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A permaculture friend Facebook-posted the question: How many of you are willing to sacrifice your lives, your kids’ lives, grandkids’ lives, for the economy?

I would add to that question, And how many of you are willing to continue to sacrifice the Earth’s ecosystems, and the wellbeing of indigenous communities and marginalized populations, for “the economy”?

And here’s the answer I gave:

Absolutely NO. And in fact, it is not necessary to sacrifice the economy to safeguard our health. Contrary to popular belief, “the economy” is not Wall Street or big corporations. The economy is everyday people trading goods and services to meet each other’s needs.

Might it require sacrifice? Might those of us who can afford to do so, want to cut unnecessary expenses and instead channel our money & energy to helping out neighbors and family members who are less well off? And do extra legwork to support local farmers, local businesses? Yes, and it’s a sacrifice I’m happy to make, because that is the REAL economy.

And rather than being at odds with public health and wellness (as the “big economy” has often been shown to be), the REAL economy is 100% aligned with public health and wellness. We can use our innate human creativity to help one another develop new, more localized livelihoods; ones that are less dependent on government and big corporations. And we will all be better off.

As a kid, I mainly dreamed of becoming a writer, an artist, a psychologist, and a fashion designer when I grew up. I never dreamed I would take on what I would come to consider as the ultimate marketing job. But in fact, that is what being a self-appointed sustainability educator is to me: Persuading people that it’s in their best interest to take care of the planet.

In college, I took marketing classes with a vague notion of “taking something practical” (i.e. to balance out my “impractical” major in English literature). I never imagined I would come to consider marketing an essential skill for persuading people to care for the environment.

Marketing is telling someone a story in order to motivate them to change their behavior in some direction you consider positive. Sometimes the story includes factual information, but just as often it is a purely subjective or emotional appeal. In social movements, the “positive direction” is presumably some beneficial shift on the planet. People stop using insecticides, stop buying snacks that contain palm oil, that kind of thing. In a corporation, “positive” might just mean “Consumers start buying our product so we can get paid.” 

Where the environmental movement has gone wrong in the past, in my opinion, is by bombarding people (developers, city commissioners, presidents, everyday citizens) with scientific information, and expecting that information to make a shift in people’s behavior, and being utterly baffled when it did not. Rather than take a page from scientists’ books (or in addition to doing that), we might do better to take a page from marketing textbooks!

Growing up in the 1960s and 70s, I observed how odors of cooking in a house came to be considered as a sign of a slovenly hostess. “Fried fish again for dinner last night, Ruthie?” squawked the bitchy neighbor in an air-freshener commercial. Or how about those “Ring Around the Collar” commercials. Ugh!

The multi-billion-dollar lawn-maintenance industry was sparked by landscaping companies that applied chemicals to grass to make it super green. The people in the neighboring house felt ashamed that their grass didn’t look as green (or as perfectly clipped) as that other guy’s, and so the demand for chemically based lawn services skyrocketed. An artificially green, rigidly manicured lawn has become a signifier of good neighborliness, prosperity, and overall decent citizenry.

One of the most startling and (to me) offensive marketing feats I can think of, is the “personal hygiene” industry’s success in conveying to women that their vagina “smells”, and/or is “dirty,” and needs to be disinfected with pine-scented or floral-scented chemicals in order to make her desirable sexually or even a halfway decent human being. I mean, who would buy this?? But lots of people do. Shame is a powerful driver. Just tap into someone’s shame, combined with their desire to be sexually attractive, and watch what happens. This has been going on for decades at least. I’ve seen magazine ads from the 1920s, warning women not to get complacent about holding onto their husbands’ affection, and offering some scented chemical liquid as insurance. 

Not long ago I read an article about a woman who developed a product that creates a film over the water in your toilet, so the smell of your poo is covered up. This product has made millions of dollars so far. Millions! Poo-Pourri, a spray made from essential oils that traps unpleasant odors below the surface of the toilet water, has sold 60 million bottles since it came out in 2007 (See “Suzy Batiz’s Empire of Odor” in The New Yorker.) How much easier and less expensive could life be if we humans couldn’t be so readily shamed about the fact that our poop, like everyone else’s, stinks!?

But how about if we were to use marketing for the good? So, instead of harnessing people’s shame and fear to hawk unnecessary and sometimes damaging products, how might we leverage human emotion to motivate people to take better care of Mother Earth?

