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Tiny barriers can be surprisingly powerful.

The bucket that I use for a compost bin in my kitchen requires me to use one hand to open it. It would be vastly easier if it had a foot-pedal. Every single time I have to open the bucket to put food scraps in, I feel an ever-so-tiny twinge of stress and annoyance.

Micro-stress adds up. It can be enough to discourage a person from using the compost bucket. And just toss her scraps in the trash can instead. The trash can doesn’t need a lid because there are no food scraps in there to create smells or attract bugs. But if I were to get sufficiently annoyed with my compost bucket lid as to dump food scraps into the trash bucket instead, the trash bucket would attract noise and bugs … and need a lid.

Another tiny barrier I’ve noticed: Screen doors that require me to have a hand free in order to open them. When I’ve got both hands full (with a pot of collected sink-water to dump outside or whatever), having to bend down to put the pot on the floor so I can open the screen door, and then bend back down to pick up the pot while holding the screen door open with my hip … is such a tiny micro annoyance, yet surprisingly energy-sapping!

Tiny barriers of this kind deepen my appreciation for thoughtful design. My idea of a good screen door would be one you could open from the inside by pushing with your hip, thus not needing a hand free. And the screen door would spring back tightly shut so as not to let in mosquitoes.

And it would swing both ways, so you could do the same thing when you were coming back indoors with two armfuls of groceries or whatever.

Sounds kind of like an old-school screen door that’d be at the back door of a restaurant or something.

Tiny barriers can be surprisingly powerful. And addressing them can often provide immense relief, seemingly way out of proportion to the size of the annoyance.

But maybe it’s not so out of proportion. After all, minor annoyances from tiny barriers can chew up a person’s day and clog the brain, blocking out creative and useful thoughts. Unless we use the barriers to incite our creativity to develop a solution!

What tiny barriers and micro-annoyances do you notice around you? How might you fix them?

I haven’t figured out a solution to the compost bucket. I definitely need to do something though!

Neighbor up early
Sunday morning, edging grass
That’s square already.

*Or maybe this should be titled “American Distraction.”

Today I stepped on a lubber by mistake. (The giant, brilliantly colored grasshoppers, native to Florida, are very slow-moving and stumbly, which is how they got their popular name “lubbers.”) After I stepped on it, the lubber just lumbered off as if nothing had happened; as if a very large, heavy, clumsy, absent-minded two-legged animal had not just landed on its body. I’ve seen that happen before. Lubbers are tough! (Still, I wouldn’t recommend testing that out by stepping on them on purpose.)

The defining attribute of lubbers, other than their distinctive appearance, is the fact that they seem to eat pretty much ALL plants. I have yet to see a tree, grass, or shrub they won’t nibble on. Early in the season, when the plants are still babies and the rains haven’t arrived to help accelerate their growth, it’s kind of terrifying to witness. I remember my first year in my house, wondering if any of my threadbare plants would survive the lubbers (and yet not wanting to kill the creatures).

Well, most if not all of the plants came roaring back to life bigger and better than ever. This morning I had the thought, “Maybe trials and tribulations in our human lives are like lubbers in a plant’s life.” Or, as the popular saying goes, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger!”

I chose to see those lubber-surviving plants as a visible example of grit; sheer determination of life-force. This is a quality I’ve had to work at cultivating in myself.

I’ve lived a privileged life. I grew up middle-class, not particularly wealthy. But I had the kind of parents who made huge personal sacrifices for their kids. I might even go so far as to say they were a bit “helicopter” or “snow-plow” before those terms even existed: The thought of their kids experiencing any kind of pain or adversity was so unbearable to them, they went to great lengths to protect us from anything bad.

There were times in life (such as when I slacked off on schoolwork and got D’s) when I probably should have been allowed to just flat-out fail and experience the consequences of my laziness and entitled attitude. Maybe instead of a parent-teacher conference to smooth things out and keep me in the “advanced” classes, what I needed was information about vocational schools and other non-academic paths. Or simply being moved to “regular,” non-advanced classes. Or being asked to help fellow students instead of being allowed to harbor an arrogant attitude about being “gifted” (that word really makes me cringe). Or (and?) my parents warning me that I’d be on my own for college tuition if I didn’t straighten up.

But my parents didn’t crack down in any of those ways. They wanted an idyllic life for their kids, and they were doing what they felt in their hearts was best, and who could blame them? Not me!

