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My email earlier today to an organization that puts on outstanding conferences and webinars. The organization recently sent out an email invitation to its upcoming “shape of our region’s future”-type webinar. Their use of the year 2070 in the event title prompted me to email them this:

I love all the work you guys are doing. That said, it feels shockingly optimistic to see the year “2070” used by a climate-aware organization like yours, as if it’s a given that we humans will still be around that far into the future!!

Do you really feel that optimistic? Or is the use of “2070” in your program mainly to attract the interest and buy-in from conventional organizations, planners, govt leaders etc?

Thanks for all you are doing, regardless.

Jenny Nazak (Daytona Beach Permaculture Guild; Daytona Beach Resilience Task Force)

I will let you know what I hear back from them, if anything.

I just heard back, very quick!

Jenny – My kids often ask my – why do you care? You won’t be around then. LOL. But they will be. We are trying to show that if Florida is to have a future we must start long-range planning now so used a 50-year time frame. But your point is well taken.

Thanks for your interest!

And I responded just now:

Thank YOU. I totally share your viewpoint. Same as you, I care A LOT about future generations. We owe it to them. My point was that I’m just not sure ANY humans will be around by 2070 at the rate we are going. And I worried that when people see 2070 in the title, they might have a false sense of security, like it’s OK to take things for granted and continue with business as usual.

But maybe if we all pull together, and with wise organizations like yours helping people wake up to the need for long-range planning, humans might just live to see that year. And maybe even be thriving, in a civilization that has repented the error of its ways and become compassionate and reconnected with nature.

Thank you so much for undertaking this work! I do look forward to your event! River-Friendly Planning, and human survival on a healthy planet into 2070 and beyond, is a great thing to aspire to.

When it comes to pest control, my practice of nonviolence has sometimes veered from my ideals. The lone garden-spider, ant, palmetto bug, cricket or other everyday critter who has gotten into my house, is routinely escorted outside, using the basic “humane bug-removal toolkit” that consists of one of those shiny junk-mail postcards and sometimes a jar.

One time, when my late sweet kitty Starshine (April 2002-March 2017) brought a live mouse into the apartment, I had to act quickly so I rolled her and the mouse up in the scatter rug they were standing on, and carried them both outside.

But, when it comes to potential infestations of cockroaches or termites, and other less “manageable” critters, I have sometimes resorted to poison or a shoe.

At such times, I always feel sadness and remorse, even while I feel relief at getting the situation “under control” before it becomes an actual infestation. So I am always seeking to expand my toolkit for nonviolently dealing with creatures. I searched and found some good articles. Hope you find them helpful!

• How To Get Rid of Pests and Bugs the Buddhist Way (tricycle.org). “In Buddhism there is a long held and integral tradition of caring for animals and all living creatures. They are regarded in Buddhist thought as sentient beings, different than humans in their intellectual ability but no less capable of feeling suffering, fearing death, and craving life. …” This article offers practical tips, plus helpful background reading on how Buddhists practice an attitude of non-violence toward creatures including those we call “pests.”

• Attending to Insects (Joela Brown; voices.uchicago.edu). “In the West, many of us would describe ourselves as animal-lovers. What we tend to mean by that, though, is that we like to engage only with certain animals — animals for which we have some affection, such as domestic dogs and cats, or ‘cute’ animals like koalas and dolphins, or interesting zoo animals like elephants and sloths. We tend to permit non- humans into our lives and spaces only if they please us, entertain us, love us, or at the very least do not frighten or annoy us. …”

• How Nonviolent Religions Handle Bedbugs (medium.com). “Practically speaking, insects and other vermin are harmful. The mosquito may be the world’s most dangerous animal — it kills far and away more humans than any other creature (as evidenced by the current outbreaks of dengue fever and the Zika virus). Flies and roaches can also spread disease. Bedbugs are lately on the rise. With all that in mind, here’s a look at how spiritual-minded folks have approached the vermin problem …”

Yesterday as I steered my bicycle in to the shopping plaza where the driver’s license office is (I needed to get my driver’s license updated), I beheld the treeless forlorn parking lot and the charmless architecture of the mall buildings. And a thought struck me: that our USAmerican culture is an experiment in what happens when a whole country decides that beauty and practicality don’t mix, and that the latter must always take precedence.

