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Starting a list of suggestions, in response to things I’ve seen in my community with nonprofits, citizen advisory boards, neighborhood association groups, grassroots organizations, and others.

• If no one wants to do it, maybe it doesn’t need to be done. Look into streamlining your processes and procedures. Eliminate unnecessary work.

• A whole separate category of unnecessary work is in-person meetings. Of all the real silver linings of the pandemic, the popularization of Zoom and other online platforms is high on the list. Keep using the vast array of freely available technology for meeting virtually (why would we stop, now that the gate has been opened!); save people including yourself time, money, and effort (while reducing carbon footprint).

• Maybe the work you’re asking volunteers to do is work that needs to be compensated in some way.

• Compensation can be money (or a gift card or similar), but think of compensation in wider terms as well. If someone has a stake in your organization or issue, they are in a sense getting paid to volunteer. Example: business bigwigs happy to serve on an advisory board related to downtown development. By serving on the board they are protecting and advancing their financial interests. Another example: If I volunteer to work a shift at the plant sale of our local native plant society, I’m getting “paid” because the work they are doing is supporting my occupation as a sustainability educator and permaculture-landscaping consultant. Also, it’s inherently delightful to be outdoors surrounded by beautiful plants.

• Which brings me to another point: If you’re having trouble attracting volunteers, add elements of fun and beauty to the work.

• Reach wider; don’t just keep tapping the “usual suspects” you know off the top of your head. “Board fatigue” is real.

• If you’re trying to get people to do work you’re not willing to do yourself, ask yourself why that is. Maybe this part of the work needs to be cut, streamlined, re-thought. For instance, if no one is willing to take detailed notes of a meeting, maybe you don’t need notes.

• As a rule, if you are starting an organization, don’t ask other people to do work you’re not willing to do yourself. It’s your organization; create it in the shape you want from the start. This is a version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

• For nonprofits: If compliance with your nonprofit status requires more labor than you are able to find volunteers for, maybe you don’t need to be a nonprofit.

• If you yourself are getting paid (or seeking to get paid), but are looking to volunteers to support your organization, take a good long hard think about that.

• Citizens’ advisory boards: Don’t ask people to show up and give of their time if their ideas aren’t going to be listened to or taken seriously. These days it’s very easy for people to get their ideas out there via email, social media, etc., and a lot of government officials are making an effort to be more accessible. If you’re asking people to serve on an advisory board, they need some assurance that they will have a bigger impact by serving on this board than by simply communicating from the comfort of their own home, on their own time.

• But really my big tip is always, When in doubt, cut it out! Eliminate excess labor; convoluted processes; meetings about meetings; etc. Organizations that perennially have trouble attracting volunteers (which unfortunately is many volunteer-based organizations I know) are unsustainable. They suck resources and energy. If you’re having trouble attracting volunteers, stop fighting against the current, and instead look for the root cause of the difficulty.

A lot of people these days are talking about how they dream of living in a sustainable off-grid community. Often their comments take on a wistful tone, as if what they’re looking for is only possible in some other place and some far-off time.

My advice if you want to live in a sustainable off-grid community: Start now, where you are. Reduce your dependence on centralized water, electricity, gas, and other “grid” systems. You can live an essentially off-grid life even while connected to the grid.

I offer tips throughout my book and this blog for constructively disengaging from dependence on large centralized systems. Note, if you live in a city you’ll still most likely need to maintain an account with the power company, city water/sewer service, and so on. Even so, you can save yourself a lot of money by minimizing your need for electricity and city water and all that. I live in a conventional, fully on-grid house, but have reduced my electricity use to less than 5 percent of the average USA household’s! My electric bill when I’m here by myself is only about $11; even with housemates it’s generally under $20.

But the real prize, beyond money savings, is the peace of mind that comes from being able to rely on natural resources readily at hand (sunlight, rainwater, wind, microbes) rather than being vulnerable to failures of large centralized infrastructure.

Now, there’s one grid you don’t want to try to go “off” of, and that’s the social grid. Unless you really want to live all alone out in the woods and grow or forage or kill all your own food and make your own shoes and never deal with another person again, you’re going to need to build and maintain some kind of ties with your neighbors. You don’t have to be best buddies but you do need to find ways to get along and work together; we all do.