Here are some things I’ve typically seen used as marketing points for products. Buy our product, and you’ll get this desirable attribute:

Cuteness

Sex appeal

Hipness, being up on things, not being behind the times

Being in the know

Freedom 

Convenience

Comfort

Relaxation

Prospect of being famous, a hero

Pondering this list, I thought of a couple of eco ads:

1) Two young beautiful surfers, one male and one female, are walking along the beach together, carrying their boards. Surfer Dude is trying to impress the girl, and she looks interested, until he offers her a bottle of bottled water. She stops dead in her tracks, and says, “Wait. You’re a surfer, but you drink bottled water?” Camera pans across the sand, showing it littered with plastic bottles. Her expression turns cold, and Surfer Dude stands there looking foolish.

2) Two women are standing next to each other in the kitchen of one of the women. The guest sniffs the air and looks at the hostess, says “Ewww, what’s that smell?” The hostess opens the cabinet, sees that the trash is the source of the odor, looks embarrassed. The friend says, with shocked look, “Um … Do you not compost your food scraps? Do you just throw them in the trash? No wonder your trash stinks! Hold on honey, I can fix that for you in a jiffy!”

Now, an obvious weakness of both these ads is that they don’t sell any product; they just shame someone for a non-eco-friendly practice. But the bottled water shaming commercial could be used to sell reusable steel water bottles, or filters. Or a water dispenser where you can fill up your reusable bottle. And the composting commercial could be used to sell a vermicompost bin, or composting classes! I envision both ads having a sort of retro flavor like those hygiene-shaming commercials of yore. 

What other eco commercials can you think of? Put on your marketing hat! It might be fun to have a YouTube channel dedicated to mock eco commercials. 

The return to “normalcy” (lifting of the Coronavirus shutdowns) is coming sooner or later. And while I don’t want to be a spoilsport, I do think we need to be heads-up about a potential danger of that return to normalcy. That danger is: forgetting the good that has come out of the shutdown, and letting the good slip through our fingers as we get back on the brutal high-speed treadmill that our modern industrialized society defines as normal.

This article, titled “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting,” by Julio Vincent Gambuto on medium.com, sums up my feelings to a T. (The following is just an excerpt; I urge you to go read the entire article — it is so important, in my opinion, that I’m not loading you up with any other links in this post):

Pretty soon, as the country begins to figure out how we “open back up” and move forward, very powerful forces will try to convince us all to get back to normal. (That never happened. What are you talking about?) Billions of dollars will be spent in advertising, messaging, and television and media content to make you feel comfortable again. It will come in the traditional forms — a billboard here, a hundred commercials there — and in new-media forms; a 2020–2021 generation of memes to remind you that what you want again is normalcy. In truth, you want the feeling of normalcy, and we all want it. We want desperately to feel good again, to get back to the routines of life, to not lie in bed at night wondering how we’re going to afford our rent and bills, to not wake to an endless scroll of human tragedy on our phones, to have a cup of perfectly brewed coffee, and simply leave the house for work. The need for comfort will be real, and it will be strong. And every brand in America will come to your rescue, dear consumer, to help take away that darkness and get life back to the way it was before the crisis. I urge you to be well aware of what is coming. …

…From one citizen to another, I beg of you: Take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud.

On this blog, I’ve been writing a lot lately about “silver linings” of the slowdown, and how it’s in our interest to consciously decide what we want to keep even after things go back to “normal.” Clearer rivers; a return of wildlife; a resurgence of food-gardening; hearing more birdsong; and getting to meet more of our neighbors (from a social distance while out walking the dog or exercising); devising creative ways to make a living are examples of the kind of thing I’m referring to.

After seeing the above-linked article about the Ganga River getting clear (and supposedly clean enough to drink), one friend commented that she hopes the powers-that-be take this kind of thing to heart. That we CAN do it, we CAN fix the environment, but we need to start now.

To which I replied: So true! And — to a great extent, the powers-that-be is US, millions of everyday people. Do we have the self-discipline to limit unnecessary car trips, flights, and other forms of excess consumption even after the lockdown is lifted? Will we decide that certain aspects of the “new normal,” such as getting to stay home more and not rush around so much, are worth making an effort to keep? I like to think so!

As another Facebook friend put it, “We are the ‘powers that be’… don’t buy it, don’t support it, don’t need it… those three things will make all the difference.”

In my book, I point out that low-footprint living, in addition to helping the planet, can also allow households to boost their disaster-resilience. As if to underscore my idea, numerous hurricanes and other natural disasters have hit the world since I published my book in 2017. All of them have had devastating effects on the livelihoods and living circumstances of people in different parts of the world. And our latest natural disaster, the Coronavirus, is affecting literally just about everyone, everywhere in the world. The less dependent we are on sources outside our local communities to meet our basic needs, the better off we are. Does this mean we have to forego imported goods, electricity, long-distance travel, and other convenient aspects of modern society? Not necessarily (though there’s certainly a lot of room for us in the privileged parts of the world to scale back while still living comfortably), but the less dependent we are on these things, the less vulnerable we are to disaster; the more socially and economically resilient we’ll be.

