Return from Ohio Part II - Famous Folk

My favorite moment at the whole conference was after I spoke, a woman I'd met earlier at the conference came up to me and said, "I had no idea you were *someone.*" I think that describes a lot of the experience for me - until sometime Sunday mid-morning, I was essentially travelling incognito among the famous (not Oprah famous, but definitely peak oil famous). Quite reasonably, no one but Pat had any idea who I was (and realistically, if you had any idea who I was that still wouldn't tell you anything important). I have no book. I have a teeny website that went up last week and remains partly unreadable because of technical difficulties. I was there because Pat liked my writing style and took a chance on the possibility that I could speak too. And I'm tremendously grateful that he did. But I'm still not "someone" in the sense that the kind lady meant it. (BTW, if the people I'm writing about aren't famous to you, here's their info, so you can follow along http://www.communitysolution.org/06conf2.html)

But the serious someones were out in force. Let me start with the person who was the absolute highlight of the conference for me - Peter Bane. I think we were 20 minutes into the speakers dinner when it became clear to me that I had fallen deeply, passionately in love with Peter. Fortunately for Eric, Peter's partner Keith (who is just as wonderful) and probably the gentleman himself, this was the kind of love that makes you want to get down and worship someone as a god, rather than anything more earthy. When Peter Bane speaks, you get TRUTH - capital letters truth. And unlike every single other person at the conference who, no matter how deeply committed they were to telling everyone about peak oil (and they were), was selling something - a worldview, books, a website, etc... (I do not exclude myself - I was selling a perspective). Peter wasn't. He has things to sell - he and Keith do courses, which I can only imagine are amazing, and of course, he's the editor of Permaculture Activist Magazine. But while he answered questions about his magazine and other enterprises readily enough, but there was no agenda, just wisdom that he was passing along as fast as it could flow out of him. I don't really know how to describe what was different about Peter than everyone else there - and anyone who can put their finger on it better than I should definitely try - but it was one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen. If you ever have a chance to hear him speak or take one of his classes, do.

Probably the biggest star of the event was Vicki Robin. Now I have to confess something. I went into this assuming that she would be a lightweight - I've read The Book, as it is called, and I thought it was very wise. But most of the representatives of the voluntary simplicity movement that I had met have been in it for purely personal reasons, and never really connected fully to the culture at large, and as far as I could tell, the impact of the movement on our culture of consumption didn't seem perceptible. While I could understand why Pat might invite someone from a related movement who had millions of followers, while I liked *her* personally on sight, I wasn't expecting all that much other than some good advice on frugality.

Boy, oh boy was I wrong. Vicki Robin is a smarter person's Oprah, with a much better sense of humor (and I don't think Oprah is either dumb or humorless, so that's saying something). She was a terrific showwoman, but never anything but sincere. And she looked at us in the audience, read the audience, and gave it what it needed - not only a way to get out of an overpowering inertia, but also a good talking to about self-righteousness. Afterwards, she joked that I should kiss her feet - and I'd have been glad to. Because I've never seen 250ish people lose 10,000lbs off their shoulders in an hour before. After Vicki spoke, everyone straightened up, shook their heads and was ready to *go forward* - that sense that they could go on from where they were was of inestimable value, and she deserved all the foot kissing she wanted.

Now of course, like any peaker, the three people I was most excited to meet were Richard Heinberg, Julian Darley and especially David Orr. In a purely technical sense I met David Orr - I was introduced to him. But at the speakers dinner he was at the other table, and after that I never quite worked up the nerve to go chat him up. Which is really too bad because David Orr is one of the most wonderful and brilliant of all agrarian writers, really just a shadow below Wendell Berry.

That said, I really didn't like his speech much. Despite its attempts to talk about the root of the problems we're facing, I think it got bogged down in partisanisms and laying blame. Nothing he said was untrue, but it didn't take me anywhere I needed to go, personally. But I was thrilled I got to hear him.

Richard Heinberg is a very, very polite man. We stayed across the hall from one another, and he managed very quickly when Pat Murphy introduced me to him, to lie and say he'd heard of me (Suuuuuurrre.) Later on, when I think he might actually have placed the face to the fact that I was on the stage too, he was kind enough to praise my talk and not run screaming away when I first lobbied him about putting education and agitprop more seriously on the agenda for peak oil (more about that later), and then asked him to consider taking off his shirt for a camera for my randomly generated idea of "The Men of Peak Oil Calendar" (which I still think is a good idea - more on that later too!) He is also a terrific violinist. Those are the only things I can say about him personally, since neither conversation lasted more than 3 minutes. As a speaker he was very good, very graceful, even unveiling something that was both very important and a little boring on some level (oil depletion protocols - we need to know this stuff, it is very important, he's written a book about it and we should all read it, but 40 minutes of powerpoint, after 40 prior minutes of power point, all first thing in the morning was a bit long). This was not Heinberg's fault so much as the structure of the conference's. And it wasn't the conference's fault either, because we need this information - I think we just needed a step aerobics class in the middle or something to get everyone moving (yeah, right, like I would ever do that).

Julian Darley preceded Richard Heinberg. In a personal sense, I would say that Julian Darley seems like one of the most over-extended people in human history. Despite that, he's very nice. Much, much, much nicer than I could be if I had as many balls in the air as he did, and as many people who want to add more balls. And he handled his over-extension astonishingly well - not only are all these balls in the air, but he's juggling with both hands and feet.

I managed to irritate him during the first 2 minutes of our acquaintance during the speaker's dinner (he was late after a bad day, trying desperately to stuff down his first meal of the day before the keynote address, and I was caught up in a prior discussion, and accidentally
baited him a little at a bad moment - my fault, not his). The very first thing he said to me, having caught my statement that I have four kids was "Have you Read a Book Called _Maybe One_?" (Yes, I'd read it - for those not in the know it is Bill McKibben's account of why he and others should only have one child, and it is quite good. As you know if you read the blog, I'm not trying to pretend the population issue doesn't exist or that I'm not culpable - much more on that later, too). I think this may be a new personal record - I've never before ticked off a famous person enough to have them be rude to me in under 2 minutes (please note the modifier "famous" here - I've ticked off regular folk in under 2 *seconds* ;-). His was definitely the most obvious "And who are you and why should I be polite to you" moment. I'm actually kind of glad it worked out that way, because it is a much funnier story this way.

But I did have a chance to both watch Julian Darley speak and to talk to him several other times, and I was impressed by his genuine commitment to live as sustainably as possible given his job(s), by his really astonishing range of knowledge about nearly everything, and about the fact that he may be the only person that I've seen in the peak oil movement who fully gets how mainstream this is about to be, and how many ways this is going to have to play out. He's quite astonishing, and he handles 50 new proposals every 20 minutes with grace and style. The talk was again, a bit too much crammed into a little. I think the problem is that it is a fairly new thing for peak oil speakers not to have to explain the problem to their audience - for so long Heinberg and Darley have been speaking to people who are only just getting it, and all of a sudden, there's a critical mass of people who understand and are ready for the next move. And to both Heinberg and Darley's credit, they are ready with next moves - the Oil Depletion protocol Heinberg has worked out with Colin Campbell, the smart jitney program he and Pat Murphy put together, and all the thousands of projects Julian Darley is juggling between Global Public Media, Post-Carbon Institute and the relocalization project are exactly what is needed, on both grassroots and policy levels. They are keeping ahead of the curve on what they have to offer (think about how rare that is - if they were rock and roll musicians, they'd be Paul Simon and Madonna, not the Beach Boys, playing the same stuff at the state fair). But I think they are still trying to explain peak oil a bit too much. On another note, I regret, since I didn't get to talk to Darley again after my talk, I have nothing to report on his willingness or unwillingness to strip at least partially naked for the cause ;-).

I admired Richard Olson from afar, which was a great pity, because he was a terrific speaker and the things he is doing at Berea College are astounding - and like Jeff Christian, they aren't building houses for the priveleged, but bringing sustainability to the poor. I think that big old economic issue - how do we get down away from the relatively educated and priveleged - is going to be a huge deal, and Richard Olson is doing it right now (along with his wife who I did chat with briefly). I never even shook hands with Jeff Christian - he was there and he wasn't, and we passed in the night. Pity that.

Bob Brecha was my fellow non-celebrity, and I'm so grateful he was there. He's local, and we got to see the strawbale house he built, which was amazing. He's a good guy, fun to argue with, and he gave a really nice, solid presentation - at least the 1/2 of it I saw. I ducked out to drink tea with my old grad school friends who were in town, and missed some of it. I got the sense at the end, as I came back, that 3 engineer/scientist types talking about building in a row may have been a mistake in terms of excitement levels, but that's hardly his fault. He should be more famous in the peak oil movement than he is - a lot more. I think after his talk, he was.

