Category: low-footprint living

Someone on Facebook posted a Mother’s Day cartoon. It shows one woman saying to another, “For Mother’s Day, my mom would like the activism of her youth to not be for nothing.”

My thoughts:

(This is addressed to my fellow white, “Woodstock / eco Boomer” women):

[TL;DR for my comment on the post below: For us to ask for this for Mother’s Day, even in a cartoon joke, we need to be still doing our activism. We sort of got derailed in the me-first prosperity-flood of the 80s but let’s get back on track now. And, we need to be walking our talk, in terms of aligning our daily choices with the change we want to see in the world.]

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*Special note for fellow Boomer white women of the “Earth Day/Woodstock tribe”: We do not get to say this even in jest. acting all entitled, when we should be begging the forgiveness of the younger generations. Also can someone please invent a time machine where we go back and we don’t abandon our activism when the going gets cushy? Yes that’s right, instead of abandoning our activism when the going got rough, we abandoned it when the going got cushy, probably sometime in the 80s with all the fancy fancy shiny shiny.

just kidding, Time machines are really hard to invent (plus, I hear they get really bad gas mileage), so no use crying over spilt milk. But what we can do is straighten up and get back to the commitment of our activism, with a bunch of corrections. For one thing, if our activism isn’t intersectional it’s bullshit.

For another, if we’re really serious, we need to fully divest our money from the war machine, and do some serious decolonization of our minds.

It’s not cool if we sit here on our cushy cushions and talk about what great ideals we had when we were younger, and how we worked so hard and now we’re tired and we’re going to rest, but thank God/dess for the younger generations who are going to fix everything. Oh hell no.

And by the way, we need to stop having snide/dismissive attitudes about Tik Tok, it’s where the actual revolution is happening as far as intersectionality, sharing the truth, mutual aid, and connecting with fellow activists.

I share some practical tips on my blog about how we can get back in the groove. I love you, fellow white eco Boomer women, but we have some deep reflection and self-correction to do!

Because we (as a group) have become too entrenched in the establishment. We’ve turned into the very sort of people who we ourselves were talking about back in the 60s and 70s when we said “Don’t trust anyone over 30.”

So let’s fix that. And then we can get on with things. Note, if you are one of my abovementioned “tribe” who are still doing activism, GREAT! Me too. We still need to start doubling-down on our courage, shoring up our integrity, and fixing our blind spots.

PS. Happy Mother’s Day! And let’s give our full heart and hands to practice respect for our mother, mother Earth. And all of her creatures including all humans.

PPS. You can see the above-mentioned cartoon here, where I shared it on my deep green Facebook page.

A serendipitous thing happened today with my outdoor water setup. I call it accidental kaizen!

My watering can just happened to be underneath the old coffee urn that I use as an outdoor dispenser for water in my outdoor trellis-room as a convenient way to wash my hands outdoors (like when I need to switch from a “dirty” landscaping task to some task that requires cleaner hands).

So, as my hands get washed (or as my toothbrush gets rinsed etc.), the rinsewater trickles down into the watering can, whence it can then be reused to water certain areas of the yard where there is no tender or edible vegetation. Or on a mulch pile that could use a little extra moisture etc.

In permaculture design we refer to this kind of reuse as “energy cycling.” Reusing resources onsite as many times as possible in a trickle-down kind of way.

(Another example of energy cycling would be using old clothes as attire for dirty outdoor tasks rather than throwing them away. And then as the clothes get super worn out, cutting them up into rags which can be used in a downward-cascading hierarchy of tasks — from neat to messy — before finally ending up in the compost.)

Kaizen is one of my favorite concepts. I first learned of it via the world of Japanese business/industry. It means continuous incremental improvement.

Kaizen is a great fit for permaculture design and “DEEP GREEN” living.

(BTW the soap-dish isn’t visible in these shots but it is nearby. It’s a neutral-toned bowl I rescued from the waste stream. Although the bowl is plastic, it’s sturdy and nicely shaped, and it seems to have been made to look a little bit like wood or ceramic, which is very in keeping with my wabi/sabi-inspired aesthetic out there.)

Updates May 13:

• I ended up snapping a couple of pics that show the soapdish. There are a few pieces of an old cake of Maja soap in there, one of my favorites. It lasts a long time and works really well. BTW if it rains, I get some free liquid soap in the bowl. Or, if it starts raining a whole lot, I turn the bowl upside-down over the cakes of soap to protect them from getting totally melted.