In that spirit I propose a fun household activity for the Coronavirus “Stay At Home” time: Conservation Games! Depending on the culture of your family (and the ages of your kids and others living with you), you might opt to do these as a friendly competition between household members, or approach it as a team working together to get your numbers lower and lower.

My preferred framework for household-scale conservation efforts is the Riot for Austerity. It’s a worldwide grassroots movement of citizens aiming to reduce their footprint to 10% of the average U.S. resident’s. The people who started the Riot movement (Sharon Astyk and Miranda Edel) set forth numeric targets which I’ll outline below.

Now, at this point you might be thinking, “Are you nuts? We’re in the middle of a crisis! Why would I want to voluntarily heap more challenges on myself and my family?” To which I would say 1) You might be surprised at how self-challenges can take one’s mind off an ongoing crisis, and help maintain a sense of perspective; 2) As I mentioned, low-footprint living is great for boosting one’s disaster-resilience; and 3) The current crisis makes it easier in various ways to reduce one’s footprint. So now is actually a great time to start!

My friend Cedar Stevens was talking about plastics consumption when she made the following comment (and the hige volume of plastic trash is a major problem in itself), but she could just as easily have been speaking about any other aspect of reducing one’s eco footprint: “Perhaps you don’t want to think about reducing your plastic consumption. Life is so interrupted though, maybe this is the time to make new choices that are better for the Earth, create new habits. Be humbled in the face of the Wild.” (By the way, Cedar is a virtuosa gardener, herbalist, community organizer, and all-around wise woman. She is the proprietress of Natural Magick Shop, which offers “Magick potions, ritually crafted for the modern practitioner.” Visit her shop, and enjoy!

Note, any amount by which you can reduce your footprint is great! Whether you are able to reduce your footprint by 90% or 20% or even just 10%, you’re chipping away at the beast of excess consumption, resource mining, deforestation, violent landscaping, overdevelopment, etc., that is straining the planet’s resources. You might find it helpful to set moderate targets at first so you’ll be eager to build on your successes and keep going. Most people find some areas easier than others. For example, a person who lives in the city and doesn’t own a car might find it easy to have a low transportation footprint. A person who’s good at gardening, or has a farmer’s market nearby, might find it easier to lower their food footprint than one who has a black thumb, or has no farmer’s market to shop at. Following is a capsule summary of the Riot for Austerity targets. (For the full set of Riot for Austerity guidelines, see my post Riot for Austerity Rules.) Notice that some targets (such as trash) are per-person, while others (such as electricity use) are per-household.

GASOLINE: U.S. average 500 gallons per person per year; RIOT target 50 gallons per person per year. (The Coronavirus shutdown, with its moratorium on most commuting and on non-essential shopping, could make it easier than ever for many households to cut their gasoline consumption to a low percentage of the U.S. average. Under the RIOT target, you get slightly over 4 gallons a month, so if your car gets 30-40 miles a gallon and you are no longer commuting, 10% of the U.S. average is actually within reach! With outdoor exercise one of the only options for getting out of the house, you might find yourself enjoying family walks or bicycle rides. I know I’m seeing a lot more of that in my neighborhood!)

ELECTRICITY: U.S. average 900 kWh/month per household; RIOT target 90 kWh/month per household. (With household members being at home all the time, some families might be seeing a jump in electricity use. This could be a great opportunity to start an in-house conservation challenge! If your power company has a way for you to check your daily consumption online (many do nowadays), you can have a lot of fun with this. Basic notes: The biggest culprits of household electricity use are heating or A/C, clothes-dryer, and water heater – if your house uses electricity for these.)

HOME OIL/GAS: U.S. average 1,000 therms/household/year; RIOT target 100 therms/household/year.

GARBAGE: U.S. average 4.5 pounds per person per day; RIOT target 0.45 pounds per person per day. A fun thing to do could be give each person in the household their own trash can, and have daily or weekly weigh-ins. The best way by far to immediately reduce your trash weight by a wide margin is to compost your kitchen scraps. If you’re not doing this already, now’s a great time to start! Do a search on “compost” in this blog to find my favorite resources. Or just plunge into the vast university of YouTube wisdom.