Social cooperation is the most important element of building a sustainable community. Everything else follows from that. Growing food, sharing tools, sharing labor, avoiding unnecessary duplication of effort.

If your dream is to live in an off-grid community, your dream starts now, at home, right where you live. Even if you rent rather than own; even if you don’t have a roof over your head right now.

Off-grid living starts with unplugging your dependency on something. Pick something. Start where you want, and expand from there.

Some ideas:

• Cancel a subscription (streaming service, etc.) that’s expensive, especially if you’re not using it.

• Try doing without an appliance you’ve always used, such as a clothes-dryer or dishwasher.

• Start collecting rainwater, even if it’s just a bucket under your roof-line.

• Learn how to make (or mend) something you’ve been relying on large faraway corporations to supply you with.

• Get a little solar charger as an emergency backup to charge your cellphone and laptop.

• If you’re not already growing or foraging at least a bit of your own food, start today. If you’re already growing or foraging some, take steps today to expand the amount or variety.

• If you love some food or drink that comes from far away, requires a lot of processing, etc., see if you can find a local substitute. Extra bonus points if you learn how to grow or make a substitute yourself! (Some local dried fruit, a tea made from a plant native to your area, etc.).

And finally, while disengaging from excess dependence on physical grids, boost your local social grid. If you haven’t done so already, go meet your neighbors, at least your immediately adjacent ones. You could also make a post on NextDoor (or another online channel such as your neighborhood watch’s email list or Facebook page) asking if anyone else shares your interest in building sustainable community.

If you don’t get any responses to that, try making a post offering to share something. Extra seeds are always popular, as are plants. I’ve met a lot of neighbors by offering seeds and plants via NextDoor.

Also: Buy from local growers and other local businesses as much as you can. Buying local is where the social grid and the physical grid intersect in a most abundant and beneficial way.

And a final note: Living off-grid isn’t about being self-sufficient and independent, not needing anyone. Rather, it’s about being self-reliant, and being inter-dependent with neighbors and other local people who genuinely have a stake in your physical and social and economic wellbeing. And, to the greatest extent possible, eliminating dependency on faraway, impersonal and/or centralized entities who don’t have any vested interest in any aspect of you other than your wallet.

Likeminded people are out there. We saw that just now when someone in a gardening group asked if anyone knew of any off-grid sustainable communities where people are growing food, etc. There are many, many of us doing this, as evidenced by the many people who responded to just that thread. The only difference between a lone person and a community, is that the lone person reached out and found their people. You can’t judge a book by its cover and you can’t judge a person by their clothing or their front yard. Until you take the time to talk with a person, you just never know who might be your people! And oftentimes they are much closer at hand than you ever imagined.

Further Exploration:

• Grow Permaculture / Our Permaculture Farm (727-495-6145; located in Brooksville, FL) offers tele-consults to people interested in forming intentional community. The following is from my friend and colleague Koreen Brennan, one of the resident-principals of the farm. (She was responding to a question from someone in one of the gardening groups, who asked, “I have a dream of a community dedicated to growing food, solar power and sustainable living in Florida. Does this exist?” I thought her response might be helpful to some of you too, so I’m sharing it here.) “There is some misinfo in this thread that could be discouraging. Living in these communities can be heaven, it’s truly a smart way to go and there are many ways to do it. In most of Florida, you can be strictly on solar and battery power, but need to also have a grid hookup. You can catch all the rainwater you want in most places in FL and some counties will even give you rain barrels and teach you how to do it. There are a number of intentional communities in Florida, in various stages of existence. One place some are listed is ic.org. There are all different kinds of these. There are people creating them in their neighborhoods. We are doing that in Brooksville with our permaculture farm (growpermaculture.com). Don’t let anybody discourage you if you want to start a community or join one! It’s a really wonderful way to live, especially if you know a few things about how to avoid the pitfalls. We do counseling for existing or forming communities to avoid common pitfalls. There are some great books out there on the topic too, and other materials. Don’t let anybody discourage you, if you want to do this! The most successful ones are ones where the people forming it are dedicated to being persistent and are willing to get educated on the process and their options.”