As for me, I think it went fairly well. It was clear early on that Peter Bane and I were going to be saying some of the same things. As Peter spoke, it became clear that my talk was essentially a faint subset of his, and had to go in the trash. So while he talked I scribbled this sad little outline, and got up and ranted for a while. And people clapped, and said it was good. So I guess I got my five minutes of being somebody. Fortunately, my ego did not overflow, because when I came home, Simon told me, "Your job is to take care of *me*" - ie, I'm somebody already, and let's not forget precisely who - the one who cooks lunch.

Next post - Pat, Megan, Faith and why you should go next year.

Sharon

Back from the Community Solutions Conference - Part I

A Report from the Community Solutions Conference : Part I - the non-famous people

Well, first I have to say how glad I am to be home. I think Eric was faintly worried that all
the attention would turn my head, and home with its clutter and long list of chores would pale by comparison. But I actually was dying to come home and get to work on all the new projects and ideas that the wonderful people at the conference inspired. I missed my little boys terribly, and got very, very sick of my breast pump. Not to mention that I missed Eric terribly - I think a happy marriage can best be described as the perfect person to make all your jokes and snide comments to, and life without that is very pale indeed.

The trip was great - something big only fell off the plane once, and thankfully it was already on the ground, so we lived. That’s really all I hope for from the airline industry these days. And Yellow Springs OH is a really cool place - if Pat will hire me to be Megan’s slave and Antioch will hire Eric, we’d move in a heartbeat (well…) I especially was thrilled to meet several local CSA farmers, including the famous Andrew, who had been mentioned and described to me at least half a dozen times by the time I actually ran into him on Saturday. He’s already doing more with his farm than I am, and the thing I love best about him is that he’s mad as hell (in fun way) about all the right things, in all the right ways. Since I have a little outrage problem myself, I was thrilled to meet him! I’m also mentally collecting people - I suspect the peak oil movement is going to need a lot of new, different kinds of public figures really soon, and Andrew struck me as someone who could matter a lot (and not just because I want him to pose for my “men of peak oil” fund raising calender - btw, I wish I’d had a camera when I asked Richard Heinberg!). There’s a moral seriousness and authenticity to him that is potentially important.

I must now begin a series of apologies to people I met, adored, want desperately to meet again, and I still can’t remember their names. I’m sorry - I’m like that. I remember about 1/50th of people who name themselves to me, and sometimes it takes several tries for me to get it. Please understand that this in no way is a reflection of my liking or esteem for you, just my own neurological failings.

Larry and his partner, whose name I’ve lost, even though I met her several times (aaaggghhh) were kind enough to drive me back and forth from the Dayton airport, and they impressed me as two of the most practical and clear-eyed people out there. They aren’t sentimental (that’s a compliment from me, btw - I’m not incapable of sentimentality, but it isn’t my favorite characteristic) and Larry especially was extremely perceptive. I would never have noticed that part of Richard Heinberg’s effectiveness was that he has perfect pitch (as does Bill Clinton, according to Larry, something else I didn’t know). The two of them are living a low key, sustainable life in a small, depressed city near Yellow Springs (YS is pricey), and doing it for reasons in part of economic necessity. They are doing all the right things, with no hype and no fuss, and that in itself is admirable. Unlike me, they aren’t proclaiming things from the rooftop, just pointing out how simple and practical it is.

I met many other wonderful people - a man who is planning on transforming a large chunk of his Ontario farm into a permaculture farm, and who immediately connected me with someone who could answer questions about horses. There was the very sweet gentleman with the public health background who was speaking very seriously about zero population growth until I embarrassed him by asking him if he was telling me all this because of the number of children I have (he wasn’t, and it would have been ok even if he had ). There were several couples who read me on ROE2 or ROE3, who came up and told me how very excited they were to meet me. While I was deeply flattered, I hope they went and met some of the really important and famous people there, who merited a great deal more excitement than me.

I met people who had been in the environmental movements and energy movements not for years, but for decades. I met a lovely Amish gentleman who knows more about almost everything I want to know than I do, and who sadly kind of got shafted in the end because short time compelled us to move on from his legitimate question about patriarchy (the shafting was my fault in part - I made a joke out of it, which I often do, but I don’t think I sufficiently acknowledged that I think patriarchal and hierarchical structures are a real issue that deserves discussion). I met people who farm with horses, build amazing houses (one woman showed me the most gorgeous tiny house she designed for herself, and I immediately wanted to move in!), and people who know about almost everything.

I call it human google - want to know the answer to a question? Want to know about land trusts? Tillage equipment for small draft horses? Bicycle powered-washing machines? Ferments for beer? Hand-spindling angora? How much biodiesel it would take to keep the airlines running? What kind of solar greenhouse is best? Turn around and ask the person next to you. If they don’t know, they’ll find the person who does - on average, I think it took less than 3 minutes to answer any single question I had at any given time.

There were so many wonderful other people, and I can’t talk about them all, but I do want to mention Aaron Newton. First of all, he gave me his card the first day, and I didn’t look at it carefully until this morning - he’s *THAT* Aaron, of the powering down blog (www.powering down.blogspot.com) - he’s a terrific writer and thinker, and I’ve actually been reading him for a while, but never made the connection. He’s also an editor of a new Environmental magazines, www.groovygreen.com (also well worth checking out). He’s an absolute delight as a conference buddy - we're both shy about approaching people, and so we strategized together. And he’s my personal pick for the charismatic face of peak oil phase 2, the part where we need a bunch of new figures who can present the message in a way that is compelling to a mainstream audience. I’ve been watching for a while, and despairing that I hadn’t seen anyone (besides Megan Quinn, of course, who is already there) who was fairly young, smart and had the gift of connecting to people. Aaron’s got that, and if I have any role at all in determining who helps introduce the rest of America to this, he’s going to be in it (not that I’ve mentioned this to Aaron - oops, guess I just did!) His wife asked him if he’d picked up a lot of crazy ideas at the conference - well, she has no idea how crazy *my* ideas are.

Ok, on to the famous people next time I get a chance!

Sharon

Website is Up!!

Thanks to Sandy, my wonderful and noble neighbor, the preliminary form of my website www.ourvictoryathome.com is now up and running. There will be much, much more soon. The goal is to encourage people who haven't traditionally been engaged by the peak oil and environmental movement to see themselves as potential participants in saving the world and our nation. And the stakes really are just that high. I welcome comments, critiques, question, anything. You can respond here, or send them to me at sharondownonthefarm@yahoo.com

Thanks,

Sharon, who promises much more as soon as she returns from Ohio

Peak Oil and Credibility

http://www.aspo-usa.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=49&Itemid=9

There's an interesting list here of all the people who believe in peak oil. I don't offer this as an attempt to persuade anyone, although I've always thought that anything that Michael Moore and Dick Cheney agree on must at least be worthy of consideration. But I do offer it as a bit more proof being the raving chick on the blog may make me nuts, but I'm in interesting company.

ASPO, by the way, is the most serious and dignified of the peak oil groups. If you look at the list of speakers, they are almost all very respectable, very important, very knowledgeable. They also pretty much all have penises. I tend to think of ASPO as the penis conference - not in a bad way, precisely, but as something that focuses on the manly attributes of peak oil - energy depletion curves, large scale economic planning, the hard science of alternative energy. All of those things are important, and the people who are bringing them to us are doing urgent work. Many of them have paid a price in credibility for supporting where their data takes them, and I'm mostly not making fun of them, even gently.

But I do want to point one thing out - this is a conference with a stated agenda - they want to talk to the elite managers, leaders and thinkers (and they say so on the conference page). This is not a conference designed to create bottom up change, or to attract and engage people who haven't fully connected to peak oil, except perhaps rich, priveleged, highly educated ones. I admire many of the speakers deeply, and am grateful to ASPO for the information it passes out and the programs it runs. I look forward to the conference. But I also believe that a solution to peak oil will never be a top-down process, created by the Elite and run for people with penises and portfolios. If we're to transform our culture, the work of that transformation must come from ordinary people who demand it because it is right and because it is necessary.

I'm going to ASPO, I suggest you do too. But I also suggest that while you are there, you do as I do, and point out that true revolution comes from the bottom up, not the top down, and includes people without stock portfolios, ph.ds and penises ;-).