And besides, somehow my siblings escaped becoming spoiled or entitled, so obviously there were other factors at work than parenting choices.

Hey, we all have our character deficiencies. And one of mine has been lack of grit.

That said, I have learned that grit is a quality anyone can cultivate, even me. Here are a few things I’ve learned:

• There were actually times even in my very young life that I displayed grit. Such as when I was still a baby in the crib, I learned how to move from one side of the room to another, in my crib, by rocking the crib on its legs across the floor! (I kid you not. My mom must have freaked the first time she saw that!) I’m lucky I didn’t tip the crib over! Or later on, in my late 20s, when I worked really hard to learn Japanese, and also worked really hard to understand and overcome my mental-health issues. What this tells me is that sometimes if a person seems kind of lazy and not very “gritty,” they just haven’t yet found a goal that lights them up from within. If you or someone else are working toward your goals half-heartedly … maybe they aren’t really your goals, but someone else’s.

• Or, your willpower could be being sapped by chronic pain (physical or mental). That’s a huge drain. Take care of your health. Look into the root causes of chronic pain.

• Get inspired by others! I have been absolutely blown away at how much grit some of the people around me have. Their example inspires me to kick it up a notch. This includes examples from history, such as the Shackleton Expedition. It also includes other species, such as lubbers; and so-called “invasive” plants.

Below I’m starting a list of books and other resources that have helped me cultivate grit; boost my determination. Hope you find them useful!

Further Exploration:

• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, book by Angela Duckworth. Also check out her TED talk on YouTube.

• “Life Challenges” video talk by Harry Palmer (creator of the Avatar(R) Course). Profound yet simple, and entertaining. He talks about how all the best rewards in life are “upstream.” (It’s about the 10th title down the page. All his other talks are excellent too.)

• Basic Will Minicourse – A set of exercises to strengthen one’s will and determination. It’s like core strength training for the mind! I use these exercises a lot. The Basic Will minicourse is part of the Avatar Course materials. (Avatar is a nine-day experiential course to increase awareness of how one’s own mind works and how to live deliberately. I took the course back in 2005 and got so much out of it that I went on to become an instructor of it.) Basic Will is one of seven minicourses. For developing will and determination, you might also enjoy the Life Alignment and Attention Management minicourses.

(Announcement from WMNF):

“TUNE IN ON MONDAY 8/24 TO LEARN ABOUT PERMACULTURE …
when we will host two major influencers in the movement, Koreen Brennan and Jenny Nazak.

“We’ll unpack the word and the concept. Then they will share the ethics and principles that may well shape a new and hopeful future for Earth and its inhabitants …. including US!

“JOIN THE CONVERSATION … They’ll share their projects and you can share about yours! Listen on-the-air at 88.5FM in the Tampa Bay area or online from anywhere, https://www.wmnf.org/events/sustainable-living/ .

“Phone in questions or comments at 813-239-9662 or text to 813-433-0885. You can also e-mail the studio, dj@wmnf.org .”

I always love being on the Sustainable Living show on WMNF. Jungle Jay is a superb host. And it’ll be an extra special treat being on with my friend Koreen Brennan, of Grow Permaculture. Hope you can tune in! And don’t hesitate to ask us questions.

One of my rallying cries for the #GrassrootsGreenMobilization is “Small-Footprint Living Large!” The idea being that choosing to live light on the earth need not involve deprivation. And moreover, by cutting out activities and expenses that are not adding value to your life, you not only help Mother Earth; you also liberate yourself from junk that’s superfluous to your wellbeing, so you can live large according to your own definition.

But what IS living large? Being a product of an affluent, media-saturated society, when I think of that phrase, what comes to mind is things like yachts; jetsetting movie-stars with big hair and big sunglasses; traveling all the time to Cannes or Mumbai or Barcelona or wherever.