• Online Permaculture Design Certificate Course from Grow Permaculture/Our Permaculture Farm: This just in!! Course starts May 15; visit the link for details, and register now to secure your space. At this time, the ONLY courses and events I am endorsing are either online; or outdoors AND within walking or cycling distance of where you live. This is GP/OPF’s first-ever online PDC, and is a golden opportunity for people anywhere to study and practice the permaculture design principles with some highly experienced and successful practitioners.

It struck me the other day that taming one’s mind is a service to the planet. A mind that’s calmed and collected (by steady use of mind-taming tools) is also a really nice place to hang out and operate from.

I may have more to say about this, but it’ll wait til another time. I am getting ready to have very limited-to-no internet access til late tonight.

(Bike Week is in town all week, and, similar to other events such as the NASCAR races that attract lots of visitors (yes even with pandemic restrictions), internet access — at least for those of us who use our cellphones as our internet node — gets squeezed down to virtually nil from about 10am til after midnight, as many thousands of extra people are using the cellular data infrastructure.

This used to irk me when I was trying to get my online work such as writing and social-media posting done, but I’ve gotten better at working around it. Moreover, in keeping with the permaculture design principle of “obtaining a yield” / “turn problems into assets,” I actually take the constraint as a fabulous opportunity to focus on non-internet-related stuff all day. Painting, stitching, taking care of plants and humans and other fellow residents.)

Further Exploration:

• To watch some great video talks about taming the mind, visit the Avatar video page of the Avatar(R) Course website. All of Harry’s talks are superb. For starters I particularly recommend “Life Challenges” and “Impressions.” (And, if you’re in more of a mood to read, you can explore elsewhere on the website where a wealth of articles and exercises await.)

A thought-provoking post in one of the permaculture groups I belong to:

Widespread home ownership has been promoted in the United States since World War II as a way to get people invested in capitalism instead of pursuing more cooperative livelihoods. William Levitt, one of the original architects of suburbia, famously said “No man who owns his own house and lot can be a communist. He has too much to do.”

I’ve always thought that permaculture’s focus on the private domains of homeowners undermines the collectivism needed to make the permaculture principles transformative on a social scale. Is focusing on homeowners an attempt to turn a problem into a solution, and if so, how is that supposed to work? (Post by Dave Meester in the Facebook group Permaculture Money, Livelihoods, and Society via Transformative Adventures).

My response:

Great points here!!! My two cents:

It is a dilemma. Renters are dependent on landlords – can be very unstable arrangement especially nowadays more and more.

Mortgaged homeowners pay hefty premiums to banks and insurance companies. And pay property tax to govt. (Renters too pay that tax, just indirectly.)

Homeowners who own their home free-and-clear have lower overhead at least in terms of mortgage interest. Still have to pay property tax which is almost like “rent” to the govt.

Living alone or with only one other person in a house is exhausting and also can foster selfishness, insularity; diverts too much of the occupants’ energy away from community, civic, humanitarian concerns IMO.

On my blog I have often talked about what I see as best option: house owned free and clear in a part of the country where you can tolerate the weather and the ambient social climate. Ideally go in with family, or friends, or people whose sense of mission at least somewhat overlaps with yours.

Lower overhead gives occupants more freedom to pursue right livelihood; become contributing members of the surrounding community; help with the collective re-skilling and social-fabric-rebuilding that may offer our best hope of making a positive turnaround.

Further Reading:

• Radical Vitalism blog (Dave Meester): Herbalism. Deep Ecology. Reconnection Medicine. Really good stuff – Recent posts include “Why This Is No Time for Cynicism”; “You Are Nature: Working with the Elements for Change”; and “Two Visions for the Future of Life on Earth.”

More stitching adventures …

This past week I added an external pocket to an old, already-hacked sweater in a most eccentric yet functional way. It struck me that throughout the ages, different fashions of clothing have come to be defined socially as “normal” and stylish. But, viewed through an objective eye, some of the most wildly popular fashions over the years would look no less weird than my bizarre little cellphone pocket that I stitched onto this sweater in eccentric hangy-downy fashion.

You know what? THE VERY MOMENT i finished stitching the pocket on and donned the sweater, I immediately found the cellphone pocket incredibly convenient and helpful. Like, Where have you BEEN all my life?! I always take that as a good sign.