WATER: U.S. average 100 gallons per person per day; RIOT target 10 gallons per person per day. (Outdoor water use accounts for 40% to 60% of this total. Now is an opportune time to look into waterwise native landscaping. Note: a food garden uses relatively little water for the amount of space it takes. The big water-hogs are exotic vegetation and manicured lawns.) A fun way to do a water challenge: Catch running water into a basin that’s a certain number of gallons, and count the number of basins you fill during a day. Got energetic young kids? Teach them to carry the water outside and water the trees and shrubs with it. Also get the kids to help with the math of calculating the total number of gallons used each day by toilet flushes, showers, etc.

CONSUMER GOODS: U.S. average $10,000 per household per year; RIOT target $1,000 per household per year. (This is another category where it could be easier to make cuts right now because of the shutdown. Golden opportunity to form new habits that are easier not only on the planet, but also on your wallet!)

FOOD: RIOT targets call for local & organic food to make up 70% of your diet; bulk/dry food 25% of your diet; and processed/industrial food 5% of your diet. Right now, this last category makes up 50% of the average U.S. resident’s diet. (The pandemic makes it a bit of a challenge to make major changes in one’s food purchasing. But one thing you can do is start shopping at your local farmer’s market, or get more of your groceries from there if you are already shopping there. You can also aim to eat fewer processed snacks. The food category is one of my big personal challenges. Although I truly love local organic veggies, I also heartily enjoy processed snacks! Lately I’m learning to make spiced crispy vegetable chips, which believe it or not it turns out I enjoy as much as store-bought potato chips!)

Reducing your eco footprint is not only the easiest and most immediate way for you as an individual to address environmental issues; it also has immediate benefits for your wallet and your well-being. Not only that, it makes you and your family and your community better able to weather whatever may come–be it a natural disaster or an economic recession or any other kind of crisis–and come out stronger. I hope you enjoy your low-footprint competitions and experiments as much as I’ve been enjoying mine! Always feel free to drop me a line if you have questions. And if you like, get yourself a copy of my book DEEP GREEN! It’s a concise manual to crafting your own version of an ultra-low-footprint life, and I’ve packed it chock-full with links to the absolute best resources I know of in each category.

During this time of pandemic sequestration, I’ve heard many parents say they’re loving the opportunity to stay home and spend time with their kids. Even some parents who are now unable to earn any income are savoring the slowdown, aside from the financial worry. The other day, a couple with several kids passed by our porch, amid a gaggle of big dogs on leashes. “We’re having so much fun!” they shouted when I asked how they were faring with school at home. “There are so many cool free educational resources online!”

But I’m also hearing from plenty of parents who are going stir-crazy with the additional responsibility of having to keep their kids schooled and entertained all day, every day, on top of all their usual parental responsibilities (and in some cases on top of their professional jobs, if they are working from home). Their kids miss their playmates; the parents miss the company of other adults. And adding insult to injury, a lot of parents right now are getting chastised for having these perfectly natural human feelings. I’ve seen Moms getting shamed online for saying they could use a glass of wine. Please!

My take on the “kids at home” struggle is the same as my take on other challenges that the pandemic has brought. My take is that the pandemic, besides being a crisis in itself, has exposed cracks in society that have been there for many years or decades.

Now, before I go any further, let me say I’m well aware that some parents feel that if a person is not a parent, that person has no business commenting on child-rearing issues. And I am not unsympathetic to that viewpoint, especially when the commenters are trying to shame people or tell them how to raise their kids. But my take is 1) Parents are emotionally enmeshed in the high-stakes, stressful task of raising kids, and it could be helpful to get support from someone who’s not as emotionally involved. And 2) It is impossible to solve, or even fully grasp, any major problem in society without looking into how that society is bringing up its children.

So, in that spirit, here are some of my observations based on a combination of things I’ve observed myself, or heard from older relatives, or read in books and magazines. I realize I’m speaking in generalities here, but generalities have their place, as they can help us see more clearly and get to the heart of things.

There’s a wealth of articles out there offering tips on how to keep kids happy and engaged at home. If I find some particularly outstanding ones, I’ll post them in the Further Reading section. But there are lots online that you can find easily. For now, I’m giving you two main takeaways:

1. Community, Community, Community. By now, pretty much everyone is familiar with the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Isolation is one of the two biggest culprits of parental overwhelm. The nuclear family, detached from the old hometown and extended family, is a modern experiment that just hasn’t worked out well. The other day in a “Coronavirus overwhelm” discussion thread online, I was happy to see a couple of Moms, whose kids are playmates, talking about the possibility of living under the same roof. What a great idea! I hope it catches on. The truth is that living alone or in nuclear families is expensive, and raising kids is way too much work for one set of parents alone. Part of the original motivation for the emergence of the nuclear family–a trend that accelerated after World War II–was surely the lure of independence from “the old hometown” and its bossy elders. But nowadays, with so many people learning how to set healthy emotional boundaries and tolerate differences, it seems feasible to have the best of both worlds: the ability to be true to oneself, without having to disengage from extended family. In general, over the past few years, it’s been good to see more people living in multigenerational households again, even if a lot of the motivation is economic constraints (young adults not able to afford their own places because of school debt, etc.) This is one case where all the arrows (economic, social, division-of-labor, and ecological) seem to be pointing in the same direction: Live with other people if at all possible! (If you are living alone and it’s working out great for you, disregard this bit of advice.) This is true whether or not you have kids, but if you have kids, it could save your sanity and make life a lot more enjoyable for you and the kids.

