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Q: HELP: My kid is majoring in digital marketing and visual media! (Or art, or English etc. — insert “major that seems unstable from a parent’s perspective” here.)

A: Oh wow!! Visual arts and digital marketing can actually be a wonderful major right now!! — among the top skillsets for communicating the urgency of world problems and helping to effect change, help people and the planet.

Spoken as someone whose supposedly “useless” English Lit major and Sociology minor, and psych & marketing courses, and associate’s degree in commercial art back in the 80s, have all turned out to be PERFECT and exactly what I need for my work as an activist and permaculture teacher/speaker!!

And also, ask yourself: Is there a particular subject you would rather your child study? If so, what is it and why?

Question I saw today in one of the food-forest groups: If you were given a plot of flat land (2 acres in zone 9B) to build a food forest, what would you do first?? Step 1, uno, very first plan of action.

My answer: What I would do, and what I have always advised my clients with this much land or more to do: Leave 90% (in this case 1.8 acres of it) wild and tree-covered. “Zone 5” as we say in permaculture design terminology.

Fit the house and mini orchard / food forest on 10 percent of the land — in this case 0.2 acres. Trellises, espaliered fruit trees, and other multi-functional use of vertical space, leaving most of the space for wildlife and native trees/plants.

(If the land was cleared and flattened and mowed by the previous owner already (ugh!), my condolences but all is not lost: Simply allow that 90% to revert to meadow. Assuming the land has not been doused with chemicals for years: Shrubs and trees, mainly native, will grow in succession more rapidly than you might think possible.)

Also: If the site is really dry & barren, or even just super flat and cleared/mowed, my “numero uno” step would be Bill Mollison’s advice on the first three things to do with a degraded piece of land: “Mulch it, Mulch it, Mulch it!”

The mulch can be any combo of wood chips, leaves, twigs. And even logs! All of which will break down and nourish the site and build back the soil biota. (In some permaculture design circles we refer to logs used in this manner as “nurse logs,” also known as the “poor man’s mulch”!)

I am deeply grateful to Ruth Friddle, a fellow permaculturist and fellow member of Transformative Adventures, for allowing me to run this gem as a “copy-paste guest post.” Thanks and much love to you Ruth! And, dear readers, I hope you enjoy this post as much as I do!

“Recently I listened to someone share their utter despair of the life they were experiencing: life-threatening illness, break-up of 20+years relationship. Another person shared their debilitating addiction to prescription meds and alcohol and the trickle-down effects those were having on their life. Someone else talked about the depth of loneliness and despair they were feeling from all the isolation and distancing they’ve been enduring for the past year and a half. They all said they were at rock bottom.

“The dreaded rock bottom, where all seems lost, all options gone, where everything seems to teeter on the edge of life and death. Physical pain. Mental and emotional anguish. Spiritual hell. I suspect we’ve all been to those places in varying degrees of intensity at different times in our lives. I certainly have.

“Hitting rock bottom sucks. There is no pleasure or joy in that fall, no moon-beams or unicorns as a booby prize once we’ve arrived. There is just this endless unknown that, more often than not, we fill with every worst-case scenario our thoughts can dredge up. Sometimes those scenarios playout. Sometimes they don’t. No guarantees.

“I’m not sure there are any answers, but lately, I’ve been wondering if maybe befriending the rock bottom we keep hitting might hold the relief we seek. Rocks have a lot to teach us: to listen, to be still, to wait in silence, to trust the solidity and strength the rock offers when we’re lying there, on our back, with no where to look but up.

“While hitting rock bottom is a terrifying and miserable fall, maybe rock bottom itself, is the safest place to be. Maybe being on that rock solid foundation makes everything else just clouds in the sky, coming and going. Clouds that may demand our attention but can only be wisely dealt with from the position of rock bottom. Everything is much clearer when you’re at rock bottom. You’re not lost in the clouds of thoughts, trying to figure it all out. You’re resting on that unchangeable place that allows for complete surrender because there’s no where else to go.

“However horrifying it might be to sometimes suddenly find ourselves there, I wonder….could it be that the dreaded rock bottom, once we’re there, is actually the best seat in the house?”

And my comment: Yes Ruth. My experience concurs with your observations. I hit an extreme rock bottom some years back that further turned out to be a trap-door to a cascading series of rock-bottoms. At one point when I really thought I was well and truly done for, I took a deep breath and decided to try to befriend it, and the relief came almost immediately — and always thereafter when I was willing to befriend it and learn from the rocks. It has ended up bringing me so many riches. I now know how to surf or navigate the rocks, so when it hits again as I am sure it will, I will be ready. This is one example of anti-fragility. Thank you Ruth for this deeply insightful and beautifully written post.