• Because the spigot of the water container doesn’t quite stick out far enough for the water to make it all the way into the watering can, I made a tall funnel using a sheet of flexible transparent plastic which I have had sitting in my “purgatory bin” for a while. (The purgatory bin is my way-station for temporarily diverting things from the waste stream. Utimately I either find a use for them or send them on to landfill.) So basically, I kaizen-ed my kaizen from yesterday! I’m really happy with the funnel.

You can see pics here in this post on my deep green Facebook page.

Since a lot of people in the permaculture community, and in Degrowth and Deep Adaptation circles, seem to be interested in forming intentional communities “from scratch” (as opposed to working within their existing neighborhood/community, which is always my first recommendation), I’m sharing this good article that might help people avoid some of the pitfalls.

This landed in my email inbox via the organization Shareable which has a steady stream of good content — articles, webinars, podcasts etc.

“Challenges and strategies for anti-capitalist community design (part 1)

“This is the first part in a three-part series on intentional communities and capitalism by Sky Blue.

“Capitalism isn’t just an economic system we live inside. It is a culture that lives inside of us. It influences our psychology, how we design our communities, how we relate to each other, the kind of culture we create, and what’s possible for us to do together.

“Capitalism is one of the most harmful aspects of mainstream society and is deeply entwined with white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, and imperialism. Societies, including micro-societies like intentional communities (ICs), are a mixture of structures and culture, and economies are a key aspect with implications for both. Capitalism is a structure that encourages individual finances and embeds commodification and transaction into our relationships with each other and the world around us. This fosters and reinforces a culture of hyper-individualism, privacy, competition, objectification, and entitlement. It creates an experience of separation, isolation, loneliness, and fear, and normalizes inequality, oppression, exploitation, and violence.

“ICs are idealistic responses to the problems of society. We see and experience the harm caused by human civilization on people and ecosystems. We want to live in a way that is more healthy and satisfying, where we can have a different relationship to people and place. We want lifestyles that align with our values and help make the world better. But as much as we want something different, we are susceptible to recreating the problems we want to solve.”

Go here to read the rest of the article, and to read parts 2 and 3 of the series:

https://www.shareable.net/intentional-community-and-capitalism/

IC, intentional community, capitalism, hyperindividualism

The following might seem really over the top and too good to be true, but it fits in with everything I’ve learned about the water cycle and how we restore it. Something like 40% of rainfall comes from the local water cycle.

My friend and permie colleague Chris Searles in central TX has pioneered a technique called strategic watering. Basically, watering large trees in order to bring rain.

We need to spread this everywhere, please watch & share this 12-minute, no-filler video and subscribe to his channel.

https://youtu.be/DRCspDH-W8E?si=v6UezPBaXXE5xw2d

On a related note, it’s way too micro to be verifiable, but I have done this kind of watering in the mini, Miyawaki-inspired forest I’ve cultivated in my tiny urban yard, and watched plumelike clouds either seem to form or grow, almost always in the same patch of sky, and I’ve seen where rain happens within hours where either there was no chance or the chance was very low.

Correlation isn’t causation but it sure has happened a bunch of times.

But PLEASE watch Chris’s video (12 minutes, no fluff) and follow his YouTube channel, because he / his organization BioIntegrity has done it on a large scale and I believe witnessed successes about 75 times!

All of his videos are great. Here’s another one, about 1 minute and 17 seconds, showing hyper-localized rainfall happening after strategic watering.

BTW here’s BioIntegrity’s website for you: https://www.biointegrity.net

#strategicwatering #trees #watercycle

Someone in my circles was posting about wanting to buy an E350 van. Price 20 K.

My take: A 350 is too heavy and uses too much gas. Try to find a stripped-down E150 if you can. (They don’t seem to be very easy to find because people like to hang onto them, understandably.) And furnish it your own way with your own DIY lightweight modular furnishings. That’s what I would live in if I wanted to do van life.

Or if you wanted to go more compact; are able to fit your work tools and your life into a more compact footprint, then one of those little Ford Transit Connects. But it looks like even the old used ones are probably pretty expensive.

In recent times it has become apparent to me that many members of my social demographic (college-educated Boomer white women who think of themselves as liberal) are not as far left as they think they are.

Why does this matter?

Thinking of ourselves as progressives, as opposed to recognizing that we are more conservative than we realized, has led us to finger-pointing at the so-called 1% and billionaires. When in fact we and our wallets are having a lot more influence than we think, and not always for the good.

Also, we end up deceiving ourselves into thinking we actually even have a two party system in the USA still. We need more than two parties, but the two mainstream parties we do have are not enough, by far, to cover the full spectrum of political views.

If we think we’re at a far leading edge, it can lead to complacency. And it can also lead to discouragement — like, are we really as far left as it gets? No worries though, there are lots of very left lefties even in the senior age groups.

