Category: low-footprint living

(post topic tags: second home; goodwill; community-building)

Here’s another question that came “from the wild” this week. An Internet acquaintance posted this on FB, and I took it upon myself to insert my eco/permaculturist perspective even though I’m pretty sure the questioner is a civilian.

Q: “Any tips on winterizing a house? First time and going to be working on winterizing a house in Maine. Seems like a steep learning curve for someone from Florida.”

My initial response: “Why is a person from Florida winterizing a house in Maine if you’re not going to live in it? I know, I’m nosy but I just can’t help it! I guess what I would do if I were in that position is get help from locals.”

Their response to my response: “We are buying a second home.”

And my answer: “Oh. In that case, I would probably pay a local to do the winterizing work (and/or pay them to show me how), and also allow a local to stay on the property rent-free as caretaker.”

(post topic tags: ethical finance; questions from the wild)

This one is “from the wild,” so to speak; someone in my circles posted this on their personal page and I took it upon myself to provide my answer.

Question: “What brokerage do you use/prefer for your financial management and investments? I’m deciding between Schwab and Fidelity.”

My response:

Because of certain eco-spiritual beliefs that I hold, I completely refrain from investing in financial instruments. (Especially anything tied to Wall Street.)

However, I have a Permaculture design colleague who has done some deep research into ethical investing options, including many localized investment funds etc., and I think you and many other people in our shared circles might find it helpful to check out her website.

Laura Oldanie offers a huge wealth of free content too, along with her books and classes and personalized sessions. Visit her at Rich Resilient Living, https://www.richandresilientliving.com

As Laura words it: “I teach reluctant capitalists how to cultivate true wealth & financial resilience on a climate challenged planet.”

Yes, the original motivation of my book & blog is to provide guidance for fellow humans seeking to lower their eco footprint.

And, I myself am a staunch eco activist. However, the DEEP GREEN truth is that most of my choices are not motivated solely — or even primarily — by environmental concerns.

The fact is that I consider foot, bicycle, and bus, and train to be BY FAR the best modes of transportation, superior to the private automobile for numerous reasons!!

Less expensive, less risky, less brittle, more social, and better for physical and mental health.

On a personal note, public transportation made it possible for an Internet friend and me to meet up in person.

I immensely enjoyed walking over the bridge on a beautiful day to the main Votran transit station to meet up with fellow activist Jennifer H., who had traversed the county by bus to come do an errand in this area. And just like that, an Internet friend becomes a face-to-face friend too!!

Walking really is transportation, exercise, and internal medicine for me.

The various components of my day yesterday were beautifully stitched together by foot transport. Some writing and landscaping tasks in the morning, then walking to meet up with my friend at the bus station.

Then walking onward to meet up with a close friend for lunch. (And then we drove together in his car to while away the afternoon in one of our favorite pubs. Note, my pal doesn’t drink alcohol, so no drinking and driving was involved.)

And then later in the afternoon, walking to an opening reception for a chiropractor who shares office space with my primary-care practitioner, and then to local government Planning Board meeting to participate in the process of deciding things about our city. And then the beautiful walk home over the bridge with the almost-full moon overhead.

Fun fact: the chiropractor and my primary-care practitioner, and the therapist who shares office spaces with them, were first connected via our vibrant Daytona Beach chapter of 1 Million Cups.

Reflecting on yesterday, and what a typical day it was in many ways for me, I am really struck by how much of a difference spending significant amounts of time outside of a car has made in my capacity to make social connections and see things happening around my community.

(Written to one of the many fellow USA-born white people I know who have “escaped” the USA for Mexico or Costa Rica or Belize or some other country where the culture is supposedly nicer, and the living is supposedly easier, than in the harsh, brutal society we have co-created here):

“Sounds like you are happy living in Mexico. It always struck me as strange and a bit sad that people like you and me could decide to go live in Mexico, while apparently for so many Mexicans it has become unsafe and they have felt compelled to flee their own homeland. It doesn’t make sense to me. Probably way too big a subject to fit into an email.”

