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Around 1980, Bill Mollison (who co-founded the permaculture design movement with David Holmgren) predicted that in 30 years we’d be having water wars. He was spot-on; the situation with Oregon farmers is a prime example. (“Farmers vs. Fish: Tensions Rise Again in California-Oregon Border Area Water Battle“; Gillian Flaccus, AP in Los Angeles Times 4/13/21.)

With much of the western USA now in mega-drought, and even the typically-mild Pacific Northwest cities of Portand and Seattle forecasting 110-degree temperatures or higher, water is going to become an increasingly serious topic.

Available at the turn of a tap in much of the USA, water has tended to be taken for granted here — though people in many other countries know better.

Sarah Scoles spent a week exploring radical water conservation practices at the household level. Myself, having been doing extreme water conservation (5-7 gal/day) for over a decade now, I can tell you it’s not that hard, actually fun and empowering once you get the hang of it. And as Ms. Scoles points out in her article linked below, every change we make helps shift the culture.

” … our individual choices add up to an enormous demand as a society—664 billion gallons per day. In a 2014 Government Accountability Office study, water managers in 40 out of 50 states said they expect shortages in their states in the next 10 years. By late last year, nearly a third of the contiguous U.S. was in moderate to exceptional drought, the latter defined as widespread crop loss, shriveling reservoirs, and water-shortage emergencies.

“I decided to see how low one person could go to ease the problem, and whether that could make a difference. …

“My experimental footprint was the same size as a Chinese citizen’s normal one. Over in Norway, the per-capita use is just half a U.S. citizen’s, and right around the global average. Which is to say there’s room for improvement here at home. If everyone in the U.S. used 20 percent less—still more than twice what I did—they would each save 152,424 gallons of water a year. That’s 49 trillion gallons across the whole country. When you think about it that way, each of us can make a huge difference—especially if our sustainable actions encourage others to behave similarly.

“And that is how large-scale water-use changes happen, says Missouri State’s Jones. If enough people start employing a particular conservation tactic—leaving liquids in the toilet, ripping out Bermuda grass and putting in native plants—that thing becomes the expected behavior. ‘It’s a culture change,’ he says.

“The community flips its reward-punishment system. Instead of shaming you for your brown-grass yard, friends might instead criticize your lush landscaping.”

Read the rest of the article at the link below. She goes really deep (deeper than I go); for example, she includes the water consumed to produce each type of food she eats, each article of clothing she wears, etc. You might find it interesting; my advice is always “Don’t beat yourself up; every cut you achieve makes a difference.”

By the way, I don’t collect my toothbrushing water in a cup to be taken outdoors; I just brush outdoors, and spit directly into the compost or mulch pile. Easy peasy!

However you do it, extreme water conservation practice is planet-friendly, and makes your household less vulnerable to supply reductions.

“I Spent a Week Exploring How We’ll Have to Live in Post-Water America” (Sarah Scoles, getpocket.com).

I could have sword I’d written a post before that at least touched on this topic. But if I did, I can’t find it. In any case, my friend Laura Oldanie (Rich & Resilient Living blog — see link below) just shared a good article on the nuts and bolts of looking for, buying, and owning a house with friends; see link below.

A friend who lives out on rural acreage wondered why I am content to live on such a small urban piece of land. Didn’t I want more space? And my answer is … No! My 1/10 acre is breaking my back as it is; why would I want more?

To put that in a more positive, permaculture way: I have not even begun to realize a fraction of the potential of my 1/10 acre. When I say haven’t even begun, I mean I have just barely started to build the soil to the point where anything planted there doesn’t instantly die. Progress has happened this year!

What excites me is how many people could live in a modest house on a small urban piece of land, in combination with neighborhood-shared plots for community food forests, communal meadows, and other collective wealth.

Now, most places in the USA aren’t there yet. Many will never be. Some people think that’s communism. Run!!! But, that is my ideal vision.

The Dervaes family cultivates 7,000 pounds of food on 1/10 acre in Pasadena, California! Wow. I don’t support everything they do (such as copyrighting the term “urban homestead” and actually going after other people who dare to use that term). But, I offer them as an example of how little acreage humans can get by on. (Ideally, we’d then leave as much of the remaining land as possible — from highway medians to mall parking lots to schools and churchyards — as possible for wildlife and native meadowlands, scrublands, forests.)

That’s my ideal if I were Queen Mayor of the world.