I actually never thought of myself as a leftist until maybe a couple years ago, when I took a test called the political quadrant test. I had always thought I was a libertarian, as in right of Republican. Sometimes when I’d be going to vote and I would pass by the Republican information table, I would tease them by saying “Oh, no thanks, you guys are too into big government for me.” And I would wink at them. And because I identified as a libertarian rather than a Democrat, they could at least sort of smile at me..

My reexamination of my political label started a few years back when a couple of Boomer, dyed-in-the-blue-wool Democrat women online were “mansplaining” me, telling me I am a Democrat, and I was trying to tell them no I am not a Democrat I am libertarian.

When I took the test, I found out that what I am in fact is an anarchist. And a rather far leftist one. In any case, not a Democrat.

I didn’t know it, but of course once I saw it laid out it made a lot of sense. There are right-wing anarchists (think Ayn Rand) and left-wing anarchists (Gandhi, Hanna Arendt, Emma Goldberg). We left-wing anarchists can find a fair amount of common ground with some Democrats, which is why we are sometimes mistaken for Democrats.

Also, a lot of us environmentalists get mistaken for Democrats. People automatically assume that no conservatives can be environmentalists, which is absolutely untrue.

I also found out from the political quadrant test that Biden and Trump are very close together in the upper right quadrant, the authoritarian / capitalist quadrant.

In other words, people who think they are progressive liberal just because they vote for Biden are actually just a slightly milder flavor of authoritarian conservative.

The other day, on the page of an account I follow via my deep green Facebook page, a boomer woman was defending some authoritarian attitudes regarding the protesters at Columbia and other campuses. This woman’s profile bore the description that she is a “raging crone” who is so far left that she even embarrasses her progressive liberal friends.

Several people jumped on and called her a bootlicker, to which she took great offense. I posted a comment in response to all that:

1) Well, in fairness, you are talking like a bootlicker in this moment. You are saying the kind of things bootlickers say.

2) Contrary to your profile, you don’t sound lefty at all, let alone so lefty that your extreme leftiness embarrasses your progressive friends.

I am in your same “crone” age group, and I know a lot of other white women our age who consider themselves really super left who are actually not very left at all. It seems to be a pretty widespread phenomenon.

It could be because a lot of us haven’t met that many actual leftists in the course of our daily lives, since we have tended to hang out in the “safety” of established power structures. A kind of blindness sets in, and we end up defending/upholding those structures instead of dismantling them, which actual leftists work to do.

This is a long comment, and I realize it’s risky to communicate sensitive ideas by text w strangers in a thread, because things can end up generating heat rather than light. But maybe some of this will hit a note of truth. Or maybe not.

Oh, I almost forgot
3) We shouldn’t ever go on Black women’s pages and expect them to “defend their stance.”

My words might sound harsh because we are part of a culture that is not used to speaking in a confrontational way unless it’s to fight. But I don’t mean to sound mean.

Peace to you, and may there actually be peace among all the nations someday sooner rather than later. And three cheers for the young people on the campuses!!!

If we “Woodstock Boomers” had stuck with it back in the 1960s and 70s and dismantled the toxic structures, instead of allowing ourselves to get derailed by shiny-shiny in the 1980s, we wouldn’t be dealing with what we’re dealing with today.

<emoticons: green heart, earth, blue butterfly, peace sign>

She didn’t reply to my comment but it got a few likes so at least it’s helping a few people if only to offer emotional validation, solidarity.

Regarding a lefty litmus test, I thought of a one-stop test. It’s from an ongoing issue in my neighborhood. A vacant four-plex keeps getting broken into by squatters. I am sympathetic with the squatters, secretly cheering them on, and frustrated with the absentee property owner.

Meanwhile most neighbors are more focused on getting the cops and code enforcement to keep out the squatters, than they are about getting the absentee owner to fix up the place and make it available to tenants. Or sell it to someone who will live there.

I would say that a person’s feeling on this matter could possibly constitute a quick “lefty litmus test.” Let me know your thoughts on that. And below, I’m posting the link to the political quadrant test. Hope you enjoy it!

OK, here it is. It’s actually called the Political Compass Test. By answering the questionnaire you can learn which political quadrant you fall into, and see some famous people from present and past who share your quadrant, and see some famous figures who fall into the other quadrants.

And finally, if you are adamantly anti-war and discouraged by the “pragmatic” stance of Democrats around you, check out Veterans for Peace. Lots of good company there. There’s even an organization within VFP called the Granny Peace Brigade.