Sharon

Astronomers are Weenies

Ok, except for the one I'm married to. But I feel a need to express this point of view, speaking as the mother of a space obsessed kindergartener (not to mention the mother of a 2 1/2 year old who tags along on all his big brother's obsessions), about the demotion of Pluto. Astronomers are major weenies. As I understand (and DH teaches history of space exploration, and thus is something of an expert) it there was no true, compelling reason to demote Pluto - scientifically it was equally possible to expand the definition of planets or contract it. Neither had much effect on anything, except certain obscurist elements of astronomical terminology, and on the pedagogy of space for kids and young adults. And thus, the Union of Astronomical Twits chose to demote Pluto, rather than expand the definition of planet in such a way as to actually teach people something about what makes a planet. We might have included Ceres, and children might have needed to learn about the asteroid belt, what makes a planet a planet, etc... Instead, we all now get to take our model solar systems, and add a little notation that Pluto doesn't really count - and neither does the newly named Eris, Ceres or anything else.

Speaking as someone whose four year old and 2 year old knows the names and/or numbers of all the moons of Jupiter (Do you? Nope, me neither), I find the claim that we're all better off with a narrower canon of objects being called by the dignification "planet" lest we be unable to learn their names, umm...stupid. We're dumbing down our solar system. This is, I think a sign of the apocalypse.

In the past I've noted that an astronomer/astrophysicist a la my husband is a handy fellow to have around in an apocalypse, or at least a whole lot of science fiction novels include an astrophyisicist who saves the world. If you have a comet racing towards you, or a the earth is being wrenched out of its orbit, fiction would suggest that an astronomer is just what you need to save the world. That, of course, is why I married my husband - so I could keep him handy in case of cometary collision. However, the recent course of events has forced me to revise my opinion of at least some astronomers. They are weenies. If they expect us to keep them around in case of sudden space-borne disaster, they'd better shape up.

Sharon

Cookbooks for the Future

As an inveterate cookbook collector, I'm aware that a lot of my beloved books about food, food history, and food culture aren't goingto be all that useful after peak oil. In fact, many of them aren't all that useful to me now, much as I enjoy reading them. Most cookbooks emphasize fancy, elaborate cooking that takes a long time, involves combining odd or unlikely (certainly unseasonable) combinations, and have a heavy emphasis on foods that are likely to be unusual treats or festival food in the future - cakes, large roasted animals, etc... But there are some that I truly use now, and expect to continue using in the long term. I thought I might list some off, in hopes of inspiring others to do the same (after all, I need more cookbooks...really.) These are the books I know that I think can genuinely help people make the connection between the food they grow and the food available to them and what we really eat.

I'm going to assume that nearly everyone owns _The Encyclopedia ofCountry Living_, Carla Emery's recipe bible that begins her noodle recipes with "first, till the soil..." I was lucky enough to be Carla's friend (I miss her still) and part of a group that tested recipes for her. I tested quite a lot of them. I have to say some of the recipes are straight out dreadful. Others are really good. But there are recipes for everything, few call for exotics or out of season combinations, and most, if not perfect in themselves are good jumping off points - they operate as ideas about how to cook and eat sustainably.

Another book I consider a basic staple is Doris Janzen Longacre's _More with Less Cookbook_ - conceived by the Mennonite Central Committee as a way to help people eat more sustainably and ethically, it is effectively a Joy of Cooking for the poor, plain and frugal. It is a bit dated, and some of the ethnic recipes are not very authentic (_Extending the Table_ part of the same series, is a much better source of ethnic recipes and an excellent cookbook in its own right), but for staple food recipes, Longacres' is one of the best.

Totally unlike the pragmatic conscience of the two previous books is a new favorite of mine (a gift from my MIL), _Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations_ - it is a pretty hardcover, designed to appeal to the kind of people who buy cookbooks and try three recipes in their Calphalon kitchen. A few of the recipes are of the fussy type - I suspect even before peak oil I am quite unlikely to ever stuff and roast a quail with black walnuts, white sage and adobe bread. But by and large, this book is a slightly modernized three sisters cookbook, with additional recipes for desert foods like cactus pads and prickly pears. I don't live in a desert climate, but I've rarely seen so many wonderful recipes for corn, squash, hot peppers and beans. The meat section emphasizes game and includes recipes for jerky. The sunflower cakes were a huge hit with my kids last summer, and the garbanzo bean stew is totally delicious. Definitely worth looking past the fancy cover.

Another cookbook that would be easy to overlook would be Eileen YinFei Lo's _From the Earth_, a cookbook of Chinese Vegetarian (some fish is involved) recipes. There are lots of recipes in American storage cookbooks for mock meat made from tofu and gluten. Most of them, frankly, suck. They don't taste anything like meat, and they don't taste particularly good, either. On the other hand, if you've ever eaten Chinese Buddhist cooking, you will realize that there exists the perfect fruition of fake meat cookery. It is very,very good. So if you think you may have to make do with soybeans andwheat for dinner any time soon, this is the cookbook to have. That is not to say that everything is a perfect substitute - but the textures are good and the flavors are spectacular. So are all the vegetable recipes I've tried, many of which are for traditional asian vegetables. If you grow these things (and you should), this is worth having. While not all of the recipes are easily adaptable to storage or local foods, most of the sauces can be reproduced. I've had excellent luck, for example, with my first bottles of homemade soy sauce, made by the recipe in Carla Emery's book.

On the other hand, if you want to find more conventional recipes for gluten, the best of the wheat related books I've seen is LeArtaMoulton's _The Amazing Wheat Book_ - not only does she do bulghur, bread, noodles, porridge, etc... but also gluten meats, sweets made from whole grains, even faux non-dairy "ice cream" made from the settled starch after gluten making. I haven't loved everything I've tried here, but the ideas are right, and the recipes work, and can be fixed with a lot more seasoning (blandness is endemic in American cookbooks).

Paula Wolfert's book _Mediterranean Grains and Greens_ is one of the more fascinating cookbooks I own. It is 350 pages of recipes using mostly whole grains and fresh greens. Most Americans would hardly believe it was possible to write such a cookbook, but it is not merely possible, but glorious. Wolfert knows Mediterranean cuisine inside and out, and the recipes are a look into real peasant cuisine - a peasant cuisine that is all the more luxurious because it does so much with so little.

_Please to the Table:The Russian Cookbook_ was written by Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman back when "Russia" was the entire Soviet Union. And while there are recipes here for luxury foods, there are also plenty of simple, cold climate foods that are absolutely delicious, simple and eminently reproduceable in a post-peak future. This was one of the first cookbooks I ever owned, and in college, I ate von Bremzen's Mothers "Super-Quick Vegetarian Borscht" more or less constantly, often with Holubtsi (stuffed cabbage with buckwheat and mushrooms). My family on one side is Polish, and this was the cuisine of my great-grandmother. It is delicious food, but also food suited to cold, wet places like the one I live in.

I've bought 5 copies of Crescent Dragonwagon's _Soup and Bread_cookbook for myself and others since I first acquired it in college, and they keep disappearing. People borrow this book, and it is never seen again. I've given up lending it out, and now I make everyone get their own. It is a very simple concept - recipes for soup made of everything imaginable. Every vegetable, legume, etc... Soups with milk, soups with broth, even a few soups with meat (although the vast majority are vegetarian). And some bread and salad recipes to accompany them. The soups are the centerpiece. Speaking as someone with no southern credentials whatsoever (you can laugh at me for this), her gumbo is spectacular. She has three recipes for zucchini soup, which alone is endearing when you are trying to use the bloody things up. There are 50 different recipes for bean soup. Not everything is sustainable, it certainly isn't designed with peak oil in mind, but the recipes are unfailingly good, and fairly simple. A definite keeper - under lock and key, if necessary.

If I could only have one cookbook, it would be Laurie Colwin's _Home Cooking_ or perhaps her equally indispensible _More Home Cooking_. I like the recipes in these books - I've never made anything from these books I didn't like, and by now I think I've made nearly everything in them (her Damp Gingerbread is the best on earth and Creamed Spinach with Jalapeno Peppers will kill you, but is worth it). But it is her way of thinking about food that is most wonderful - she writes wryly, humorously, warmly about her love of food and the pleasures of eating regular old homemade things. If I met someone who did not cook, and wanted to, these would be the books I would suggest they start out with.

Sylvia Thompson's _The Kitchen Garden Cookbook_ is a pleasure, and she emphasizes making use of what you have. Thus, there is a recipe for using the outer leaves of cabbage, cooked Ceylonese style and one for stuffed stems of chard. We will need to minimize waste in our kitchens in the future, and learning how use these foods is potentially important.