Before, I was keeping my phone in the zippered hip-pouch I wear. But it took time & energy to fish it out of the tight confines of the zippered pouch when needed, and jam it back in there (around my credit-card case and my pen and my mini notebook and my reusable spoon and my cloth napkin and other stuff that lives in the hip pouch) when not needed.

Taking the phone out of my new external pocket, and putting in back in, takes almost zero time and energy.

(To see the photos I refer to below, check out the corresponding post on my DEEP GREEN page on Facebook.)

First photo shows aqua-colored pocket (cut out of a worn-out pair of shorts) stitched onto the magenta sweater. Second & third photos show my trusty grey hoodie layered over that because it was a chilly morning.

Also visible in the photo my green zippered hip-pouch, with lightweight to-go coffee cup attached by a ring. I also always have a mask attached to my hip-pouch.

Besides the pocket, I also stitched on a button closure (cut out of the same aqua pair of shorts) as a closure, because the zipper corroded and became unusable. (Our coastal climate can be rough on certain metal zippers.)

Subsequent photos show details of my earlier “hacks” to the magenta sweater. It had been a plain pullover sweater; I cut it down the front and installed a (short) zipper, plus a no-purpose-except-decorative tag in the back. (I was working in a leather repair shop at the time and had access to an industrial sewing machine.)

There was an article someone shared, about keeping clothes around and repairing them rather than throwing them away. The writer mentioned that if you keep something in your cloth storage or craft stash or whatever for awhile, sometimes you forget about it — and when you rediscover it, it’s like finding a new item in a shop; like shopping in your own home! (all words my re-phrasing based on imperfect recollection; not the writer’s own).

When I was living in Tokyo during the 1990s, I met some lovely Norwegian folks also living and working there, who told me that in their country, a lot of everyday people sewed clothing of their own design. I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

Around the age of 12, I wanted to be a fashion designer “when I grew up.” I realized later that I’m happy to design fashions even just for myself!

Thank you to my friends/colleagues in Transformative Adventures who have recently sparked discussions about clothing, either by posting their own experiences or by sharing wonderful articles or both!

Getting busy with needle and thread for the first time in a while has helped me unglue my brain which had been stuck in a mode of only being focused on scalped lawns, badly pruned trees, and other things around me that I see as wrongs that I need to address. When I get into a more centered and creative mode, I am better at finding leverage points for addressing the problems around me. Sewing is one thing that helps me do that.

Plus, I just enjoy life more. And even with all the problems in the world, life deserves to be enjoyed.

What about you — do you design things for yourself? Clothes, tools, furniture, work processes, ……? I would love to hear about it and also about anything that helps you get unstuck and into a more creative flow.

A few years back, I stumbled on a great little booklet, “Tyranny of the Urgent” by Charles E. Hummel. “Tyranny of the Urgent” … isn’t that a great phrase?

In life, there is the urgent and there is the important. They don’t necessarily overlap. Most people are so used to being ruled by the tyranny of the urgent, that a person who puts the important first can be perceived as a bit eccentric if not downright crazy.

Another phrase for putting the important first is LIVING DELIBERATELY. Putting the urgent first all the time is defensive living. I liken defensive living to standing on a melting ice-floe and trying to make oneself smaller and smaller to adjust to the shrinking space. No way to live!

Further Reading:

• Living Deliberately (book by Harry Palmer, author of The Avatar (R) Course materials). Available in print form, or immediate download as PDF. “Many people are trapped in mind-numbing routines. Their lives carom through a changing landscape of directions, rules, wins, and losses. THEN, occasionally, someone wakes up and realizes, ‘Hey, I am alive.’ This is an extraordinary moment. When it is examined, a seeker is born …”

• Review of Charles Hummel’s Tyranny of the Urgent (Tsh Oxenreider, theartofsimple.net): “In the 1960s, Charles Hummel published a little booklet called Tyranny of the Urgent, and it quickly became a business classic. In it, Hummel argues that there is a regular tension between things that are urgent and things that are important—and far too often, the urgent wins. …”

In junior high and high school, I led a double life. Early on I had been labeled book-smart and treated accordingly, placed in the “advanced classes” with all sorts of passes and privileges. I did truly enjoy some academic subjects, namely English and foreign languages. But I felt a little embarrassed about that, as those weren’t considered “cool” subjects.