Voilà! We get utterly desolate landscapes that often, adding insult to injury, end up being impractical as well as ugly! (The design of the place made it really hard to see what stores were in there. And, the parking lot with its many different car-paths perpendicular to one another looked like a massive fender-bender festival waiting to happen.)

I will nonetheless be a regular visitor to this shopping mall from now on, because I found this utterly charming and adorable little Russian food shop inside the mall next to the license office. The proprietors have managed to create great beauty amid a desolate setting!

Speaking of beauty and the built environment …

My friend’s son is a carpenter in Japan. Here’s a rammed-earth construction project he is/was working on.

I have done a teeny bit of natural building (helping on other people’s projects), and one thing that always moves me is the beauty of working with quiet hand-tools and in close connection with other people. The reverence for materials & process, and for every set of hands.

What if every building had to be built by hand with non-fossil-powered tools? How different would our buildings look and feel — how much more human-scaled and beautiful?

How much quieter and less jarring would the whole world and rhythm of our days feel? I have come to feel that the default settings of “mainstream business-as-usual” USA have been cheating ourselves of great beauty and meaning, while at the same time trashing the planet. We all deserve better, don’t you think?

But to get it, we have to believe it’s possible. And one way to start is by seeing the beauty of the built environment in other parts of the world. All of our ancestors came from places where beauty and sustainability and integrity went hand-in-hand with function.

On the subject of scale … In the Natural Building module of a 6-month permaculture-based course called Earth-Based Vocations that I took in New Mexico back in 2006 (unfortunately the program is no longer in existence), I joked that we learned the most important principle of natural building as soon as we picked up a shovel or pushed a wheelbarrel: BUILD AS SMALL AS POSSIBLE! How many big ugly buildings could we avoid if we had to build them all by hand?

The vine has pretty, morning-glory-like flowers, but it is not native to here, and it climbs and grows everywhere. Literally this vine would cover every other plant, tree, and bush if I would let it.

I’m sure many gardeners hate this vine. But, in permaculture design class, we learn that everything serves a function in the ecosystem, and we can find uses for it. In keeping with that principle, I just cut the vine back rather than try to eradicate it. I use the cut foliage as free “chop and drop” mulch. Also, during the most punishingly hot time of year, I will often let the vine grow over most everything, as I figure it provides some shade to the soil and to roots of other plants.

The vine dies back in winter, doesn’t like even our mild winters.

One characteristic of this vine is that its stems get tough, ropy, almost woody. Maybe in some other times and places they have been used for rope — whether braided or single-strand. I thought of that the other day as I was cussing out some dried tangled strands of the vine that were intertwined with a nice pile of twigs and leaves that I was trying to grab from a neighbor’s curbside discard pile in order to add to my mulch pile.

It’s always good to remind myself that everything has its own inherent value. I can choose to remember that, or only choose to focus on the “pesky” characteristics of a thing.

Maybe I should do some weaving or rope-making experiments!

Speaking of natural rope, my friend Barbara, who is a longtime resident of Japan (maybe even a citizen), does a lot of writing and translation about traditional Japanese building methods, which rely entirely on locally grown wood, vines, and other materials. Thatched roofing and so on. Her Facebook posts are lovely. Here’s an excerpt from a recent one:

By now the old roof had been completely removed and the thatchers were repairing the roof frame. In addition to the rice-straw rope that had been used as binding on all the sites I’d visited previously, they were using another type of binding called “neso.”

“Neso” is obtained from “mansaku,” a kind of hazel that grows in the mountains of Gokayama. This should be used immediately after harvesting, while it is still green, but here they were forced to use branches that had been cut in November and had dried too much. Before using, the branches were soaked in water and then pounded to make them somewhat pliant. Even at best, this material is difficult to handle, but once the knot dries it becomes extremely hard and strong.

Barbara’s post is set to Public, and you can go here to read the full text and see photos.

President Biden is setting out to create a Civilian Climate Corps, which would be a current-day counterpart to the Civilian Conservation Corps.

“Building on Biden’s oft-repeated comment that when he thinks of climate change, he thinks of jobs … the $10 billion program would address both priorities as young adults find work installing solar panels, planting trees, digging irrigation ditches and boosting outdoor recreation.

“‘We must seize this opportunity to build a big, bold pathway to critical careers, for a diverse generation of Americans ready to take on this existential crisis that we face,’ said Ali Zaidi, deputy White House climate adviser. …

“The effort comes as the White House and many Democrats are intensifying their focus on climate change after a series of devastating storms recently battered parts of the nation.”