Edna Lewis died not long ago. She was one of the great figures of American cooking. She grew up in a community of farmers, African American descendents of freed slaves, and her _The Taste of Country Cooking_ is an evocative and delicious link to that culture and its cuisine. This is real, seasonal, delicious country food, along with lovely narratives of what the life was like. The food is simple, and if you don't grow your own, you are unlikely to understand what is so beautiful about her emphasis on the natural, real flavors of food.

It is possible that a book on whole grain breadmaking has superceeded _The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_, but if so, I missed it. If youare going to grind your own to make your bread, you need this book.There's definitely an old fashioned, 1970s complete proteins and carob cookies feel to it, but who cares. There are hundreds of recipes for bread products using every kind of grain, and it is well worth having.

If you want really old-fashioned, try _The Little House Cookbook_ byBarbara M. Walker. She's a food historian who went back and found ways of making all the foods in the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I'm not sure how often one would cook out of thisbook, except perhaps as an educational project (we've been doing some of that), but it is an excellent overview of a poor to middle class family's diet 130 yearsago, and how it was shaped by politics, science, and environment. I've only cooked a few things from here, among them the green pumpkin pie (it really does taste kind of like apples) and the buckwheat pancakes. But mostly, I think it gives you a sense of the centrality of food production to everyday life, and what our own lives may be like.

On the subject of books that are only sort-of cookbooks, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Albert Bates's _The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook_ - the couple of recipes I've tried were both quite good. The chick pea patties and the spicy cabbage salad were very good. The book contains a lot more information than this - the recipes are almost a side-note. It is worth having on several fronts - Bates knows a lot, and writes wonderfully. His focus on vegetarian food I think is right on, although I do have my doubts that, say, rum will be vastly more available than eggs. But it is a book well worth having.

Equally valuable, I think is Laura Schenone's _A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove_ which tells the story of women in America throughout history through their food, including recipes. This is a wise and important book, and well worth a read for anyone, even if you never do use any of the recipes - and some of them are very good. Our future is probably somewhere in our past, at least in terms of cooking, and the more we know about that past, the better off we are.

_The Joy of Pickling_ is my favorite book on pickles and lactofermentation, although there are other good ones out there as well, including Bill Mollison's (of permaculture fame) _Ferment and Human Nutrition_ - lactofermentation particularly is an important skill, because lactofermented foods have natural antibiotics specific to ecoli in them. Eating kimchi and sauerkraut with your food can protect you from food poisoning. And nutritionally, lactofermented vegetables are very good for you - not to mention unbelievably delicious. If our future is mostly local food, we are going to want that food to be as tasty as possible, and lactofermentation is one way to make that happen.

I have more to add - this is a subject on which I could go infinitely, because food is my favorite subject, but I think I'll stop for the moment with one addition, _Keeping Food Fresh_, a community food preservation cookbook by thegardeners and farmres of Terre Vivante. This is another must-have book, for it details ways of preserving food used by European farmers for hundreds of years, excluding freezing and canning. Some of the recipes are obvious, dried apples on a string. Most of them are not, and some are methods that get little consideration now, but might yet again, such as preserving meat in wine, home salting of fish, traditional candying, and lacto-fermenting. Some of the combinations, like the apples kept in elderflowers, are truly spectacular. I'm pretty sure the recipes haven't been vetted by the FDA, so use with a grain of salt. But it is worth knowing how people preserved food before the FDA.

I think here I will stop. But I'd welcome more suggestions!

Sharon

Well, someone thinks I'm a grownup, not just a lunatic ;-)

If any of you are even remotely interested, I'm going to be speaking on sustainable agriculture and food security at the Community Solutions Conference on Peak oil. Check them out www.communitysolution.org, and then check out the cool bio and picture of me (yes, I know the website isn't up yet...I'm working on it, I swear!) under the speakers section, here http://www.communitysolution.org/06conf2.html. The conference is this month from the 20th to the 22nd, and I'd love to meet anyone who is interested there!

Wow, I'm kind of amazed to see myself looking so credible. I always thought my fame would come with a mug shot!

Shalom,

Sharon, who is frantically wondering how she can loose 40lbs, so she won't look like a large consumer of resources ;-)!

Scientific Progress goes "Boink"

Most people I know recognize that oil and gas reserves are finite. Most of my friends and family lived through or grew up in the 1970s during the oil shocks, and they always knew we were going to run out...some day. The leap that is intellectually most difficult for people to make isn't to recognition of scarcity, but to recognize the fact that there's no evidence that we can buy our way out of this one.

What most people, including those who believe we need to cut fossil fuel usage dramatically say is something like, "we need to devote a lot of money and energy to researching alternatives to oil and gas." And to a certain degree, of course, they are right. If we're going to blow our GDP on something, improving solar efficiency would be a lot more useful than buying more crap at ChinaMart. But that claim reflects an inability to grasp that alternative fuels may not, in fact probably will not, fix the problem.

We have an unrestrained faith in science and progress - even people who say they don't really believe that if we put our mind and wallets to something, we can fix it. And, after all, we've had a remarkable degree of success in that regard. But we tend to remember the success stories and let slide all the failures, giving us a skewed sense of our own power.

For example, over 30+ years we have devoted at least 28 billion dollars, and untold hours of brain power to research into fusion reactors, and, as Julian Darley points, we're always at least 30 years from creating useful fusion reactors. We have devoted over 100 billion dollars and the whole lives of many scientists to eradicating and eliminating the influenza virus from the earth, with the result that we're no closer than we were before. We have spent over 60 billion dollars world-wide researching and developing wind power, with the result that at this point, wind power produces less than 1% of the world's electricity. While wind generators rose in efficiency by 69% over that time, their efficiency is still many, many times less than burnable fossil fuels. The same could be said of hydrogen - the billions of dollars to create a "hydrogen economy" has left us about as far from having one as we were when we started. Ethanol has consumed even more billions, and it still takes more energy to turn corn into ethanol than the ethanol itself produces - and alcohol manufacture has been gradually refined over the whole of human history, so it isn't exactly a new industry.

The hardest idea to get your brain around on peak oil is that just putting money into research, just getting smart people to think hard isn't going to make magic happen. There are things we can't do - or perhaps we could do them, or could have done them, had we devoted our energies to them when we recognized the problem 30 years ago, but we probably can't do them now.

For example, we probably can't create a solar and wind-based electrical grid. Among other reasons, because doing so requires a major technological breakthrough. Wind is an intermittent power source, as is solar - they only work when the sun shines or the wind blows, and intermittent power sources can destabilize the grid, because we don't really have a good way to store electricity at a lot of seperate sites, as is required for wind farms - even Denmark, which uses more wind power than any country in the world, has capped its wind power at about 15%. Wind provides less than 1/10 of 1% of the total power usage in the US - we'd need 150 times the wind farms we have to get even that 15% up and running, and that would be our maximum for all intermittent sources.

I posted back a while ago a link to the DOE Hirsch report, which evaluates the threat of peak oil to the US. Its essential message is that if we devoted our money and our time and our national will towards resolving the energy crisis for 20 years on the same scale or higher than we worked on WWII, we could avoid ill effects. The problem is that we're much closer to the peak points for oil and natural gas than 20 years - by a decade or so, at least. And we're not putting our energy there.

To convert to nuclear energy would require 500 new nuclear plants, and nuclear plants are extremely time consuming to build (10-15 years), very expensive (costs borne by the tax base) and vulnerable to attack, accident and storage issues. At the moment, there are 0 nuclear power plants in production in the US. So even if we all wanted another several hundred (coming soon to your neighborhood!), we couldn't have them tomorrow. No matter how hard we research, we haven't found a way to turn gold (money) rapidly into nuclear power.

Yes, alternative energy is a good thing. But most alternative energies produce a few times the amount of energy they consume. Oil, gas and coal produce many, many, many times the energy they consume when you burn them. Nothing anyone has proposed offers the return of fossil fuels. And nothing we've done in research for three decades has changed that. Sure, solar efficiency has risen, and we can now make gas from algae...maybe. But scientific progress doesn't have time to save us. And as the economy starts to tank and energy costs eat up more of our reserves, we're going to have to decide. Do we fund scientists looking for the ultimate magic bullet, or do we put our money and time and resources into things like trains for public transport, and insulating our houses so that we can do without oil and gas to heat them.