But then there’s MY personal definition of living large, which is totally different. Having time to sit on my porch and listen deeply to the layered sound of rain splashing on leaves. One camping trip back when I lived in Japan, just sitting still for two hours and literally watching it get dark, leaf by leaf. Learning how to read Japanese by spending hours copying characters over and over again on lines of a notebook, for hours at a time, as hot summer insects sang outside the window of my tiny tatami room. Watching a TV show with a neighbor and getting so much enjoyment out of it. Deciding at one point that I really wanted to be a fire performer, and doing that for a while. Owning, at one point, about 30 pairs of platform shoes, many of them wildly ornate, and actually wearing them for everyday wear. Using my own money to rent out a local theater and put on an Earth Day festival. Back when I lived in Austin and had a course to teach in Santa Fe, deciding at the last minute to go there by bicycle. Living on a friend’s farm for three months, painting signs and helping with miscellaneous tasks. Spending an afternoon with a couple of friends on the beach. Writing a book and actually putting it out there. Sipping coffee with friends on their porch in the morning; wine in the evening. Really having time and headspace to fully savor those things.

What’s your definition of living large, what is that for you? Whatever it is, there is almost certainly a way for you to be/do/have that while also living lightly on the earth. And, in fact, your conscious choice to minimize your footprint, by paring what’s superfluous to you, will smooth your path to living large according to your own definition.

I cross paths with so many people who are living large according to their own definition. The latest is a guy named Botan up in Minnesota, who decided to start a farm using only scythes and other hand-tools. People told him it was unrealistic, but he made it realistic. (What’s really unrealistic is continuing to trash the soil with chemicals and mechanized equipment.) Besides having a farm, Botan is also a dealer of high-quality European scythes. When he first started out with his farm, he couldn’t find the quality of scythes he needed, but he persisted til he found them, and now he also sells them. (I found his website OneScytheRevolution the other day, when frustration at the noise of lawn-slavery and soil degeneration finally motivated me once and for all to order a darn scythe, already!) This guy is living large according to his own definition.

What I notice about people who are living large according to their own truest definition, is that the benefits tend to ripple out into the world.

But what if your definition of living large is more like the stereotype “glamorous” yachts and jetset life? Personally, I think that is totally do-able even with a low-footprint mind-set. And the benefits can ripple out into the world. What if your boat is a training vessel for people interested in learning seamanship, shipboard cooking, or other skills? What if it’s a vessel for plastic garbage recon and retrieval missions?

What if your jetsetting takes you overseas to learn languages, or start micro-businesses that provide jobs to other people? What if you’re a movie star or stage actor making a difference with the roles you choose?

Living large can be just about anything. One person’s nothing is another person’s everything. Some of my largest moments have been laughably plain “on paper,” but the reality was huge, like dilating my pupils with a kind of eye-drop that makes a raindrop or a tiny insect as large as the whole universe.

In that vein, I love looking at flowers. I mean, most people love flowers, right? But I love slowing down and seriously spending time looking at a flower. Zeroing in on that miracle. Time stands still; sounds and other sensory input recede, beyond the immediate universe of that flower.

In his book A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle writes: “The Buddha is said to have given a ‘silent sermon’ once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile. He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon.”

Homeschooling, and other alternatives to sending kids to bricks-and-mortar schools, has been a hot topic in the pandemic. And I’ve made frequent reference to it on this blog. In the past few days I’ve stumbled on several tidbits that might be helpful to folks who are juggling their kids’ educational needs with their own need to earn a livelihood. Or who are simply looking for ways to enrich their kids’ education.

• Struggling Under Lockdown, Schools Worldwide Relearn Value of Older Tech: TV. (Benjamin Miller and Mitra Taj, New York Times.) “Poor regions where internet access is scarce are turning to an older technology to reach students. That strategy could also help in wealthy countries that have focused on online classes.” I grew up in the 60s and 70s, and TV was part of our classroom learning. I always considered it a special treat. It’s good to see an old, widely available technology being “rediscovered.”

• 4 ways kids could be learning in the future (by Deena Bouknight, More Content Now; published in the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Aug 20, 2020). Nice overview of options: pandemic pods (there are various kinds!); micro-schools using packages offered by a company called SchoolHouse — sounds very promising in terms of flexibility; free resources from Khan Academy and other providers; and “road-schooling” or “edu-vacation” as a supplement to virtual learning. (Personally I have a soft spot for road-schooling; it was a huge part of our curriculum as a military family who moved around a lot. My parents turned our cross-country moves by car, driving to the next duty station, into a thrilling, breathtakingly beautiful classroom with no roof and no boundaries.)

