Riot for January 2012 – Month 39

This is the Riot for the month of January 2012 for the three of us. My summary of the first three years is here. Edson fixed the calculator: all go tither to crunch those numbers!

Gasoline.  Calculated per person. Our bugbear again. DH’s shuttle to work wasn’t running because of the holidays, so he had to drive in. I’ve also been doing a lot of driving around town for events, etc. I’ve been trying not to be too hard on myself, but that hasn’t stopped us from investigating alternatives for at least one of our cars: an electric  or a solar car (the affordable ones are low speed), a hybrid (a bit beyond our price range)… But, in the meantime, for January:

13.51 gallons per person

32.9% of the US National Average

Electricity. This is reckoned per household, not per person. As the sun climbs in the sky, our solar harvest climbs too. According to our solar meter, we produced 1816 kWh since the system was turned on, and 237 kWh in January (compared to 176 kWh in grey December).  (You can follow our solar harvest live here). So in January we consumed:

237 (solar) + 139 (wind) =   379kWh

16.9% of the US National Average

Heating Oil and Warm Water. This too is calculated for the entire household, not per person. We did badly this month. I am the fire keeper in the household and I’ve not been on top of it, at all. We ran out of firewood stacked on the porch at the beginning of the month, and it was so cold and DH was traveling for work, I didn’t manage to replenish it from our ample wood pile in the back. Keeping the fire also requires attention throughout the day, and I don’t like leaving the house when the stove is going. I’ve been on the road a lot with meetings and events for Transition, so I often fell back on the oil to warm the house. At the end of the month we all fell sick and on top of not having the energy to get the wood, we also upped the thermostat (from 59 to 63F) to feel more comfortable.  Excuses, excuses, but there you have the result:

44.85  gallons of oil

72.8% of the US National Average

Ouch!

Trash. After recycling and composting this usually comes down to mainly food wrappers.

6 lbs. pp per month

4.4% of the US National Average

Water. This is calculated per person. We used up very little water this month. We took less showers, I think. I couldn’t account for it otherwise. I’ll take it!

246.76 gallons pp.

8.2% of the US National Average

Seed Order for 2012 and Tamarind Seed Give-Away

Seed collection before order

Yesterday Amie and I spent hours looking through the seed catalogs and the seeds I have left over. In the end I opted to go just with Fedco. In my defense, I ordered very few seeds last year!

249 – Maxibel Bush Haricots Verts OG ( C=8oz)
298 – Windsor Fava Bean ( B=8oz)
344 – Jacobs Cattle Bean OG ( A=2oz)
732 – Early Frosty Shell Pea ( B=8oz)
788 – Mayfair Shell Pea OG ( B=8oz)
893 – Sugarsnap Snap Pea OG ( B=8oz) 1
1311 – Boothbys Blonde Slicing Cucumber OG ( B=2g)
1382 – Super Zagross Middle Eastern Slicing Cucumber ( B=1/4oz)
1457 – Costata Romanesca Zucchini OG ( B=1/4oz)
1460 – Tromboncino Summer Squash ( B=1/4oz) 1
1539 – Early Summer Yellow Crookneck Summer Squash OG ( B=1/4oz)
1590 – Bennings Green Tint Patty Pan Summer Squash ( B=1/4oz)
2042 – Scarlet Nantes Carrot ( B=1/2oz)
2079 – Scarlet Keeper Carrot OG ( A=1g)
2300 – Takinogawa Burdock ( B=1/2oz)
2306 – Andover Parsnip OG ( A=1/8oz)
2439 – Evergreen Hardy White Scallion ( B=1/8oz)
2449 – New York Early Onion OG ( B=1/8oz)
2489 – Dakota Tears Onion OG ( B=1/8oz)
2490 – Rossa di Milano Onion ( B=1/8oz)
2510 – Space Spinach ( B=1/2oz)
2712 – Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce OG ( B=4g)
2767 – Les Oreilles du Diable Lettuce OG (Devils Ears) ( B=2g)
2791 – Tango Lettuce OG ( B=2g)
2865 – Rouge dHiver Lettuce ( B=4g)
2919 – Pablo Lettuce OG ( A=1g)
3031 – Fordhook Giant Chard ( B=1/8oz)
3036 – Bright Lights Chard ( B=1/8oz)
3049 – Claytonia ( C=2g)
3096 – Good King Henry Chenopodium or Goosefoot ( B=1g)
3102 – Verte de Cambrai Mâche ( C=1/2oz)
3114 – Large-Leaf Round Mâche ( C=1/2oz) 1
3122 – Minutina ( B=1/8oz)
3158 – Gigante dItalia Parsley ( B=1/8oz)
3182 – Golden Purslane OG ( B=1g)
3222 – Tatsoi OG ( B=1/8oz)
3228 – Early Mizuna OG ( B=1/8oz)
3344 – Diablo Brussels Sprouts ( A=0.5g)
3634 – Tango Celery OG ( A=0.1g)
3678 – Applegreen Eggplant OG ( B=0.4g)
3691 – Rosa Bianca Eggplant OG ( B=0.4g)
3706 – King of the North Sweet Pepper OG ( A=0.2g)
3735 – Chocolate Sweet Pepper OG ( A=0.2g)
3810 – New Ace Sweet Pepper ( A=0.2g)
4018 – Glacier Tomato OG ( B=0.4g)
4032 – Ida Gold Tomato OG ( B=0.4g)
4045 – Garden Peach Tomato OG ( A=0.2g)
4059 – Cherokee Purple Tomato OG ( A=0.2g)
4065 – Jubilee Tomato OG ( A=0.2g)
4106 – Honeydrop Cherry Tomato ECO ( A=0.2g)
4115 – Black Cherry Tomato OG ( A=0.2g)
4418 – Genovese Basil ( B=10g)
4470 – Thai Basil ( B=4g)
4517 – Caribe Cilantro OG ( A=1g)
4522 – Cumin ( A=0.5g)

That tube, in the lower left corner of the picture, it has tamarind seeds in it. If anyone is interested, comment and I’ll send you one. Hurry, the supply is quite limited.