Back to my little 1/10 acre homestead … As I said, I have not even begun to fully realize its potential — yet, with just me managing it, the work is endless and exhausting (though I find joy and physical/mental invigoration in it too).

It has occurred to me to explore having co-owners of this house. I may do it someday. Certainly I don’t want to be an elderly person living alone in her house. There are so many people in that situation, and to me it’s just not a good thing in many ways. (Though I recognize that a lot of older people like living alone. At least they say they do.)

For the moment, I’m just happy to have housemates who respect the low-footprint theme of this household, and share it to a pretty high degree. Co-ownership is definitely an option I will bear in mind, though.

Further Reading:

• “How To Buy a House with Your Friends” (RideFreeFearlessMoney). Practical tips on all the details from getting a mortgage to splitting expenses to providing for contingencies (so, for example, when one of you dies some crazy relative doesn’t come swooping in wreaking havoc), and more.

• Dervaes homestead (urbanhomestead.org): Family producing 7,000 pounds of food on 1/10 acre. (Of course, traditional cultures have been producing large amounts of food on small bits of land for centuries. I’ve seen many pictures of humble homesteads in Asia, Central & South America, Europe, Africa, where the “yard” is a fat dense green cube of food and shelter.)

• Rich and Resilient Living blog (Laura Oldanie): One of my go-to financial blogs, right up there with Vicki Robin‘s. Simple living, financial resilience, regenerative investment. A recent post of Laura’s that I want to share with you is “Are You Thinking in Sustainable Stores of Value?” . “As I progress in my wealth building journey, I find myself drawn more and more to resilient and tangible forms of wealth. Not only do many of them seem more sustainable to me, they also bring me more joy and meaning, while simultaneously helping me further distance myself from the extractive, life-depleting, soul-sucking economy within which so much human activity takes place. This has led me to focus on cultivating stores of value. … A store of value is an asset that retains its value over time and can be exchanged for money now or in the future. Savvy wealth builders often view them as an additional way to diversify their holdings. Consider them a form of risk management. …” (And yes, owning our own homes can be a store of value. So can cisterns and water-catchment systems. Wonderful post; read the rest to find out about some rich stores of value you may not have thought of!)

To see the photos I’m referring to below, go here to the Facebook post.

We get upset a lot (with good reason) about the damage from clearcutting and new sprawl development. But also hugely damaging is our so-called “landscaping” of existing places.

Until very recently this was just a plain sand, beachside parking lot w various dune vegetation growing around it. Dune daisy, Gaillardia, dollarweed and other. Beach entrance down the street from my house.

Now the powers that be (either the City or the owner of the lot — some developer bought it from City a couple yrs back w plans to build a Marriott) have paved it with hot black asphalt and “landscaped” it. Including what looks like spraying of what they would call “weeds” but was a stable community of various native & dune-adapted vegetation.

When I try to talk about this “little stuff” I’m used to having my concerns ignored or dismissed. But this little action on this one piece of land is part of a huge bigger problem. After all the scientific information that has been published, including in mainstream widespread news outlets, about how we are killing off our life-support system, we are still doing it.

As you can see, a substantial amount of natural vegetation is left, but who knows if it is slated for “improvement” too. Beating myself up bc this stuff happens when my back is turned. Never any notice, no asking advice or input of local residents who have training in ecosystems restoration, permaculture etc.

• We need to stop spraying
• Why are we allowing ANY sod grass monoculture, with its associated damaging regime, on public land in a natural area, especially east of the A1A and right along rivers etc.
• F’ing black asphalt, cartoon mass-produced plants … and cheddar-cheese mulch for “color” — CAN WE STOP.
• The list goes on, supply your own.

My heart is heavy right now, it was already heavy before I came out for my walk this morning and saw this.

I often ask what I’m doing here but I really have no other place to go. Just extra heartbroken this morning. At the beach down the street from my house. I know there are many positive trends gaining momentum, and that for the greater good I can’t afford to wallow in discouragement. Just sharing my raw heart right now. Thank you all for being here.

Please let’s find more ways to join forces and push back against the death-dealing norms.
Heartbroken right now (other stuff not just the environment) – please someone say something good, let’s try to pull together and make some good from the madness we see.

I apologize to Mother Earth all the time, in tears. I tell her I am so sorry for my own part in the madness and destruction.