2. Instead of being overwhelmed by kids’ energy … harness it! In permaculture design, we have a saying, “Turn problems into solutions.” Most of us have had the experience of being overwhelmed by a kid’s energy. For a long time now (for my whole life, really, which is almost 60 years) I’ve observed parents feeling overwhelmed by dealing with kids, especially young kids. And recently, my observation has led me to ask, “Is there anything we can learn from people in other times and places? How did people in the old days cope with an exhausting toddler? How do people in indigenous cultures manage to look after their kids on top of foraging for food, gathering firewood and all that?” In a nutshell, very young kids want to help with household tasks, and want to be near their parents. When we try to get kids to stay out of the way, “go play,” etc., we create stress because not only do we create a situation where kids get bored and come back looking to the adults for ideas on what to do, but also, we push away a whole bunch of really robust energy that wants to help! The ideal is to start engaging kids while they are still toddler age. But I think there’s hope at any age if the parents make it clear that they really need their kids’ help; that the kids are indispensable to the household economy. As kids get older, their creativity starts to shine, and if you ask kids for ideas on how to solve household problems, they think of amazing solutions that you or I might never have thought of.

From everything I’ve read and observed, kids are happiest and least overwhelming when they know that their labor and creativity are needed for real stuff that the household depends on. Cooking, shopping, running the cash register, designing a logo for the family business, greeting store customers or hotel guests, feeding farm animals, collecting eggs, watering plants, even laundry and dishes and what have you. (By the way, as a kid I hated yardwork. But if we’d been growing food, as opposed to toiling in the service of suburban standards of neatness and conformity, I might have felt differently.) And, when they know their parents really want them around (which is more likely to be the case if the parents aren’t constantly getting interrupted for entertainment while the parents are trying to get work done)!

Of course there is more to life than chores. Creativity is another way for families to spend time together, while also making the world a better place. I’ve heard/read of many families doing creative and compassionate activities during the stay-at-home order. One neighborhood has started a “teddy bear hunt” to entertain little kids who are out walking with their families. People put teddy bears in their windows so as to be visible from the street, and kids see how many bears they can find on their walks. I also read about a 17-year-old girl who did a ballet performance at her grandparents’ nursing home; residents could watch from their balconies. And a friend of mine, a Dad, dressed up in drag (a powder-blue ballerina costume complete with tiara, to be exact!) and went walking through his neighborhood with his young daughter, who was also in some sort of costume (the Facebook photo was too small to see clearly). This kind of playful spirit is all too absent from most people’s everyday lives, and the enforced slowdown seems to be really bringing it out. Here’s hoping it’ll continue even after “normal” life resumes!

Besides those two main points, a few other things.

One, It’s OK to want wine (or whatever you enjoy: eating chocolate; reading a novel; painting). Assuming you’re not harming yourself or neglecting your family, it’s actually healthier for all of you if Mom and Dad get to have their fun too. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, when it was still OK for parents to go out to movies or cocktail parties and leave the kids with a babysitter (or let the oldest child be the babysitter for their younger siblings). Nowadays it’s more popular for parents to hang out together while their kids play. Either way, you’re not a bad parent for wanting a treat.

Also, get to know your neighborhood and neighbors; a neighborhood with a web of social connections is more resilient in any possible circumstances than one where neighbors don’t know each other. Many of us find that our best friends (and/or our kids’ best friends) are widely scattered, requiring a car trip. But it’s not sustainable for parents to constantly have to drive their kids to a playdate. The stay-at-home orders affecting most of the population are highlighting the unworkability of that setup. Walk around your immediate neighborhood with your kids, meet your neighbors. And keep in mind that your kids, even young ones, are their own people; the friends they choose for themselves won’t necessarily have parents that you’d choose as your friends. And that’s fine!