I hope this idea comes to fruition. It would provide a lot of people with useful work and a roof over their heads while addressing climate change.

Today when I was grabbing a cup of coffee at my local minimart on the way down to the beach to watch the sunrise, I noticed that an extra-spicy snack food billed as the “One Chip Challenge” had been given a new, bright-yellow warning sign, enjoining store employees to educate themselves and customers on “the intensity of this product.”

I commented on it with a laugh to the morning guy who works there, and he offered to let me try the product. “No thanks!” I replied with a laugh.

I didn’t say this but I felt it: “I don’t need to buy extra-spicy challenges; they are all around us.”

And I pictured myself on a trail with a shovel, working for the Climate Conservation Corps or equivalent. Yep, we have plenty of spicy challenges and, despite being of a life-or-death nature, they might even be fun, and bring people together. And offer people a form of housing security, and community. Not just young people, but older people who still have something to give; don’t want to fade away and stop being useful.

“When we go slower, we are more patient and when we are more patient we have a choice in how we respond.” — Eknath Easwaran

A friend posted this quote on social media and it expresses something that’s been a major theme of my life lately.

At first I thought that slowing down is a hallmark of patience; that a person has to first become patient in order to slow down. And no doubt it’s true that constitutionally patient people might find it naturally easier to slow down than the rest of us do.

But I’ve realized that it very much works the other way too. Just as the quote says. I have found that I can become more patient by deliberately slowing down. Be it making coffee or doing laundry or writing a blog post or whatever. It works.

And the effects are very pleasant. So nowadays when something or someone seems to be trying to get me to speed up, I’m not so easily led in that direction.

Deliberate slowing down is one of the keys to finding a way of life that’s sustainable; that runs by nature’s rhythms.

This weekend I have been on a huge adventure — without ever leaving town!!! I have always loved motorcycles, and loved being a passenger, but had never driven one myself. Now I have learned and practiced the basics in a 2-day FDOT-approved course. It was definitely an adventure. All five of us in the class passed our written test and checkout exercises, and are now allowed to have the motorcycle endorsement added to our driver’s licenses.

There is a lot to motorcycle riding. From what I experienced, piloting a motorcycle has some things in common with riding a bicycle, and other things in common with driving a stickshift car. And still other things in common with neither one of those!!

Besides caring about cost and eco-footprint, I am extremely safety-minded when it comes to riding any kind of vehicle on the road. Taking this class — where the riding area was a large empty parking lot marked with cones and lines to simulate lanes, etc. — was a safe way to satisfy my curiosity about motorcycle riding.

I may purchase a motorcycle one day, but even if I never do, this was a wonderful experience and I’m glad I allowed myself to do it.

General note: Taking a class is a relatively low-cost, low-footprint way to explore just about anything you think you might be interested in!

So why am I bringing up my motorcycle class here on this blog? As an example of the idea that living a low-footprint life doesn’t have to involve renouncing all material pleasures and just sitting at home in a sparely furnished house. You can do that if you want, but you don’t have to.

Many people I talk with seem to equate low-footprint living with “minimalism”: having hardly any material possessions; relinquishing all but the strictly necessary. But that isn’t so.

Low-footprint is paring down things that add unnecessary cost (environmental, financial, or monetary) to our lives without adding value. A two-day motorcycle course added great value to my life, for minimal cost and probably only about a gallon of gasoline.

If your hobby is (for example) flying planes on a regular basis, you’re obviously going to be consuming more fuel, but you can still find ways to fit that into an overall low-footprint lifestyle.

The ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes was said to have lived in a large urn in order to reduce his overhead cost of housing. He had few possessions, one of which was a drinking cup. But one day, after he saw a boy drinking water out of his cupped hands, Diogenes threw away his cup.

That’s all well and good, but we don’t have to live like Diogenes in order to have a low footprint.

Don’t confuse low-footprint living with minimalism. Unless you are an aspiring minimalist, this is likely to make you feel very deprived, as well as inhibiting you from engaging in fulfilling hobbies that happen to require stuff (be it yarn, paint, wood, fishing gear, or what have you).

Also, I could be wrong but minimalist furniture doesn’t look very comfortable.

On my Twitter profile, I refer to myself as an “ornate minimalist.” I’m super picky about what stuff I choose to keep around. I wash my clothes by hand in a tub of rainwater, but don’t try to take away my massive bead collection!