blog

Just 4 basic handtools — ratcheting screwdriver; drill (either hand-cranked, or punch drill “Yankee drill” as shown here); small saw; and hammer — can do a lot! You can make or repair lots of things with these.

I once used them to build an entire pallet porch with roof and screen walls at my place in the RV park where I lived for 10 years in Austin. And I use them for smaller projects and repairs all the time, such as repairing a broken chair at my neighbor’s house.

I typically work with materials I find discarded at curbside. Old wood can be super hard and/or crack easily, and old nails & screws can be dullish and rusty. No worries; I just take the extra step of drilling starter holes (pilot holes). If you don’t have a drill, you can make pilot holes by gently tapping with hammer on a skinny nail.

I’ve always preferred hand tools to power tools. And I love projects that divert unwanted materials from landfill and give them new life.

You can see pics here on my DEEP GREEN Facebook page, and see my TikTok video tribute to the tools here. Also check out my TikTok video about using scrounged materials to repair a chair.

As the disasters and pandemic and economic hardships and everything have piled up worldwide, it has crossed my mind to publish an updated edition of my book.

But I decided all it really needs is a preface. Here’s the preface, dated May 2022:

A lot has happened since 2017 when I wrote this book. Everything that’s happened — intensified storms; droughts; wars; pandemic; social upheaval; community violence; housing crunch, worsening income inequality, and other widening economic hardship; disruptions in supplies of food and other essential goods; fuel shortfalls — just underscores the ideas I’m promoting in this book; just makes the information and suggestions herein more valid and valuable.

Public Service Announcement for motorists who don’t see walking, cycling, and bus as real, valid forms of transportation: Please stop saying we pedestrians, cyclists, and public-transit users “don’t have transportation,” when what we don’t have is CAR ownership. We have transportation!

And please stop trying to shame us or scare us into quitting walking & cycling “because it’s dangerous.” Just STOP that please!!!

If YOU really think it’s dangerous, then do something to actually help fix the danger you perceive. Ask your elected leaders/police to crack down on speeding & drunk driving. Teach self-defense to kids, women, or other vulnerable populations etc etc etc.

What about the dangers of depression, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high blood sugar from a sedentary lifestyle! I’d rather pick the kind of “danger” that lets me be outdoors and talk with neighbors, meet new people, see cool buildings & beautiful nature close-up.

And if the real reason why you’re wanting me to stop getting around by foot or bicycle is because it makes you question your choices … then hey, go ahead and question your choices! You might find out something interesting and useful. (I always do, when I reexamine my choices and defaults.)

Oh, and you can stop asking me where my shoes are. I expect they’re right where I left them.

My chosen approach to eco-activism is to effect systemic change by motivating people to make changes at the personal and household level.

This presents me with certain ethical challenges, which I attempt to navigate as follows:

• My target audience is my fellow environmentalists, not the general public.

• My target audience is residents of the USA and other wealthy industrialized nations, as we are consuming a disproportionate share of the world’s resources and are setting toxic cultural norms of a “civilized” standard of living. So, I’m not trying to tell residents of India and China and Mexico and South American countries and African countries and so on that they need to cut their footprint.

• I don’t ask or expect anyone to do what I myself am not actually doing. I’m not driving a gas-guzzling car and telling people they should ride bicycles, etc. Or would do if my situation were applicable. For example, I don’t have kids or grandkids, but if the time comes when I settle down with some nice old man and have some “Brady Bunch” insta-grandkids, if I have any input into their education I’ll strongly advocate for homeschool/unschool with a heavy emphasis on the three R’s plus earth-based skills.

• Furthermore, I accept that I’ve been privileged to enjoy things in the past that other people have never had a chance to do. The main example that stands out for me is travel. Just because I now minimize my travel and have pledged to quit flying doesn’t give me the right to tell people who’ve never gotten to travel that they should forgo cross-country trips, visits to other countries, and so on. (I do often try to encourage my fellow environmentalists to purchase carbon offsets for their travel. And I have become very vocal when it comes to flight-shaming politicians who jet all over the world for business that can just as well be done by phone or Zoom.)

• Although the prime motivation for my actions is to benefit the biosphere and all living creatures including humans, I never try to get people to do anything for just that one reason. As important a reason as it is. I don’t try to get people to make changes or take actions unless they’ll get personal benefits in addition to the planetary. So, for example, I never try to get people to purchase “eco” products that will cost them extra money.

— These are the principles I can think of off the top of my head, that govern my advocacy. I may think of more later.

A lit of people think I have a green thumb just because I have a densely planted yard, and because I talk a lot about growing plants for food and wildlife habitat and stormwater mitigation and heat mitigation and restoring the rain cycle and such.