Part of the problem is that for our whole lives we've been taught to believe in magical economic thinking - free markets will fix it. If we just put our money and energy into it, we can make anything we want happen. But free markets don't have brains, and they don't see things coming. By the time it is cheaper to use solar than buy oil, it will be too late - our economy will be in collapse and we won't be able to afford solar. And as wonderful as our accomplishments and brilliance has been, we keep running up against reality - sometimes we can't fix it, and we can't buy our way out of it. All we can do is live with it.

Sharon

The Alphabet Garden

Eli, Simon and Isaiah have their own garden this year. Last year Simon had a bed in my garden, but this year he has his own (shared with his brothers) right next to their playset, and it has been an enormous success.

Simon like to address the world alphabetically. When he set himself to memorizing the states and their capitals, it was alphabetically. He likes alphabets of places, birds, historical sites - you name it, if it comes in A-Z form, Simon will be pleased. So it shouldn't have surprised me, but did, that Simon insisted on an alphabetical garden. And that's what we did. We had a mix of flowers and vegetables. Here's our list.

A=Angelica
B=Beans (cool purple bush ones)
C=Cucumbers (pickling type, Simon and Isaiah are both pickle addicts)
D=Dianthus (these were picked out at the local garden center)
E= Eggplant (didn't really thrive in the cool, wet weather we've had all summer, but we picked a couple.
F=Flower of an Hour (did poorly)
G=Gourd (birdhouse type)
H=Heliotrope (also known as "vanilla cookie flower" for its scent at our house)
I=Impatiens
J=Johnny Jump Ups
K= Kiss me Over the Garden Gate (which took up way more than its share of space).
L= was supposed to be liatris, which I didn't plant until the bulb had sat in the sun too long, so became Lemon balm
M=Morning Glory - Grandpa Ott's (which tries to take over everything)
N=Nasturtium
O=Okra (we're just about to harvest our first pods - it has been a cool summer here)
P=Pumpkins (jack o lantern type)
Q=Queen Anne's Lace (laboriously transplanted by Mommy who muttered a lot of not too nice things about transplanting weeds into gardens and the lack of better plants beginning with Q)
R=radishes (which no one but Mommy and Daddy really liked, but provide instant gratification)
S= Snapdragons and strawberries (there was some debate)
T=Tomatoes
U=Umbellifarae (sort of cheating, carrots are umbellifarae)
V=Vinca
W= Watermelon (which isn't going to mature, but is exciting to loook at - we only succeed with watermelon in pots or black plastic)
X= X-tra flowers. There's actually some wildflower out there that has a latin name including X, but we got lazy.
Y=Yarrow
Z=Zinnias and Zucchini

Tonight we're eating the last of the purple beans, stir fried with oyster sauce, chicken soup with zucchini and carrots in it, and the last of the alpine strawberries with a bit of sugar and lemon balm. A bouquet of zinnias and snapdragons is on the table. And we're planning next year's garden, which is going to have a colonial American theme, if Simon's attention span for that sticks long enough.

Garden with your kids.

Sharon

The Permaculture of Domesticity Part II - Practice

Now, on from the theory (which is, after all, the easy part), to the practice. Here are some strategies of mine, complete with thestupid things I've done to learn them

-1. Attitude adjustment is probably the first alteration any of us can make. We can choose how we think about domestic labor, how we respond to the activity, at least in a purely mental and emotional sense, and often in a physical one as well. I can think of 2 kinds of attitude adjustment that apply to domestic work. First, there's lowering or altering your standards. Most of us can do this (in my case, further lowering might not be such a good idea), and it can be a considerable time-saver. For example, if you ordinarily wash sheets and towels every week, try stretching it to two weeks or three, and see if there is a significant reduction in quality of life. Clothes can be worn more often before washing, floors can go longer between washings as well. While some jobs (laundry for example) get bigger and less manageable by ignoring them, many things can be put aside for a while.

You might also adjust to less white whites, or a less tidy house. Only you can say where your quality of life is unacceptably diminished. This should not be used, however, for any household work that involves basic hygiene, health issues and safety. So while you could choose to let your floors get grubby in many cases, if you have an infant eating crud off of them, that may not be wise.

Second attitude adjustment can be choosing to enjoy or find satisfaction in work you have previously not enjoyed. People can change their preferences, and can choose to find pleasure in most activities. You might consider taking a chore you particularly dislike and attempting to find a way to enjoy it, either by trying to take pleasure in the process, altering the process to make it more pleasurable, or by deriving satisfaction from the accomplishment. Obviously, there may be some chores that simply can't be readjusted to, either because the activity is in some way stressful or painful, or because no matter how hard you try, you can't come to like it. Some people with physical limitations will have fewer options in this department. But it is worth trying.

I strongly disliked organizing clothing for my four sons. With four kids who grow rapidly, I have boxes of clothing for every size from preemie to boys 12, plus cloth diapers and covers in many sizes, andtracking the clothes, sorting outgrown things, switching them around as the seasons change, mending them, keeping track of what I have and what I need, etc… was time consuming, and, I felt, extremely boring. But I've managed to convince myself, if not to like it, to take a good deal of satisfaction from doing it, simply by, instead of begrudging the time it takes and seeing it as an annoyance, recognizing it for what it is - a useful and necessary job that saves us money and time in the longer term. I still like other things more, but I don't find the job as difficult and intimidating.

A third way of adjusting your own attitude is to think seriously about the requirements of your life, and distinguish carefullybetween wants and needs. The classic example of this is the parent who works full time, but when commute, wardrobe, meals, daycare,etc… are calculated in has a household net loss, or only a tiny gain. (Please note, this is not to say that parents should stay home - this is merely an example, so don't get your kidneys in an uproar, as DH's grandmother liked to say). For example, if you dislike dusting, perhaps you could choose to have fewer dustable objects, or to keep them in closed boxes, even if there was some slight inconvenience.


2. After attitude adjustment, the next lowest input thing to do about household work is to find ways to either do chores with others, or to get others to help with difficult or distasteful projects. The most obvious such method, if you have kids, is to train them to help out. The difficulty with this is that teaching children to do things is, in the short term, inevitably much more time consuming (although it can be fun) than just doing it yourself. After a while this ceases to be so, but many parents find it difficult to build time into their daily lives to teach their kids the necessary skills. Planning for this, accepting the short-term reduction in efficiency, and adapting to it is usually worth the hassle. Even very small kids can help out if you give them time to learn how.

The same is true of getting a spouse or other family member to take on an job they have traditionally not done. It is worth noting, however, that it helps not to be over-committed to a single technique. Many people who would willingly take over X job are turned off by someone insisting that it be done exactly X way and to X's standards. Women are, I think, particularly guilty of the sin of over management.

For large scale chores, involving other members of your community, or friends and extended family might improve the experience. For example, my extended family on one side has at times had an annual "work-weekend" where once per year, the entire family descended upon one of the members who owns a home and devotes a long weekend to making repairs or completing major projects. The whole thing is considered enjoyable by everyone - the homeowner provides accommodations, food and materials, and everyone enjoys being together. Everyone eventually gets a turn. We're working on build a neighborhood coop, which functions in the same way, volunteering once per month to help each family get a big work project done.

Also, the simple act of working together can provide a tremendous degree of satisfaction. Cooking can be an unpleasant job if it takes you away from your family and isolates the cook in the kitchen. The same job is quite enjoyable when done with a partner, a friend, or even a child helping. Simple proximity to one another makes big jobs much more manageable in many cases. Finding ways to bring people into the kitchen when you have guests, or to make whatever job you are doing part of the life of your household can make an enormous difference. One neighbor I know has her children read aloud to her while she cleans - they get practice reading, the family hears a story together, and everyone has a good time.

3. The next most significant way to reduce labor sustainably is to experiment with time and energy costs. Most of us have a built in set of assumptions about what constitutes labor, and what constitutes labor savings, what is efficient, what is easy and what is difficult, andwhat the best uses of one's time and energy are. But these assumptions may not be correct, and can only be verified by experimentation. It is not at all uncommon to assume that that one thing is faster than another, only to realize that it is quite the opposite - our own perceptions are shaped by what we expect to find. Want to know how much time it takes you to do a load of laundry by hand, compared to the washing machine? Try it. But not just once - try it three or four different times, in as many ways as you can think of. Think about ways in which you can make the process more efficient. The next time you chop an onion, do it a different way than you usually do. Don't take for granted that labor-saving devices actually are. Some are. Some aren't. For example, my husband and I were given an electric citrus juicer as a wedding gift, and we rather unthinkingly used it for a while, until one day my husband got frustrated and said, "I could do this faster with a lemon reamer." Well, what do you know - he could. The same is true for me of the dryer - I can just as easily hang laundry as transfer it over, clean the lint filter and earn the money to pay for the electricity.