Finally: A major factor in parental overwhelm is economic anxiety. See if there are some household expenses you can cut, so you can slow the treadmill down. Ditto for household tasks; see if there are any you can ease up on a bit. Do you really need to have perfectly square shrubs? Does the laundry need doing right this minute? It might be worth trading some niceties for just plain ol’ free time for each other. There’s no point in having a family (and no point living on planet earth, really) if we can’t all take a deep breath and enjoy each other, listen to the song of a bird, watch the sunset, learn the names of the wildflowers growing right around us.

On a personal note, today when I got home from the farmer’s market with my groceries, it felt like it was taking a long time for me to get things put away and stow the reusable bags. I found myself wishing there were a toddler in the vicinity! I would have enlisted the little one’s assistance stashing the bags in the milk crate where I keep them. I had the same thought later, when I needed to wash some clothes. I always hand-wash my stuff in a tub, then pour the water on whatever area of the yard needs a bit of water. What a perfect job for a little kid to help with!

If you’re a parent (or grandparent or other relative in close proximity with kids), I’d love to hear your ideas on this topic. What, if any, aspects of working with kids do you find overwhelming? What’s worked for you? What hasn’t? Or if you’re from another country, whether or not you’re a parent — How are things different in your country? What tasks are kids expected/allowed to do at each age? Same question for people of older generations, wherever you’re from. What household tasks were you required/expected to do as a kid?

Further Reading:

• Maybe the single most illuminating resource I’ve found on the “kid energy problem” so far is this short article from npr.org, on how to get kids to do chores. It gives impressive examples of how people in other cultures harness the “power of toddlers.” In a nutshell, toddlers naturally want to help (in one study, 20-month-old children stopped playing and crawled across the floor to help adults pick up dropped objects), and by being willing to spend extra time even though the toddler’s involvement slowed things down or makes a mess, parents invest and end up with kids who continue to love to help even as they get older. Typical parents in modern Western culture rebuff a toddler’s offer to help, and send them off to play. But mothers from indigenous cultures will invite the child to stay and watch, and participate. The article also cites a book that sounds like a must-read: Anthropology Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans, and Laborers, by David Lancy.

• Childlike Innovation: Parents Find Creative and Fun Ways To Keep Kids Busy and Happy. (Daytona Beach News-Journal). Even very young kids can start learning a valuable skill like gardening or cooking, and can collaborate on a wall painting or other house project. “We just involved her in everything we do,” one couple said of their 2-1/2-year-old daughter. She’s interested in practical life skills, so instead of trying to keep her out of the way while they get stuff done, they involve her in cooking, seed-sprouting and other tasks. It sounds like it’s a lot more fun and less exhausting than the other approach!

I’m in love with my stapler. Yes, in love. With a stapler. Because it’s sturdy and metal, and I doubt it will ever break. I will probably get old and die first, or just decide I don’t need to staple anything anymore, before this little beauty would quit on me. I bought it a few years back at a yard sale or thrift shop, one of the two, can’t remember which. It is pure old-school, all steel or other sturdy metal, enamel-painted a pretty blue that one color website I hit upon when I Googled “names of shades of blue” referred to as “Cadet Blue,” and another as “Air Force Blue.” I might call it a dark shade of sky-blue.

It’s got small rust spots here and there. Just enough to add a touch of dignity and gravitas. It’s a compact stapler that fits neatly on the small antique sewing-machine table that doubles as my desk. And with the stapler, at the same garage sale or thrift shop, I bought a little box of staples. Both the stapler and the faded yellow cardboard box of staples look like they came from a time capsule made by a stationery store in 1963. And they both look like they would survive Armageddon.

Except, I aspire to use the staples up in my lifetime, or at least make a big dent in their number. Although the box of staples was decades old when I bought them a decade ago, it did not look like a single row of them had been used. And yesterday as I was stapling little bags of wildflower seeds to put out in the Free Seed box I set up out front of my house, I noticed for the first time the number of staples in the box. I’d been thinking maybe 500? 1,000? Nope! When I read the fine print, I saw that the box had originally contained five THOUSAND staples. Packed in like little rows of square soldier sardines.

It seems like I’ve been using them forever, freely, but still I’ve barely made a visible dent in the rows. The box of staples is small, maybe 2 inches wide by 5 inches long by an inch and a half high. Not much bigger than a stick of butter. Maybe when the original buyer bought staples, he or she bought an extra box, not realizing how very many staples the deceptively small box contained. Or maybe boxes of staples were on sale two for one, and we know how that can go. (File that image in the same folder as a snapshot of the guy who’s hanging a picture or something and goes to the hardware store for screws, and comes back with two boxes of 500 or something because the price is cheaper per screw that way. Little did he know he’s consigning some future person somewhere to hold a garage sale to get rid of the unused portion.)