Actually, though, I do not have a green thumb; I’m just very persistent because honestly, plants are non-optional, for the abovementioned reasons and more.

As a person with a NOT-green thumb, who nonetheless feels a strong duty to add as many trees and other plants as possible to our denuded landscape, I am everlastingly grateful for the existence of plants that grow really easily.

There are some plants you can literally grow just by sticking them in the ground. As in, just take a cutting or a twig or whatever, stick it in the soil, and voilà. Sure you might have to water them a bit to get it established, but basically they are a guaranteed success even for someone like me who has a proven ability to kill even the hardiest plants.

Where I live, my go-to’s in this “stick in the ground” category are prickly pear (both spiny and spineless variety), plumeria, chaya (Mexican Miracle Spinach Tree I’ve also heard it called), and a couple of non-edible succulents whose names I don’t know.

Prickly pear is edible (both the pads and the fruit); plumeria offers beautiful fragrant flowers (that are also edible); chaya is delicious and nutritious (but needs to be cooked a certain way to remove toxins, so do your research and don’t just eat it off the tree!!).

But the main thing I value all these plants for is their usefulness in creating a living privacy screen, and some shade. It’s easier and cheaper to make a living fence than it is to build or replace a conventional fence.

A popular fence-plant for drier climates is ocotillo. Here’s a beautiful example of a living ocotillo fence.

And here’s my TikTok video of a living fence I’ve started as a privacy screen for our shaded patio area.

Though not a fence per se, these gorgeous living bridges in India can be hundreds of years old, and I include them here as another inspiring example of how plants can serve as a super durable and lovely part of the human-built environment if we’re nice to them and recognize their value. As Katie Hunt writes in the article on cnn.com, “They’re not the world’s tallest or longest bridges, but a string of humble river crossings sculpted from tree roots in India are engineering marvels that contain lessons for modern architects.”

My approach to dishes (and laundry as well) is strongly influenced by my experience of traveling with a backpack (both on trails, and in cities). Living in tiny Tokyo apartments, and later in an RV, probably had an influence too. As did attending many camping music festivals.

Even though I live in a house, and haven’t backpacked for some years, I still find it helpful to minimize the volume of stuff that needs washing. The other day I was looking through a book about hiking the Appalachian trail. It was published in 1971 and was one of many books about camping and backpacking that my parents bought when we were growing up.

The author’s mentality for keeping dishes and utensils clean on the trail is similar to what I do at home. I generally use one dish, one cup, and one spoon — all of them metal. Unlike him, I use a cookpot rather than eat directly out of the pot, and unlike him I do use both a cup and a dish. (My dish and spoon were actually part of a whole dish & pan kit I used to carry on backpacking trips til I wised up and pared it down.)

This passage, from the 1971 book Appalachian Hiker, Adventure of a Lifetime, by Edward B. Garvey, describes an approach I find useful:

“It consists of a 6-inch sauce pan, a Primus stove, and a soup spoon. … Breakfast: Instant wheat cereal — sugar and powdered milk added — ready 2 minutes after the water boils. Eat from the pot. Do not wash pot, Add water, boil, add powdered eggs and ham. You’ll never taste the cereal anyway. In 3 minutes, eat eggs. Do not wash pot. Add water or snow and boil for tea … Do not wash pot. With reasonable technique, it should be clean. Pack pot in rucksack and enjoy last cup of tea while others are dirtying entire series of nested cookware, Enjoy sunrise or take morning stroll while others are washing … entire series of nested cookware.”

Here at home, I just rinse my dish after each meal. Usually just a tiny bit of water, cold (from the tap or a rainbarrel), is fine. After rubbing the dish clean so no more food particles remain, I dump the water into the garden. And the dish is ready for next meal. Same approach goes for cookpot. I only rarely have to full-on wash any dishes for my own use.

Our means and circumstances are varied. But we all have one major thing in common: As human beings, we are social creatures. Thousands of times a day, day in and day out, we are each helping to build and reinforce social norms. By how we dress, what we say to people, how we get around, how we landscape our yards or balconies, what we buy or don’t buy.

Each one of us is a drop in the ocean, but we have the power to help shift society’s default settings on what’s considered cool and beautiful and worth aspiring toward.

“I’m going to pass on that weekend outing. I need some quiet time, and also I want to save my carbon budget for visiting my family at Christmas.”

“It’s nice of you to think of me but I don’t need any more shoes or clothes; if it’s OK with you let’s donate these to someone who needs them.”

“Oh, I don’t fly anymore; I’ve pledged not to take any more flights. I really don’t miss it; flying is such an unpleasant way to travel.”

“Let’s go to restaurant X; they serve their food on reusable dishes.”

“Yes, I made this skirt; I prefer an asymmetrical look and hand-stitching.”