When you calculate labor-savings, make sure that all labor required to buy, maintain, use, clean, repair, store and tend to the item is included. For example, my husband and I don't drink coffee, but keep a coffee maker around for guests. Because the coffee maker is stored in an inconvenient place (which makes sense since the convenient ones are for things we actually use regularly), the time spent climbing upon the step-ladder and pulling the box down, cleaning the parts which get dusty between uses, etc.... make it a surprisingly time-consuming project. I suspect a press-style glass coffee maker which could also be used for tea (which we drink a lot of) would be more efficient (although I've not done anything about it), even if making coffee that way were slightly more work.

4. Design your infrastructure to accommodate *your* needs. If you are going to spend money and energy on your domestic life, try and reduce labor by adapting your home and work space to the way you actually live, rather than based on the assumptions builders and the consumer culture make about how people ought to live. A one-time investment of non-renewable energy that makes things easier, or quicker, or enables you to consume less is always probably worth while. Looking carefully at how you actually use things can make things more efficient - for example, if you use one set of bowls for mixing bread, it might make sense to also keep other bread-related materials right next to them. If you can't stand for very long, setting up your kitchen so that you can sit while working there simply makes sense.

Most kitchens are designed for women, whose average height is about5'5. At 6' and with a 6'2 husband, and children who promise to be quite tall (6 year old oldest is already 4'5), one of my dreams is a kitchen with counters properly designed for tall people. In the meantime, we've put a couple of blocks of wood on top of the existing counters so that we don't have to bend uncomfortably while chopping things. For a shorter than average person, lower counters, or alower work area (a simple butcher block, for example) might makesense.

My children get dressed downstairs, under the supervision of their father every morning, but for quite a while I was washing their clothes downstairs, hanging them outside, then carrying the clothing upstairs to be put away, because upstairs was where we had room for the dressers. But that meant that laundry had to be carried upstairs to be stored, and then down again to be worn. We put up a long set ofopen shelves in our largest downstairs closet, and now all the children's clothing is out on those open shelves, and I no longer carry their clothes up and down stairs (I haven't yet adapted this system to my husband and I, but I'm thinking about it, since we can perfectly well get dressed downstairs too. This is, frankly, one of the best things I've done - it is an enormous time saver, and it cuts the mess, since I often had laundry baskets sitting at the bottom of the stairs waiting to go up.

5. Get the right tool for the job, and learn how to do the job well. Learn how to use and maintain the tools well. Before using non-renewables, try developing skill at using renewable techniques and human-powered tools. Do what you need to develop the physical skills needed to do things well and easily. Everyone find unfamiliar work time consuming and stressful - it takes time to become quick and comfortable with any kind of work. Anyone who has ever seen a professional chef chop a clove of garlic and someone without the same skills laboriously peel and slice the same clove knows that there are a lot of bad ways to do domestic chores. But there are few domestic skills that truly require talent - they mostly need practice. So practice, practice, practice. Learn to handle a knife, to do laundry by hand efficiently (ie, to get most of the cleaning done by soaking, rather than scrubbing), how to use a hammer well, or wash dishes quickly. Watch other people do these chores. Think about ways to increase your own comfort and efficiency. And do them the hard way enough times that you find yourself looking for ways to make things easier.

If you are going to invest in a tool for whatever job you want to do, get a good one. Cheap shovels are not worth the cost. In many cases, a non-electric tool of high quality will be much cheaper than a powered one of low quality, and the difference may not be as great as you think. In fact, the non-electric tool is often better. If the powered tool is superior, get as much use out of it as possible, while using it as efficiently as possible - for example, wash your clothes whenever possible in cold water. You can't really do this with a wringer washer, and it is one of the virtues of the electric washing machine - clothes will get clean without water heating. On the other hand, the wringer might make sense for able bodied people who do only a few laundry loads a week, or during the winter if you can heat water as part of radiant floor or wood heat.

My one experience with a wringer washer was pretty dreadful - I actually preferred using a soak and rinse method of hand washing. But I've since heard from several people that swingle-handledwringer washers are quite easy on the body and low in effort. I'm looking forward to trying one, and seeing if the tool makes a difference.

6. Integrate the waste products. It doesn't take a lot of effort to re-route your pipes so that your grey water (ie, water used in showers and sinks, but not toilets) goes for irrigation or toilet flushing, and yet it makes a dramatic difference in water usage. If you have food scraps, feed something with them (garden,worms, chickens, rabbits, goats, whatever). Even apartment dwellers can have worms or a pet rabbit. Compost your humanure if possible - it doesn't take a fancy composting toilet in most places, just a commode, two buckets and a place to do it. It really isn't gross at all, and the product doesn't smell. Read John Jenkins's _The Humanure Handbook_ before you run away. Or, if you grow things, at least pee in a bucket during the growing season and dilute it 10-1 to feed your plants. Seriously - people pay a lot of money for dehydrated pee for their gardens in the form of urea - you make it for free! Why waste it?

Most parts of food plants commonly wasted have potential uses - as dyes, animal feeds, fiber, extra food for your plate, etc… Use them up. Make your own non-toxic cleaners if you don't already, as well as beauty products. I know that sounds overwhelming, but it is as simple as putting vinegar in a jar in many cases. Only put into your system (your body, your household system, your town, your nation, your world) the things you want to take out of them.

7. If you don't love it or need it, there is no reason to own it. We're all storing things for the future, and it can be hard to distinguish between necessity and junk. But every possession takes energy to manage - it has to be cleaned, dusted, stored, serviced,attended to. You pay rent or a mortgage or taxes on a house big enough for the stuff. Things demand energy we don't have. So unless you are sure you'll need it, or you care about it, get rid of it. That goes double for things like wall to wall carpeting that not only need maintenance, but need *powered* maintenance.
I have a problem here - I often dither about whether something is truly needed or not. But it is worth making these distinctions to haveless to do. I'm trying to reduce our possessions by ¼ over the next year, and I'm finding it an interesting exercise.

8. Hire people rather than buy stuff. If you can, hire help rather than buying a tool. The money for local help goes into the local economy. Or barter for labor you can't or won't do yourself. Whenever possible, give your resources to someone local, or someone who needs it. So if you need more time to get work or family things done, perhaps you could hire help with the chores, or a mother's helper to play with the kids, or trade labor with a neighbor - you do her most hated job and she'll do yours. Only buy a device or tool if you really need it.

The corollary of this is that most neighborhoods do not need one of everything. You may need a washing machine, and so may your neighbor, but you might not need two between you. Try sharing whenever possible. It took us a while after we moved here to get into the sharing mode with neighbors - sharing is scary, because it involves asking people for things, and trusting them to say "no" or "yes" and building relationships. Now we barter or share quite a few things (at times we've had a shared car with our neighbors, among other things), and we try always to offer more than we take. It is worth the risk, but it does take time and practice and a kind of courage, I think.

9. Keep records! Keep lots of records. Organize. You save time by tracking what you use and what you need, by noting the best way to do things (if you are the forgetful type like me). By sorting and organizing and writing down what is stored where. It always seems like keeping notes adds in time, but the time spent *not* trying to figure something out for the 7th time is well worth it. One trick that works well for me is to have multiple calendars. I buy them cheap at our dollar store, or after we're a few days into the new year. We have one for religious events and family stuff (birthdays, etc…), another is for the garden - what to start, what to harvest, what the temperature was, the first time we saw a blackbird, how many eggs we got. Another calender is for every little daily event - playdates, when the compost guy is coming, travels, etc.. the usual stuff. Then there are the lists in my notebooks - lists of books to find cheaply, things we need to look for at grocery stores, things to do, articles to write, how much of each food we've got in storage - I save a considerable bit of time and money by knowing what I have and what I need.

Related to this, find ways to store and sort so that you don't have to waste time hunting for things. Figure out a system and make yourself stick to it. I'm not always good about this, but when it works, it is glorious. Think about the last time you needed to do a project and couldn't find the right tool or materials. You know you just had it...make sure you know where things are, so you don't waste time and energy.