Was someone starting a clerical business and then gave up on their plan? A widow in a college town who was about to start a typing service to earn a bit of extra income, but then she passed away? Or maybe a secretary sent out to buy supplies for her company (not to be sexist, but I’m not sure there were male clerical workers back then), which later either folded or just got a newer bigger stapler which required newer bigger staples?

Anyway, I appreciate my stapler. And, while I try never to waste staples or other supplies, I do aspire to use them fully, and would rather use them up than reach the end of my life with way too much extra.

I feel the same about the needles, thread, embroidery floss, and yarn that were accumulated by three generations of crafty women in my family, and have now ended up in my custody. Needles in particular might be tough to use up; you can’t imagine how many little packets of needles there are. And I still have a primal fear of ending up in the Zombie Apocalypse with my last needle broken or lost. But I really don’t want to leave needles unused; someone made them, and they were made to be used.

If worst comes to worst, and my noble anti-hoarding sentiments end up leaving me short, I do have some spiny prickly-pear plants growing in the garden, and have heard that the pioneers made needles out of the spines.

This blog, on the surface, is about low-footprint living. Choosing to live lightly on the planet. But on a deeper level, it’s about living deliberately. For me, having excess stuff (beyond a reasonable backup supply) is an invitation to see if there’s someone else who needs, right now, the stuff that for me is excess. I have never regretted shedding stuff in that spirit. When I got into permaculture design, one of the design principles I learned was “Stocking,” which means having stuff in appropriate quantity. And part of the definition of “appropriate quantity” that I learned was, “being able to remember what you have and where it is stored.” For a lot of us in the wealthy industrialized nations, this is a bigger challenge than one might think. I speak as someone who has not only, herself, on many occasions forgotten what she has and where it is stored, but also done many de-cluttering and downsizing jobs, helping people clear out attics and garages that were packed to the ceiling with still-usable but long-forgotten stuff, much of it still in the original packaging. Important note: None of this is to shame or chastise anyone. We are all in this together, we’ve tried some things as a species that have seemed great at first but turned out to be not such a great idea (herbicides and single-use plastics come to mind), and I feel us each working in our own way to create a saner, kinder world where humans are living in balance with ecosystems, and all creatures have their needs met.

How about you? Do you have everyday tools or other possessions you particularly treasure? And do you have any multigenerational accumulations of good stuff that you’re in the process of figuring out how to use up or distribute?

And, to take it beyond the material, I think this concept applies to talents and energy as well. But I’ll save that for another post!

“Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness–”
— Albus Dumbledore to Voldemort in Harry Potter.

The fact that there are things worse than death doesn’t mean it’s unreasonable for humans to fear their own death. After all, most of us don’t know for sure what happens after death; we have to go on faith. Still, reminding ourselves that there are “much worse things” can help ease our fear of death.

Worse things than death: Not living fully while we’re still alive. Reaching the end of our lives with amends unmade; rifts unmended. Living an imitation of someone else’s life; never discovering one’s own true self. Knowing who we are but always putting up a false front and never sharing our true self with the world. Stumbling around never waking up. Never making mistakes but also never stretching, never growing. To list a few.

Just as there are worse things than death for an individual, there are also worse things than death for society as a whole. At a time like this, with people getting sick and dying; people losing their livelihoods and maybe their homes, this is a hard thing to say and a hard thing to hear, but it needs to be said: There are worse things for society than a pandemic or other crisis that threatens the very future of human life on earth. The main “worse thing” I can think of, is that after the crisis passes, we just slip back into our old default ways, with no changes, nothing learned, no lasting corrections to the craziness that passes for “normal” in everyday life. I like to think that won’t happen in this case, but it is always a possibility.

Today, I “attended” my church (the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ormond Beach) for the second week in a row, together virtually with many other members, courtesy of live-streaming technology. The sermon was titled, “Befriending Our Fears,” and you can catch the recording of Reverend Kathy Tew Rickey’s service on YouTube. The theme of befriending our fears could not have been more relevant to me this morning.

I’d gotten up fairly early, around 6, and gone outside to catch the beauty of the morning and water some plants. Fairly quickly, I found my fresh morning joy spiraling down into anxiety and hopelessness as I contemplated the lengthening drought and my still-insufficient gardening ability. Plants were looking peaked (the lack of rain adding insult to the injury of my innate plant-cluelessness) and I had run out of things to try. Water more? Water less? Nothing seems to help.

But as I sat with my feelings, the deeper fears that underlay them started to rise to the surface. And as I faced those fears, fully acknowledged them one by one, I began to get relief. There were more layers than I was expecting. There was a fear that my ineptitude would kill these innocent living beings I had taken into my care. That’s a tough thing to bear.