Just building a loose collection of links on this topic. I believe that informal settlements are information-rich places and probably my ideal kind of place to live. We had some aspects of an informal settlement in the RV park in Austin, and I have created some aspects of informal settlements in my house and yard where I live now.

Unfortunately, despite the economic and social collapse that is in progress as we speak, the extractive institutions of industrial/capitalist culture always seems to reserve plenty of energy to meddle with the beautiful and community-building improvisations of informal settlements. The only leverage we really have against “them” (centralized PTB) is labor. They need our labor.

Still, at this juncture, the fact that it’s really hard for people to keep a roof over their head at today’s rents does not induce government to allow people to build their own simple structures on the margins and collect their own water and so on. This guy is a very real topic that we probably have not talked about enough in Degrowth and Deep Adaptation circles. Centralized institutions are failing to meet people’s basic needs, but when people try to route around them — build a parallel grassroots economy to meet their basic needs their own way (including many of the techniques we learned in Permaculture design class) — the boot of centralized authority (code enforcement, zoning, compulsively cop-calling neighbors etc.) comes down very quickly.

•Theresa Williamson: “Sustainable Favelas: The Key to Climate Justice and Thriving Cities?” (a keynote presentation at The Nature of Cities Festival 2024). Dr. Williamson is director of an organization called Catalytic Communities. My favorite takeaway from her presentation (and I had many! as her presentation, and informal settlements in general, are right up my alley) is, “An overly managed city is a dead city.” She talked about the sweet spot, where government is helping without quashing creativity and innovation. I believe the presentation recording is only available to people who attended the festival. However, you can find lots of Dr. Williamson’s work online.

• A quote from one of Dr. Williamson slides at TNOC 2024: “Could it be that those favelas that reach a ‘sweet spot’ of complexity and are then able to solidify their qualities without escalating into dysfunction hold a key to vibrant and sustainable urbanization?”

•Another of Dr. Williamson’s slides from her keynote from TNOC 2024 lists the qualities of Rio’s favelas that urban planners struggle to achieve. The list includes high use of bicycles & transit, pedestrian-centered “no cars, no strangers,” high rate of entrepreneurship, efficient & responsive architecture, affordable housing in central areas, low social isolation, strong mutual-support networks, mixed-use development, intense cultural incubators.

• YouTube video by Cities@Tufts: “Rethinking the future of housing worldwide: Favelas as a sustainable model, with Theresa Williamson”. BTW Cities@Tufts does a lot of good webinars.

• Searching on informal settlements reveals many good articles and videos. Here’s one from a past TNOC. “They are not ‘informal settlements.’ They are habitats made by people.” (Lorena Záwate, Ottawa; April 2016, on the TNOC website).

• Informal settlements, or decentralized habitats, are places of great cultural richness and living skills. But they tend to be criminalized, as Lorena Záwate explains in the article linked above: “In academic and government documents, “informal settlements” is the label typically applied to these areas. That those communities are not in compliance with building norms and property and urban planning regulations is often given as the main reason for qualifying them as “informal”. Also defined as “irregular”, they can easily be called “illegal”, and their inhabitants subsequently criminalized, displaced, and persecuted. From India to South Africa to Ecuador, legal and administrative changes have been made in recent years to give special/ad hoc inspection and demolition powers to local, provincial, and national governments to deal with these neighborhoods and, in theory, to prevent them from growing (in many cases, environmental laws and regulations or urban projects are used as excuses for destroying these settlements).”

• Festivals, such as the Kerrville Folk Music Festival and some small regional Burner events (I’m just naming ones I have directly experienced, although there are many more, such as Bonnaroo, Glastonbury, the main Burningman, and so on), have been joyful experiments in creating what I realized were temporary cities. There’s no reason why they couldn’t be permanent. There are many important caveats to help keep things from descending into the bad kind of chaos. But when it works, it really works. People build a wide array of regenerative skills both “hard” and “soft” at these festivals. Skills ranging from conflict resolution, NVC, acupuncture, counseling; to improvising shade structures, harvesting rainwater, gardening, arborculture, flood-control micro-earthworks, and generating electricity.

• Christiania Free Town in Copenhagen Denmark is a longtime famous informal settlement/anarchist community. I heard that in recent years, though, they found themselves overwhelmed with drug dealing and other violent crime, and they ended up calling in the police and other central authorities to try to manage things. This may have just been a reflection on the creeping authoritarianism in greater society. Fear drives us to seek central authority. I even feel the tendency in myself at times. On a personal note, when I was living in Tokyo in the early 1990s, I met a wonderful couple who had come from Christiania. They were so creative, open-hearted, and compassionate.