Snow on Solar Panels

I took this image two days ago. By now the snow is mostly all melted away. Two things catch my eye here. One: the panels, being black and smooth, shed the snow pretty easily. Two: the rest of the roof was still covered in snow, indicating good insulation.

This is a screenshot of our production a similar (not the same) day:

I’m so glad we went with individual inverters. If we had gone with one central one, then not only shade from trees but also snow on a few panels would have stopped harvesting.

You can follow our solar harvest here.

What’s Happening this Snowy Day?

I’m not going to shovel snow because it will all have melted away by Monday. That’s what I’ve decided.

I’m nibbling from the warm cannellini dish which was meant for dinner. On a low fire fry finely sliced garlic with thyme, pepper and salt in a good amount of olive oil, until the garlic is just brown (*almost* burnt). Add cannellini beans, heat until just warm,  add a little lemon juice (just detectable to the tongue). Toss. Eat.

Bread dough is rising next to the radiator.

The snow has let up. Four inches, I’d say. My street hasn’t been plowed yet.

Glenn Gould is playing Bach.

DH brought me a cappuccino with a gorgeous microfoam leaf.  This is his espresso machine. Yes, we’re particular about our coffee. But I have to specify that DH can’t make espresso from water. I do love M’s remark at the end, which expresses my sentiment exactly.

Amie is proofreading this as I write. We’re going to read a Moomin book now.

The Summits

We will remember within what walls we live, and understand that this level life has its summit…. and we have only to stand on the summit of our one hour to command an uninterrupted horizon.

H.D. “Thorough” (as I now properly pronounce it), “A Walk to Wachusett”

Last year, in April, we held a Transition Training guided by an experienced, trained facilitator. She worked with us for two days, from 9 to 5, with unbounded energy! At the end of the second day she and I were the last ones left, packing up, when suddenly she confessed that she was horribly thirsty.

That day she had forgotten to bring her reusable water bottle, and though she had drunk at lunch from the reusable cups I had provided, she hadn’t drunk anything since then. The reusable cups and my own water bottle had already been removed.

Worried that she would faint, I came with her to the desk to ask for a water fountain and from there on to where they directed us. It was one of those tap fountains. Next to it stood a stack of tiny paper cups. You know, the ones with the pastel flowers and the inside layer of plastic which makes them virtually non-recyclable.

She looked at it and said, “I’ll drink when I get home.”

Home was over an hour’s drive away.

I said, “But Tina, you have to drink!”

She smiled and shook her head. “I’ll be alright!”

And she was.

I didn’t understand back then, but now I do. Now I couldn’t drink from that cup either.

I think activism has done that for/to me. Going public, face to face, with one’s principles, sticking one’s neck out, has made some of these  issues (like the throwaway cup) clearer, simpler, and so easier to deal with.

Other principles (like vegetarianism, hunting), it has thrown into question and confusion. Those I was  never really clear on, of course, but I may have thought I was. Now that I am more conscious of their praxis and because I practice them out there now, I have started the thought process and until I am clear on them, I will not so easily proclaim them anymore.

Standing up for one’s principles in public – training, speaking, meeting, etc. – throws up those summits Thoreau wrote about, from which we can get an overview of the landscape of our level lives. Only I would add that the landscape changes constantly, that we need to climb those summits more than once, to keep us honest and aware.

Hopeful Naivety

I liked Bill McKibben’s essay, “Armed with Naivety”,  for TomDispatch a couple of weeks ago. In it he proclaimed his New Year’s resolution:

My resolution for 2012 is to be naïve — dangerously naïve.

I’m aware that the usual recipe for political effectiveness is just the opposite: to be cynical, calculating, an insider. But if you think, as I do, that we need deep change in this country, then cynicism is a sucker’s bet.

Cynicism makes us say, “that’s how it is.”  This stops us from questioning the right or wrong of it and precludes the possibility of doing something about it. It is the ultimate powerlessness, and it is a powerlessness that we choose.

Naivety allows us to be surprised about things that aren’t right. Then it allows us to be rightfully angry. Then it allows us to know that it shouldn’t be that way. Then it pushes us to start believing that it could be different. Finally, it allows us to know that we can make it different.

That’s what McKibben calls hopeful – as against hopeless - naïvety.

If something is wrong, then we have the right to be upset about it,  the responsibility of hope that we can do something about it, and the duty to do so.

As Bill writes,

The big boys are, of course, counting on us simmering down; they’re counting on us being cynical, on figuring there’s no hope or benefit in fighting city hall. But if we’re naïve enough to demand a country more like the one we were promised in high school civics class, then we have a shot.