Admittedly, the society we were born into is harsh and brutal. But we share responsibility for co-creating that. And using our privilege to “escape” from it as opposed to using our privilege to help fix the mess is not going to work.

My personal opinion is that we should not feel at all OK about being able to buy ourselves some measure of security, and/or financial luxury, or cultural warmth, by moving to another country where the people are worse off than us. It’s doubly galling when the citizens of that country are having to flee their own homeland because of political violence, climate extremes, or something else life-threatening.

Same goes for USA mainlanders moving to Puerto Rico or Hawaii.

Park & Ride shuttle = smart transportation solution for game day!

On Bethune-Cookman University’s Homecoming game day Oct 14, BCU partnered with Daytona International Speedway to provide free park & ride shuttle service to Daytona Stadium.

This was arranged because the stadium parking was expected to sell out (and did).

But it was also great for anyone who wanted to attend the game but doesn’t have a car! That stadium is not accessible by bicycle, public transport, or foot.

(Well, you could walk or bicycle, but trust me, you wouldn’t want to, as there are no sidewalks or even a shoulder on the road. I did try to bicycle the length of LPGA once, and ended up pushing my bike along the roadside for a couple of miles while cars going 70mph roared by.)

Hooray for the park & ride!! I hope they will keep doing it in future years.

(And, for the long term, I will keep pushing for a shoulder and sidewalk to be added all along LPGA. Those basic essential transportation upgrades should take priority over any addition of more car lanes.)

Thank you to The Daytona Times for this article about the park & ride.

Nobody should be running leaf blowers at four in the morning. They are awful at any hour but four in the morning is just… <vomit emoticon>

And, with our tax dollars. Just no.
Always happens during biker events. (Not the bikers’ fault). Every morning starting promptly at 4 AM.

When government does something, the practice is implicitly legitimized and spreads out to become social norm. Not really a norm we want to spread in this case.

The leaf blowing will go on every morning starting at 4 AM for the duration of the event. A good example of how machinery has just expanded the amount of work people are expected to do, and has ratcheted up the expectations for (in this case) how “clean” the ground is expected to be. It’s the outdoors though; it’s not our living room.

The fumes are awful. The so-called “cleanliness” is only in the visual dimension, as the noise pollution and air pollution caused by this unnecessary work are very obvious.

That seems to be a characteristic of modern life; the emphasis on visual neatness. (I wonder if that’s a side-effect of people mostly viewing the world from behind the closed window of a climate-controlled car or building.)

It’s still going on a half hour later.

When permaculture co-originator Bill Mollison referred to unnecessary work as a form of pollution, he was right in more ways than one!

PS. If you know what ancient communication platform the title of this post is a reference to, you might be old like me, haha! If you get this reference, email me or text me to receive a special prize.

Good morning! My solar oven is now once again pointed at the sun. (I just now turned it around to optimize the morning rays, as I was using it in afternoon-oriented mode yesterday to heat some water to clean a greasy pan. Heated the water right in that same greasy pan, easy peasy!)

A friendly couple from California passed by yesterday and commented on the oven and the landscaping. We had a nice chat.

I may bake some soda bread later. The tourists are in town for Biketoberfest and I like to maximize the fun / educational function of my house on its corner lot. We get a lot of foot traffic here.

When I was a kid, I vaguely remember seeing or reading about some transparent mini house that was set up on a very busy street corner like in NYC or something.

The idea was that the occupants going about their everyday lives would be observed by passersby. I kind of feel that way about my house — although obviously my house doesn’t have transparent walls. The “transparent” part is all along the sidewalk, and if I’m outside doing stuff I’m sort of like a human ant in an Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm (ha ha, remember those?)!

Behind the scenes, my little 1950 block house provides a cozy refuge for three people (or however many people are here at any given moment).

Outside, along the sidewalk, it’s a low-footprint-living demonstration site on a busy street corner, casually showing ideas for cool fun practical thrifty green living.

Want to see pics? Go here!

And here you can see pics of my publicly viewable outdoor food prep area. I am tucked away on my front porch, yet in view of passersby.