10. Have a place for everything. Try and mostly put things in their places. One of our biggest problems in keeping clean is the stuff that doesn't really live anywhere. Mail we might want to look at eventually. The books that don't really fit on the shelves. The clothes that don't fit in the drawer, or on our bodies anymore. Instant mess. The more you can either get rid of things or make an appropriate place, the easier this all is. Make workspace for yourself, if you need it - accepting the realities of your life (ie, "I'm never going to dump all the junk mail, I like looking in the catalogs too much." And make a space for the catalogs). If you are going to be canning, for example, make room for it if possible, and plan that room into at least the times when you are canning. Have a place to put the mending, the knitting needles, a chair to sew in, a useful and comfortable space to do necessary mobile (ie, can be done in more than one place) chores.

11. Look at your schedule for time and space that might go unused (although remember, down time is good too) . Try new stuff and see if you can multi-task. For example, I learned to knit and breastfeed, to type and breastfeed, etc… out of sheer desperation to get things done. Otherwise, I never got to knit or write. I find that I can get a surprising amount of cleaning done if I set a timer for 15 minutes and say, "ok, I'm going to do what I can in the next 15 minutes". Knowing the time is short increases my efficiency. Remember, nothing has to be all or nothing. Can't hang all yourlaundry? Hang as much as you can, and the next dryer load will be that much shorter and use that much less energy. Don't have time to wash all the dishes by hand? Do as many as you can in 10 minutes,and try to do more each time. Then, you'll have that much longer between dishwasher loads. Most of us have a few 10 minute increments now and then we could spend doing some simple chore.

12. When in doubt, drink beer. Permaculture works from the principle that theoretically, yields are unlimited - you can optimize so much you get more out of a system than you ever put into it. That violates the laws of physics, of course, but it is fun to try. Beer works kind of like magic - you ferment it, people get to drink the beer ,and the grain is nearly as good for animal feed (and more digestible) as it was nutritionally before. So drink locally made, sustainable beer before doing household chores, and you'll find them much easier to bear. As you strive to get more out of it than you put into it, strive also to relax and enjoy yourself. Really, no one is going to remember whether the tile was grouted and the towels were clean when bad times come. But they will remember whether there was food, basic hygeine, a place to sleep, hospitality, good things to drink, and peace in the home. These are things worth having, and worth making time for. The rest is gravy.

Sharon in upstate NY, who is still nursing and, sadly, drinks verylittle beer.

The Permaculture of Domesticity (Part I - Theory)

It struck me that since for many people the biggest problem in their domestic life is time, and thus the most compelling argument for using high-energy consumptive appliances like dishwashers and dryers is the time spent on chores, it might be worth strategizing on ways to manage domestic labor with the fewest possible inputs and the greatest degree of productivity and pleasure. (Of course, the first trick to increased productivity at my house would be to actually go do the domestic labor instead ofwriting about it - say, to go fold the laundry and put it away, rather than nattering on about the best ways to get it done. But*that's* not going to happen, is it ;-)?

I'm calling this the Permaculture of domestic life. For those not in the know, permaculture is "permanent culture" and it is one of the ways to get the most out of everything in life. And whether you do this because you have to (ie, the rolling blackouts in your area make it necessary) or because you want to, IMHO, all of us need to figure out ways to makeour domestic work manageable alongside our other work in the coming years. I'm by no means an expert here, and would welcome suggestions for more and better techniques.

First, the theory (even the sorting of underwear requires a good grounding in theory, or so I try to convince myself, as I merrily ignore the actual underwear in favor of the meta-under things and their philosophical grounding.) So here are the broad points of a Permaculture philosophy of domesticity (much of it stolen wholesale from various other, smarter people).

-1. "In Chaos lies unparalleled opportunity for imposing creative order." (Bill Mollison). Given that housekeeping is the act of imposing order, the key term here is "creative" - old ways may not do, traditional assumptions may be flawed. The first thing we needto do with housekeeping is look at the project with new eyes. We may find that there are better ways to do things, our what seems efficient, isn't.

-2. "There is no such thing as a free lunch" (Robert Heinlein, articulating the second law of thermodynamics). Energy must be used as wisely and efficiently as possible, and we must make as much effort as possible to use ambient energy before it escapes our reach. Human energy, fossil fuel energy, mental energy, renewable resource energy - all have end points. Those that are most limited must be used with the most care and attention to avoid waste.

-3. "Every object must responsibly provide for its replacement; society must, as a condition of use, replace an equal or greater resource than the one used up." (Mollison) When energy is consumed, it should be gainful, and provide the maximum benefit with the fewest possible consequences both for the user and for others affected. If we use labor saving devices, the uses we turn our saved time to should be valuable, since our use of them cost others and the environment something. If we use fossil fuel energies, we should store or conserve more energy than it cost us.

-4. "The problem is the solution. Everything works both ways. It is only how we see things that makes them advantageous or not."(Mollison) We can choose actively to see domestic labor however we want, and we can choose to make use of things we've often viewed as a problem. Wastes and involuntary outputs should be reintegrated into the system. Our attitude, and our creative adaptability are perhaps the most important tools we have.

-5. "That Which is Hateful to You, Do Not Do to the Other." (TheTalmud). If you are not willing to absorb all the consequences of your actions personally, in your own immediate environment, you should reconsider your actions. There is no such place as "away" - we cannot throw things "away" or waste things without doing harm to others. Thus, we cannot conceive environmental consequences, or consequences to people we cannot see as not part of our practice. Preserving what we have is virtually always the most energy, time and money efficient way of acting for the earth and people as awhole.

-6 "Make the Least Change for the Greatest Possible effect"(Mollison) Don't make more work for yourself than you need to. Evaluate carefully what you already have, and what resources(and "problems") you can make use of. Domestic life, like any other part of life, can be an optimization exercise.

Ok, now that we're done talking theory, how does that play out in actual life, when you've got dirty dishes to wash, laundry to do, things to get done, meals to cook, plus your job, your internet life, your family, and all the other stuff you've taken on. How do you get things done?

That'll be the subject of Part II.

Sharon

Buy nothing, week 1

Well, it has been a week now. I'm not missing the shopping at all - the goal is to shop 1x per month at our local coop and the asian grocery store, and then no more than 3xs per week at our local farmstand for things like milk (not currently able to barter for milk, although we have at times), fruit outside what we grow, and other things we don't produce.

So far the big dilemma is whether to replace the 50 chicks that gotten eaten by something unknown (very mysterious). We lost our layers for next year (our current batch are 2+ years old and starting to slow a bit), as well as 25 bantam chicks that I'd planned to give away to various people I know who want to try keeping chickens in their suburban backyards. I figured cochin bantams would be excellent - they are attractive, quiet, decent layers and good setters, as well as small and good foragers.

I think I've decided that I will replace the layers, since they are a business expense - we sell eggs and make a decent profit off of them. But I'm less sure about the banties - a pity, since it was a good cause.

I'm also looking for a free kitten - we lost two cats last week. One of our indoor cats (Tycho, our cat's cat) slipped out and met with a neighbor's German Shepherd. His spine was broken, and he had to be put down. And we lost Yorick (Alas Poor Yorick, actually) to the neurological condition that he's had for years. That leaves us with three cats, all fairly elderly, none of them a spectacular mouser (Yorick was by far our best, although Angus is good at catching bats and birds that slip into the house). I think we need a kitten. But, of course, nobody *needs* a kitten, right? Hence, we look for a freebie.

But I admit, otherwise, I feel a pleasant sense of satisfaction at not having to go near a mall, particularly as my friends complain about the joys of back to school shopping. My children, dressed in a combination of gifts, yard sale clothes, cousin cast offs and things I've made for them may look like hopeless ragamuffins, but they are cute ragamuffins, and at least I don't have to go to the mall.

We had guests all this week, including my Mother-in-law, who despite the fact that we've explicitly asked her not to compensate for our not-buying things (after all, we're choosing this, not living in a cardboard box in the train station) arrived with a big bag of toys for the kids (just little things, of course, she said ;-)), brought cookies and a meal of take out malay food, and insisted on buying us some ice cream before she left. She's very, very worried her son and grandsons might die of starvation or deprivation, I suspect. But she's also very, very sweet. My sister kindly asked me, "Can you go out to dinner if I buy?" I find it kind of funny (although also very wonderful) that people are so willing to try and save us from ourselves. And who knows, after a year without restaurants, I might be. But so far (and fortified by the take-out Malay MIL brought) I'm able to handle the first week sans restaurants (given that where we live there are only two options - pizza and diner, neither very good, I often go months without eating out - we're better cooks than any food we can buy very locally) without *too* much strain ;-).