• Open-air school getting fresh look in pandemic (by Svetlana Shkolnikova, Bergen County Record USA TODAY NETWORK; published in Daytona Beach News-Journal, Aug 20, 2020). Fascinating glimpse of history. Open-air schools offered learning environment to kids at risk for tuberculosis. Another “Back to the Future” development that seems like a great idea even if not for the Covid pandemic: “It may have been cold, but by the end of the school’s first year, none of the children had gotten sick, and each gained an average of 5 pounds, according to the book ‘Open Air Schools’, published in 1918 amid the Spanish Flu pandemic. Education moved onto rooftops, into open-windowed classrooms or fully outdoors on vacant lots and beaches in 168 American cities, according to a report published in 1916 by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Boston erected a tent classroom with canvas curtains on the roof of a park refectory, and New York City opened its first open-air school on an abandoned ferryboat…”

• Update! Just found another one. A Milwaukee teacher is creating an outdoor classroom. (By Alec Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel USA TODAY NETWORK; published in Daytona Beach News-Journal, Aug 20, 2020.) “Lindsey Earle, a fourth grade teacher at Prairie Hill Waldorf School in Pewaukee, said the idea came from the school’s early childhood program, which has outdoor time in the mornings. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Earle said, the school had looked to create more of an outdoor learning environment.” And yes, the students will be outdoors year-round. The open air tent-classroom has a fire pit and other measures to protect from extreme cold, but also most of the kids are used to being outdoors year-round. I love how it’s being seen not just as a Covid response, but also as a plus for emotional wellbeing and “letting kids be kids.”

Speaking of newspaper coverage, I’d like to put in a good word for my local paper, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, which does a good job carrying a mix of local articles and highly topical wire-service content. #SupportLocalPapers

And finally, a word to those of you who (like me) are not parents, students, or teachers: We all need to care about the educational system, and about kids’ access to education. It literally affects every aspect of society. (And it most definitely affects eco footprint in many ways, as I’ve mentioned in my book and elsewhere on this blog.) Any of us can serve as resources: We can tutor or mentor kids in our neighborhoods; we can have the attitude that “all kids are our kids”; we can offer emotional support to parents or teachers who are overwhelmed; we can offer our creative talents and free time.

My letter “Set Main Street Free From Rules” got into the paper, hooray! This is a topic I feel strongly about. It was written about my city, Daytona Beach, but may apply to yours as well.

In my opinion, small business is potentially the most powerful force for urban revitalization. (Not coincidentally, it is a powerful force for sustainable households and eco-friendly neighborhoods.) We need to allow our local Mom & Pop businesses more creative leeway in their operations. This applies not just to Main Street but also to Mary McLeod Bethune Avenue and other essential downtown areas in my city that used to be vibrant, and can be again.

Of course I’m not advocating a total free-for-all. Businesses would still need to get permits, be conscientious neighbors, etc. But we need to relax some unnecessarily rigid rules that inhibit the development of a rich year-round economy that serves the needs of residents as well as visitors.

Here’s a link to the letter, which appeared in this past Sunday’s Daytona Beach News-Journal.

I’m also pasting the text below for you.

Set Daytona’s Main Street free from rules 

“City leaders have tried for decades to reinvent the Main Street corridor that runs between the Halifax River and Atlantic Ocean. They’ve tried to transform the thoroughfare into a bustling, year-round epicenter of the beachside with a mix of shops, restaurants, professional offices, second- story loft apartments, pocket parks and boutique hotels,” said a recent article about Main Street.

The problem is that the city feels compelled to insert itself as “command central” of commercial revitalization. The street already has second-story apartments. Already has ideal spaces for that bustling mix of businesses. There’s no “reinvention” needed.

We have to look into what’s impeding building owners from renting out their upstairs apartments and other spaces year-round. Are codes unnecessarily strict; is compliance unduly expensive?

One impeding factor is parking minimums.

Recently I was chatting with a city official. They said, “We’d like to get a riverfront restaurant on Main.”

There is a restaurant there! Many different people have tried to run it. Maybe the rent’s too high because they’re forced to rent the parking lot across the street in addition to the restaurant’s own parking lot. We should stop imposing parking minimums; let businesses figure that out on their own.

Small enterprise wants to happen; let it! Allow food trucks, vendor tables (not just during special events but at all times), pushcart vendors. Remove unnecessary barriers. Let everyday people make money serving everyday needs! An economy dependent on tourism and special events is fragile.