It’s Sunday, and Fathers Day to boot, but I did leave a voicemail w one city official who i have a rapport with (tone was respectful but distraught, i did not try to disguise my anguish) – he will hear it when he gets to the office tomorrow – and I will continue to work to make progress in this matter and will update you guys. Also I want to organize a regional citizens’ effort to reform public landscaping practices; probably will start with a Zoom meeting and you will all be invited.

(And a comment I added below the post – you can see the photo by visiting the post): Positive example for comparison purposes … Here is a County beach entrance nearby (footpath planted with sea grape and beach grasses alongside). The County did a beautiful job with this. Natural vegetation is part of the unique identity of a place. Can you imagine if this path were lined with sod-grass instead? (and its associated poisons and irrigation requirements). I praise the County for taking this natural approach to landscaping.

Update: On Tuesday June 22, I organized a Zoom meeting of fellow citizens who want to shift our damaging and expensive landscaping practices. If it hadn’t been for my distress at seeing the sodgrass-and-asphalt abomination on the beach entrance at the end of my street, I might not have been motivated to organize this meetup. Some good next action steps came out of the meeting. One is a #PuffyLandscaping campaign celebrating soft, low-maintenance, native/adapted vegetation that requires no chemicals to maintain. So if some situation in your community has brought you to fury and despair, see what kind of good you can turn it into.

Further Exploration:

See my video on this topic here.
(Heads-up: Contains profanity, raw emotion). “After typing my post expressing sadness and frustration about the “improved landscaping” of a beachfront parking lot on my street (posted to this group earlier this morning), I made a video. Different channels reach different people. And I’m learning sometimes that we eco folk, in our effort to sound “calm” and “rational,” may be undermining our efforts to light up a sense of urgency in public officials, developers/companies, fellow citizens. In this spirit I offer this 12-minute video. I hope you find it helpful in your own efforts to activate eco awareness and an appropriate sense of urgency in your neighborhood, city, watershed, and hopefully we pull together for our whole bioregion. We need a shift!! It is not optional!! We owe it to our ancestors and to future generations to clean up our act now.”

Comments re the video:

1) See Katie Tripp’s business card below <under the Facebook post>;

2) In addition to being known toxins to bees, many of the chemicals we are spraying, with our hard-earned tax dollars, are more persistent than “til it’s dry”; they get into the water table and storm drains and from there, into the waterways where they are toxic to marine and aquatic life.

3) To clarify what I said about being available to give talks to your neighborhood group, activist group, church school etc — I offer such talks FREE as part of my self-appointed calling as a freelance public servant. Private organizations do engage me for paid speaking gigs, which is part of how I make my livelihood as I mentioned — BUT my talks for grassroots/neighborhood/community groups are offered free, as a public service from my heart.

In my social-media feed today appeared yet another petition begging yet another local government to spare the lives of yet another stand of trees that have been sentenced to death for no apparent reason.

This just so happens to be in my geographic area, but it could just as well be Anytrees, Anywhere, USA.

WHY are they planning to cut down these trees? I didn’t see that info in the petition.

It looks like an already-existing road, with houses already there — so the plan to cut them down doesn’t seem to be motivated by new development.

What is causing us (collectively) to not value shade and beauty, and habitat, in our state?

Trees are also powerful stormwater pumps, and uptakers of nutrients that would otherwise run off into waterways, causing all sorts of trouble. Two benefits that SHOULD give trees high status among public-works departments as “natural solutions to expensive municipal problems.”

It’s painful to me that we even have to ask this, but I think learning the deeper “Why’s” is an essential piece of the puzzle when it comes to trying to salvage what’s left of our biosphere’s life-support system.

I’ll update you when I hear about the “why.” (A fellow activist is looking into it.) In the meantime you can check out the petition here. Please Help Us Save the Oak Trees on Rockledge Drive Rockledge FL.

If I had kids, I would almost certainly choose to unschool them. (I used to think I’d homeschool them, but that was before I heard about the concept of unschooling and realized it’s the approach that best fits my philosophy of learning and life.) Not that school can’t be wonderful; it often was for me since I had a natural tendency to be bookish and relatively compliant. But school can also be very limiting and constricting. And, over the years, it seems like the school systems have gotten more and more rigid and bureaucratic, as well as energy-consuming (both fossil and human).

I’ve written quite a bit about schooling alternatives over the past year. And this past week I ran across a couple of really good articles. Both articles pertain to Black families, but I suspect that they’ll strike a note among other people as well.