The people I idolized — OK, let’s be honest, the boys I idolized, because for the most part back then I didn’t really idolize anyone of my own sex — were all hardcore intellectual in what I considered the “hard” subjects. The ones that required a person to learn and retain a lot of facts or formulas. Math, sciences, history.

But I had an even deeper secret. Even more than English and foreign languages, my real favorite subjects were art, and … Home Ec. My love for these subjects was tempered by the shame I felt at loving them. They were for “less smart people,” according to beliefs I had absorbed from the world around me.

My mother was a fulltime homemaker. She worked outside the home at times but mainly stayed home to raise us. Back then I didn’t really respect “homemaker” as an occupation, though I didn’t understand why at the time. I didn’t respect homemaker for the same reason I didn’t respect myself for Home Ec being my favorite subject — though I didn’t understand any of that at the time.

I loved sewing. One skirt I made in seventh-grade Home Ec class stayed in my wardrobe til my late 20s.

Prone to depression and anxiety from the time I was small, I experienced a vacation from my troubled mind by working with my hands. Even much later, after I got help and learned how to operate my mind deliberately, I never lost my love of hand-work. To this day (even though I’ve learned tools for navigating my emotions and harnessing them for the good, and use those tools every day), when my mind starts to get to me I still experience a huge boost in mental wellbeing the minute I pick up a needle and thread, or a paintbrush.

I went to college, got on the mainstream white-collar career track, stayed on it for the first decade or so of my working life.

It wasn’t until 2012, when I spent a few months living and working on a farm in Texas, that I got a taste of doing home ec fulltime. My main duties consisted of cooking, managing flows, and keeping an eye on things, and helping to promote my friends’ farm. I felt like every bit of knowledge I had, every cell of my body and brain, was relevant and needed. At that time I realized why my Mom had chosen to be a homemaker. And I came to understand and respect why Home Ec had been my favorite subject. And art — the two are intertwined for me.

And now I come across this brilliant article shared by a fellow permie in the Transformative Adventures group. I had somehow never heard of Federica or the movement to pay women for domestic labor.

Her insights about labor and pesonal fulfillment and societal wellbeing strike a deep chord in me.

Further Reading:

• The Lockdown Showed How the Economy Exploits Women. She Already Knew. (Article about Silvia Federici and the idea that domestic work is unwaged labor; by Jordan Kisner in New York Times, Feb 17, 2021): “Federici is a longtime advocate of the idea that domestic work is unwaged labor and was a founder of the Wages for Housework movement in the early 1970s. It is a form of gendered economic oppression, she argues, and an exploitation upon which all of capitalism rests. … These ideas weren’t exactly obscure before the pandemic. But mainstream feminism — not to mention mainstream economics or politics — has mostly ignored domestic labor. Instead, it has measured women’s empowerment by their presence and influence in the workplace, which is attained by outsourcing housework and child care to less economically advantaged women for a low wage. Even so, women remain mired in housework. It’s common now to hear the term “the second shift” (coined in 1989 by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild), which describes how the work of maintaining a home and caring for children still falls disproportionately to women, even if they have full-time jobs and pay for help. What’s more, people who are paid to do domestic labor or care work (like elder care or house cleaning) are, as a group, badly compensated and denied workplace protections or benefits. These jobs are held mostly by women of color and immigrants. … ‘You cannot make good policy if the single largest sector of your nation’s economy is not visible … You can’t presume to know where the needs are.’ … How might this year have looked different had the work we do to care for one another, ourselves and the world around us been valued at a premium?”

• The Weaving Women of the Bauhaus Have Inspired Generations of Textile Artists (Alexxa Gotthardt; in Artsy.net): Relegated by sexism to the fiber arts department, these women artists took their craft to phenomenal heights, and wove themselves a supportive community as well. “Despite the limitations imposed on them, artists like Gunta Stölzl, Anni Albers, and Marli Ehrman made the weaving workshop not only the Bauhaus’s most commercially successful sector, but also one of its most collaborative and audaciously experimental.”

What a lovely & informative article – thank you Denise Miller for sharing!