“Let’s not get takeout from those guys; they never listen to me when I ask them to leave out the plastic utensils and sauce packets. Let’s order from these guys instead; they use cardboard containers and leave out the plastic junk.”

“Of course I walked here; I live right down the street.” (Said even if “down the street” is miles away.)

Even when we can’t speak out loud, or don’t know what to say, we can influence cultural norms by amplifying the voices of people who are advocating or reporting good stuff.

And of course, most of the social norms we transmit, are transmitted silently, without us speaking a single word. We each have the power to help dismantle hyperconsumerism and normalize degrowth, DIY, energy descent, nonconsumerism.

Every single day is Earth Day!

Further Exploration:

• “Culture-Building as Climate Work” (Whitney Bauck; atmos.earth). “We crossed paths at the TED climate conference in Edinburgh last year, where Rev Yearwood was co-leading a session on ‘how to be a good ancestor.’ In a week packed with slick presentations on a fancy stage, Rev’s intimate session went gently against the grain. It was the first moment where I saw the high-performing attendees that TED attracts breaking down in tears, as Rev and his co-leaders encouraged them to engage with the climate crisis not just as strategists or decision-makers, but as people. ‘You can’t do this work if you don’t have something to pull on. Because if you pull on yourself, you’ll become bitter, jaded, and cynical. Having a faith, or some kind of grounding system that helps you reconnect to humanity, to life — you need to have that to do this work,’ Rev told me later.”

• “Homeschooled students learn ‘lost skills’ in woods” (Patricio G. Balona; Daytona Beach News-Journal). “As part of their lessons at this school, students eat pennywort and bee sting salads and wash it down with long leaf pine tea. … On other days they learn about cooking, sewing by hand, gardening, sailing, archery or making a fire, among other things. … the classes are derived from a curriculum that teaches ‘lost skills’ to homeschooled children.”

• “A Comic Book Sparks Kids Toward Environmental Justice” (Rebecca Bratspies; thenatureofcities.com). “It certainly helps that artist Charlie LaGreca created a visually-stunning book. Mayah’s Lot stands alone as a storybook, but it also provides valuable environmental justice lessons. It is an ideal tool for bringing environmental messages to a generation steeped in highly visual and interactive ways of learning. Students learn alongside Mayah, the young heroine, as she organizes her already environmentally over-burdened neighborhood to prevent the siting of a hazardous waste facility on a nearby vacant lot. To succeed, she must navigate administrative law hurdles, produce compelling advocacy grounded in fact-based reasoning (a big component of the new Common Core Learning Standards), and mobilize popular support. The resulting story offers an environmental justice message that has won praise from state environmental protection agencies around the country (Mississippi and Illinois will be adopting the book in their community outreach efforts), has been featured in Colorlines and mentioned on NY Times Parenting blog. Better still, it resonates with children like my very urban daughter and her friends — many of whom tend to think of ‘the environment’ as existing elsewhere, rather than where they live and learn.”

• “‘OK Doomer’ and the Climate Advocates Who Say It’s Not Too Late” (Cara Buckley; nytimes.com). “Alaina Wood is well aware that, planetarily speaking, things aren’t looking so great. She’s read the dire climate reports, tracked cataclysmic weather events and gone through more than a few dark nights of the soul. She is also part of a growing cadre of people, many of them young, who are fighting climate doomism, the notion that it’s too late to turn things around. They believe that focusing solely on terrible climate news can sow dread and paralysis, foster inaction, and become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

• Disgusted at the volume of single-use plastic bags which just seems to be getting worse and worse, I decided to use humor to try to shift the norm. Check out my TikTok video where I give an Earth Day PSA about Plasticia the abandoned plastic bag. “Spay and neuter your plastics, people!”

• “7 Lessons About Finding the Work You Were Meant To Do” (Kate Torgovnick May; ideas.ted.com). “Whether it was during a career aptitude test or in a heart-to-heart chat after getting laid off, chances are someone has talked to you about how to ‘find your calling.’ It’s one of those phrases people toss about. But StoryCorps founder Dave Isay takes issue with it … specifically, the verb. ‘Finding your calling — it’s not passive,’ he says. ‘When people have found their calling, they’ve made tough decisions and sacrifices in order to do the work they were meant to do.’ In other words, you don’t just ‘find’ your calling — you have to fight for it. And it’s worth the fight. ‘People who’ve found their calling have a fire about them,’ says Isay, the winner of the 2015 TED Prize. ‘They’re the people who are dying to get up in the morning and go do their work.’ Over a decade of listening to StoryCorps interviews, Isay noticed that people often share the story of how they discovered their calling — and now, he’s collected dozens of great stories on the subject into a new book, Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work. Below, he shares 7 takeaways from the hard-won fight to find the work you love.”