• “Why More and More Black Families Are Homeschooling Their Children” (Jessica Huseman, Atlantic.com; February 17, 2015). “African American parents are increasingly taking their kids’ education into their own hands—and in many cases, it’s to protect them from institutional racism and stereotyping. … Black families have become one of the fastest-growing demographics in homeschooling … And while white homeschooling families traditionally cite religious or moral disagreements with public schools in their decision to pull them out of traditional classroom settings, studies indicate black families are more likely to cite the culture of low expectations for African American students or dissatisfaction with how their children—especially boys—are treated in schools.”

• “Unschooling: The Educational Movement More Black Parents Are Joining” (Tomi Akitunde, matermea.com). “There’s another movement happening, often considered as being under the umbrella of homeschooling, that’s caught Black parents’ attention: unschooling. While homeschooling is defined as parent-led home-based education, unschooling (also known as self-directed learning) lets children direct their learning. Rather than following a set curriculum, unschoolers are led by their interests, and those interests inform how and what they learn—with parents and surrounding community members there to provide kids with the resources they need. One of the most visible Black unschoolers is Akilah S. Richards. Along with her husband Kris, the author, entrepreneur, and mother of two daughters—Marley (13) and Sage (11)—has been unschooling for six years, and are currently living in Atlanta. She shares her and other people of color’s experiences with Self-Directed Education on her podcast Fare of the Free Child, and runs a workshop called Raising Free People.”

• My earlier posts on homeschooling: Considering Homeschooling? Go For It! ; More Homeschool/Alt-School Inspiration ; A Year of Shutdown, and Homeschooling (guest post from Dr. Jenny Lloyd Strovas of Nature Matters Academy).

Economic competition is for losers!!!
If you ask me, the G7’s hatching of a new plan for “competing” with China (or any other country) is antiquated, crusty thinking.

Other than selling us megatons of cheap consumer goods (which we typically keep for six months or less before sending them to landfill), China is also building a massive belt of roads around the world — presumably to facilitate exploiting more forests and other natural resources. NONE of that is a competition we want to win.

In December 2020 at the UN climate change dialogues, UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated that making peace with nature will be the defining task of the 21st century. If there’s any competing we should be doing, it’s a healthy competition to find new ways for humans to coexist harmoniously and synergistically with all other life forms. After all, the air, water, trees, and all the other living things and natural materials that make up the biosphere constitute our life-support system. We trash it, we die.

Competing economically is a road to death. It’s eco-cide, and eco-cide is suicide. Let’s take the high road by ditching this mind-set of “competing” with other countries.

Time to update our mindset to the 21st century.

Here are some ways we could compete with China:

We could try to match their massive efforts to re-forest parts of their country.

We could also compete to see who can produce higher volumes of organically grown food, using “low-tech” old techniques.

What other ways of healthy competition can you think of?

Further Exploration:

• The Story of Stuff – referenced & annotated script by Annie Leonard. Some of you have probably seen her famously viral YouTube video by the same title. I first watched the video a few years back; that’s where I first heard the statistic that only about 1% of what we buy is still in our possession after 6 months; the rest we have sent on to landfill. The transcript is an immensely valuable asset, and I’m grateful to Ms. Leonard for making it available.

• Making Peace with Nature: Highlights from the UN Climate Change Dialogues 2020 (iisd.org). “‘Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century. It must be the top, top priority for everyone, everywhere.’ UN Secretary-General António Guterres. While the Climate Dialogues were in their second week, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres spoke about the state of the planet. ‘Apocalyptic fires and floods, cyclones and hurricanes are increasingly the new normal,’ he highlighted. ‘It is time to flick the ‘green switch.””

The days before the opening of the Dialogues were rife with media talk of COVID-19 vaccines but overcoming one crisis does not mean dismissing the other. As Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), gravely noted during the opening of the Dialogues, “There is no vaccine for the global climate emergency.” (The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) is “an award-winning independent think tank working to fulfill a bold commitment: to create a world where people and the planet thrive.”)

For anyone who missed my recent guest appearance on Dr. Jenny Lloyd Strovas’s show — she has now put the recording up on YouTube. Thanks Dr. Jenny, it was a pleasure chatting with you!

Also check out Dr. Jenny’s Facebook page/group, Setting Gifted Kids Up for Success Through Nature & STEM — with Dr. Jenny. She’s a treasure trove of ideas and resources on getting outdoors with your kids, and creating opportunities for the whole family to learn and be creative in Mother Nature’s vast homeschool.