There was a more prosaic fear that the native plants I’d bought for privacy hedges (as well as for the benefit of wildlife and the land) would never grow, and I’d be stuck needing a fence forever, and also would never be able to screen out the obnoxiously bright streetlights. For the first time, I fully felt that I could handle any of that; that there were worse things. I realized how I’d been hanging onto this idea “I must have tall high shrubs and I must have them now!” Realizing I could just deal with things as they are helped me relax.

I realized that I could let myself off the hook, quit spending money on lovely plants only to live in constant fear of killing them. I could just be happy with what’s growing right now, as it is, the unflappable native wildflowers, a few stunted but scrappy herbs and veggies, and other buoyant survivors, and let the rest unfold in its time. Surely plants, like people, can’t thrive in an atmosphere of nervousness, and I’ll give them a better chance at life by cultivating a more relaxed loving attitude. And I can just focus on the unchallenging but (to me) richly enjoyable activity of layering my yard with the oak leaves, grass clippings, and other riches (termed “yard waste” by conventional wisdom) that I gather from curbside in my hand-cart, and let this earthy lasagna do its magic of attracting the teeming community of good microbes and bugs that form the foundation of healthy soil. And trust that this evolution will take place to a sufficient degree and in sufficient time for the soil to be more plant-friendly when I really need it to be, if such a time should come to pass.

Another layer of fear I noticed was a primal fear of starving to death because I haven’t been very successful at growing food. Could I handle it, if it came to that? I realized I could, because there are worse things to me. For example, spending my life ignoring other people because I’m so wrapped up in worry about my own fate — that, to me, would be worse than starving to death. Anyway, I have in fact grown food quite well at times in the past — just never alone. Always in cooperative arrangements. There’s a lesson there. Find nearby likeminded folks; grow stuff in partnership. I’m working on it.

I am of course worried about drought; I have been for a long time here in Florida. Our conventional landscaping practices (which I sometimes refer to as land-scalping or land-scraping) — the relentless clearing and incessant mowing that leaves just a thin film of turfgrass and increasingly bare patches of compacted sand — strip away the green buffer and ground-sponge, creating conditions ripe for ever more intense drought-flood extremes. What I’m calling the “crispy” season seems to be lengthening here, and now maybe we’re going to be having it in March-April as well as in October. (The past two years’ Octobers here have been brutal, with seasonal raininess stopping short while summer heat was still in full force.)

This morning I sat with my fear of drought. Yes, this place could become a desert in my lifetime. Yes, we could all become displaced; there could be horrific wildfires, widespread famine, the utter decimation of all life from the lush paradise Mother Nature had provided. Hard to imagine worse than that. But as I felt my commitment to doing my best to save the lives of other people, present and future, who may not have had the opportunity to live as long or as many lives as me, my own fear began to dissipate. I’ve got a post in the works for you about simple things we can all do to help mitigate drought-flood extremes, wherever we live.

Another primal fear I contacted was the fear of being useless, superfluous, having no skills of any use to anyone, ultimately being alone and unwanted, no community. (This is one I’ve been peeling away layer by layer for decades, but today I found a new layer.) I asked myself could I handle it after all, if it came to that — if really I ended up with no place to live, no way to make myself useful? And I realized that yes, I could; that somehow I would find a way to move forward and love life and somehow be in service, not be a burden on anyone. That there were worse things.

Facing each fear, experiencing it deeply and feeling it dissipate, I ended up feeling simultaneously calm and energized, and had a beautiful morning, capped off by the sermon on “Befriending Our Fears.”

Later in the day, the theme of facing fear and coming out stronger on the other side of it continued, as I spotted an extremely powerful article on a friend’s Facebook feed:

It’s Time to Emotionally Prepare for What’s Coming, by Elad Nehorai on medium.com. Anticipatory grief — preparing ourselves emotionally for the loss of life (our loved ones’, and our own) — is a heavy task but an essential one, and I really want to thank my friend Flip Solomon for sharing this article. Flip is a talented and hardworking visual artist, fashion designer, and all-around creative soul. You can see Flip and her work by visiting her Facebook page The Art of Flip Solomon and her website. Enjoy!

Because, yes, we can have joy too amid all this pain and uncertainty. Life is wondrously fractal and layered. The deepest, giddiest-yet-most-solid joy I’ve ever found in life has always been on the other side of fear and pain.

P.S. Another treat for you! Beautiful talk that a friend just now shared with me. “Remaining True in a Time of Crisis.” About taking the crisis as an opportunity to slow down, “grow inward,” engage in self-discovery, become centered in our true nature. (The speaker, Mooji, points out that fear comes from not being centered in our true nature.)