‪Ummmm … Yeah … this bathroom is BIG, all right! What IS the vast cavernous space in the middle supposed to be used for, I can’t imagine. Pre-bath ballroom dancing lessons or yoga classes, maybe? Or a helicopter landing pad (if you opened up the ceiling)???

Sometimes I feel like an alien in my own country. USA – we do things big! ‬

Building choices are a huge factor in the eco footprint of modern industrialized humans. Not only do the materials themselves have a footprint, but the finished building itself has an ongoing energy footprint (for heating and cooling of air, mostly).

Note, I’m not saying big houses can’t be eco-friendly! One of the most eco-friendly ways to live is to have a multigenerational household, or share a house with several friends. (“Golden Girls” style.)

What I am saying is that we shouldn’t build huge spaces just because they convey an image of opulence. And we need to be deliberate in our design; avoid needless use of space and materials.

When I was growing up (in the 1960s and 70s), my Mom had a phrase “wretched excess” that she’d use for extravagant displays of wealth. The things she labeled with that phrase were a lot less wretchedly excess than a lot of the bathrooms and kitchens I see advertised nowadays for middle-class homes!

And an afterthought on the mega-bathroom: Another thought I had was that maybe this huge space is deliberately designed for maneuvering a wheelchair or hospital-style bed into the bath area? Although the narrow entry door would seem to preclude that.

Tough talk for fellow environmentalists: If we want a society powered by clean renewables, WE as individuals must take the lead; we must demonstrate via our own lifestyles that it is possible to live on little enough energy to not need fossil fuels or nuclear. Not only possible, but liberating and life-enriching.

If we don’t do this, we have no business being outraged or even surprised to see fracking & pipelines desecrating the land; government and corporations exercising deadly determination to mine fossil fuels. We “greens” need to take leadership via our own lifestyles. Make Ultra-Low Footprint Cool!

How low can we go?

People often want to know (rightly) if this or that category of stuff gets recycled. And people often get upset (again, rightly) when they find out their city or county is no longer recycling this or that category. These questions come up all the time in the neighborhood and in local online groups.

For me, it is all too complicated to keep track of. And anyway, the information can change at a moment’s notice. As with so many things in life, I find it easiest and most eco-friendly to adopt an across-the-board approach.

Myself, I always operate as if NOTHING gets recycled. No plastic, no glass, no metal. (Though in fact I know we can recycle metals by bringing them to the plant in Holly Hill. I have done that some years back on occasion. I heard recently that the current amount they are paying for aluminum is 55 cents a pound; YMMV.)

But in my everyday life, I have always acted as if NOTHING gets recycled. And I make my choices accordingly. Refuse, Reduce, Reuse.

And when I end up with plastic containers, glass bottles, or other stuff I cannot manage to refuse or reuse or repurpose, I just try not to beat myself up. And I do put it in the recycling bin anyway just in case someone, somewhere in the convoluted chain, might be still out there recycling it.

Housecleaning is a major leverage point for reducing one’s footprint while also conserving our precious time, money, and personal energy.

To put it another way, obsessive cleanliness standards (led by the industrial neat-fanatic fussbudget culture of my country, the USA) generate a huge eco footprint, even just for the plastic from all those containers of cleaning products — let alone the various machines and appliances; and the environmental impact of the chemicals themselves.

A few years back, I realized I didn’t need to buy any cleaning products if I didn’t want to. Water, elbow-grease, baking soda, vinegar go a long way. A couple of drops of your favorite essential oil can add a nice touch and even help repel bugs. Personally I favor menthol-y or citrus-y scents.

When you clean your house, do it for yourself and your family, not for other people. (And if you have a nitpicky person under your own roof, feel free to hand THEM the broom or the sponge or the laundry basket!)

What I realized at some point is that many of the so-called “reasonable standards” of cleanliness are being imposed on us by TV, movies, cleaning product advertisers, and manufacturers themselves. Oh, and sometimes, people in your life (either past or present) who just like to nitpick and criticize. One piece of reassurance I always give people is to look inward and decide for yourself what your own standards of cleanliness are. Don’t let anyone else dictate them. Don’t let other people’s critical tapes play in your head!!

My main cleaning tools are a broom, a mop, and a toilet brush. I have rugs on tile floor, rather than carpet, so I don’t ever need to vacuum; just take the rugs outside and shake ’em out. I did inherit a mini handheld vacuum cleaner which I have used a time or two to suck up crumbs or other dry spills from tight spaces, but I could have gotten those with the plain ol’ broom and dustpan if I had had to.

What are your cleaning challenges, if any? Might there be an opportunity to reduce your workload?

PS. We can actually damage our immune systems by striving to make our living environments perfectly clean and germ-free!

PPS. Just because you like or even love someone doesn’t mean you have to invite them inside your house. Covid showed us that!