berry bushes? Why do I refuse to “go shopping”? And despairing of ever having those rain barrels installed?

Not because I think we (as in you and I, all of us individuals) can turn this thing around - I agree with Jensen on that. I do it out of principle - I am convinced that to take only what you need is good for the soul. And to prepare my family, my daughter especially. But that’s not enough. It will not be enough if it’s just me, and on the other hand I feel helpless on the national, even state level (the level where a million to millions of lives and lifestyles are at stake).

So there it is, for me too: the middle ground. Transition. I too have a hole in my heart, the size of a town. This town. Working on and living in a Transition Town is, I think, the only way for me to live somewhat peacefully with what is happening.

My apologies for the spotty posting. We’ve had to cope with sickness - Amie and Mama last weekend and now Amie again. A dear friend of mine has also galvanized a project I had set aside as not fitting our current schedule: the communally oriented side of “Transition” (yes, the more I think about it, the more the Transition Movement and philosophy appeals to me.)

I had thought I needed to get the garden under control and some of our house greening projects finished and working before I can use them as an example.

But I now realize that the process of transitioning has great community appeal: it is after all something that others will have to go through as well.  The idea of transitioning is after all not to do it all by oneself and then to be an “expert” for others. The idea is to transition together.

… Can’t say too much yet, but we’re working on it together and with her contacts and experience and my vision, we’ll soon be able to “go public”!