Someone asked what we are saving money for. Partly to increase our charitable donations. Partly to add to our preparations - we want to reinsulate, add more food storage, rip up the carpet, fence the yard. But mostly, I'm only generally curious about how much money we'll save (although, of course, we can always use the money). What I most want to accomplish is transforming my relationship to scarcity - I want my instinctive reaction to losing something, breaking something, running out to be "how can I manage without it/repair it myself/find something else/make it do" not "I need to get..."

Sharon

Hot Weather

We're pretty comfortable today inside the house. It is 101 degrees outside, and 77 in here, with windows closed, shades drawn and ceiling fans on. We're lucky to have a good house for this - the newer part of the house is tremendously well insulated, and the older part, is, for reasons completely inexplicable to me, cool in the summer while it is cold in the winter. The dogs have dug a den under the porch and seem happy there. But even when we lived in a fourth floor apartment, we could manage with regular cool showers, window fans and trips to the movies. We had an air conditioner for a while - and then my cat, Entropy (now long deceased) had a horrible incontinent period as he was dying, and peed in the air conditioner. The scent of cat-urine processed cool air was not worth the price.

But the heat is frustrating and scary, not least because it leads us to the worst kinds of short-term thinking. I can't count the people I know who say they "need" air conditioning - even though air conditioning emits greenhouse gasses at a rate that means that their kids are only going to need it much worse. We're unwilling to endure even the shortest term discomfort for long term security.

Not to mention the fact that everything feels worse when you come out of air conditioning. Unless you are in serious danger of health consequences, find other ways, particularly here in the Northeast. And remember, it is temporary. Winter will be here soon enough.

Sharon

The Buy-Nothing Year Begins

Today begins Eric and my exercise in non-consumption. For one year, we're going to purchase nothing that isn't necessary. No processed foods. Much less gas (we're trying to reduce driving by 50%). Much less electricity (50% reduction). No books, no music, no movies, no videos (this last won't be much of a hardship - my MIL gave us netflix last year, so we've got that for a while, but we won't renew unless she does). No junk food. No clothing. No toys. No meals out. No alcohol (given that I've been pregnant or nursing for the last 7 years, this won't be the hardship it sounds like to others). No reeses peanut butter cups (which to me do not fall in the category of junk, processed foods or non-essentials ordinarily ;-). No coffee or tea (we don't drink coffee, and we'll use up the tea we have or do without.) No magazine subscriptions, presents for anyone (we make 'em or do without.) No travel except mandatory work or to visit relatives, and a lot less of that.

We did buy a few things in advance, front-loading as we call it, mostly homeschooling materials for Simon for this year, and a few extra (but desperately needed, of course ;-P) books for me. And I've got a tiny stash of Reeses. Eric's got a couple of 12 packs of beer (he asked me, "Am I being rude if I don't offer guests beer, when I've only got 30 bottles for an entire year." My answer is "yes.") But when things run out, we will try not to replace them. The rule is that first, we make do or do without. If we can't, we then try and either fix it or make it ourselves. Last and only if we deem it impossible to live without do we replace it.

We will buy toilet paper, the components of food (no pre-made foods - not that we ate many, but the kids like pretzels and granola bars and I'm fond of a particular kind of sesame sauce, etc...). We'll buy the components to make gifts, if we cannot make them from what we have (sadly, this is not an excuse to purchase yarn, since I could make gifts for many thousands of people from the yarn I already possess, or so Eric estimates ;-).

Books will be the hard thing for me, I know. I read a lot and read fast. Eric will miss movies and music, and we'll both miss eating out. The kid will miss trips out for ice cream (we'll make ice cream at home instead), but they are young enough not to mind this very much, and over-indulged enough not to feel a drastic loss having to play with their many, many toys.

The thing is, we're on average far more frugal than most people in the culture - but there's a surprising amount of fat in our budget (not to mention the fat on me from the reeses and other indulgences - I'm hoping to lose some weight this year). And someone has to do it. Actually, people have done it - there's a book, one I'm working on now but recommend _Not Buying It_ by Judith Levine, about a couple that did the same. I admit, much as I like Ms. Levine's writing style (I do, quite a lot) and find her funny and erudite, I don't find myself drawing a lot of logical parallels. Much of the book is devoted to how much she misses entertainment - theater, art, musical performances and especially movies. Perhaps because I have four kids under 7, those joys are already mostly closed to me. I've been to three plays since Eli was born, one concert, and perhaps a dozen movies. I'm fine without it. She also misses buying clothes, something that I do only when roped and hogtied.

What will be hard for me is the pleasure of yard saling, of browsing used book stores, and of buying supplies to make things like quilts and knitted objects. And it will be hard to eliminate the convenience of not meeting people at restaurants. But mostly, it will be about gaining things - more time, more money for essentials (we will use some of the funds during the year to reinsulate our house and do other energy conservation activities), for tzedakah (1/4 of our savings will go to charity), and less thought about what I don't have, what I need, what I want. I suspect I'll enjoy it.

Wish me luck!

Sharon

Peak oil flyer for familes - draft one

I'm hoping to transform this into a flyer than can be handed out to parents at parent-type events, and hopefully encourage more people to look more deeply into peak oil. There will be website addresses and book references at the end for further investigation. Comments please?


Gas Prices are rising, with no end in sight. New Oil discoveries fall further every year. The oil being extracted is of lower quality, and costs more to get at. Natural gas is getting more expensive every year and is in danger of running out. It is called peak oil - and it means that fossil fuel will be getting more expensive and less available every year.

What will your children’s lives be like in 20 years if we don’t prepare for fossil fuel shortage TODAY?

Your children will be unlikely to:

- Be able to attend college. One logical economic effect of fossil fuel shortages is economic crisis. You can expect to lose your job, and have difficulty saving for children’s education. We can expect cuts in student aid packages, and to find financial aid more difficult to get, as more and more families need it.

- Find good jobs. Everything we do right now depends on large quantities of energy - energy to commute to work, to heat and cool and run the workplace, to purchase materials, to market and sell them, to transport them. When the economy falters, and costs get higher, unemployment rises, dramatically. Your children and grandchildren will face a world where jobs are much scarcer than they are today.

- Have adequate medical care. As companies are more and more strapped by high fuel prices, even those who have jobs will likely lose their benefits. More and more people will be uninsured, and too poor to pay for medical care. Your children may have to choose between groceries and dental care, essential medications and paying their rent or mortgage.

- Have enough food to eat. With poverty comes hunger. Rising fossil fuel prices raise the cost of EVERYTHING, including food. Lack of fertilizer and fuel for growing and transporting food means that your children and grandchildren are likely to grow up in a world where supermarket shelves are empty and they know hunger.

- Be warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Heating oil and natural gas are both rising rapidly in price, and that rise reflects the fact that there is little new oil being found. Competition for resources from other nations will drive prices still higher, and may make oil and gas nearly unavailable for heating and cooling. At the same time, as the climate shifts, temperature extremes get more severe. Your children may grow up shivering in their beds, and in danger of heat stroke, asthma attacks and other medical consequences from extreme heat and poor summer air quality.

- Travel much - the cost of visiting you far away, or seeing the world is about to get prohibitive. You may not see much of your children and grandchildren if they live far away.

They will be likely to:

- Live in a much more polluted world than you do. Because we’ve squandered a lot of time to work on renewable energy, we’re most likely to shift to coal and nuclear energy to take up some of the slack. Coal puts mercury into the atmosphere causing autism and brain damage in children, poisons ground water and acidifies rain. Nuclear accidents and storage leaks can cause increased cancer rates and endanger thousands - including your kids.

- Go to war over oil and gas resources. Already, we’re fighting in part to ensure access to fossil fuel resources in the middle east. As we run shorter, we’re likely to see the draft reinstituted and our children sent around the world to fight, be disabled and die for oil and gas.

- Live as long as you do. With poorer nutrition, medical care, more wars and more pollution, your children are likely to die younger than you do. Watching our children die is the worst nightmare of most parents, and it may be our reality.

What can we do to stop it?

-CONSERVE - don’t just recycle, change your life so that you children can have a life. Bicycle or walk instead of driving. Turn off the a/c. Skip the vacation. Use less, use it up, make it do, do without.

- BUY - local food, produced with the fewest possible chemical and fossil fuel inputs. Don’t spend money you don’t have to. Purchase things from local merchants, rather than large corporations whenever possible.

- WRITE (or email) your congresspeople and vote for increased funding for conservation, renewable energy and public transportation. Tell the president and congress that you want to get out of Iraq, and turn our resources to preparing our nation for the coming crisis.

-VOTE for candidates who support the above, and for those who support anti-poverty programs like food pantries and WIC. Remember, your children may be the poor of tomorrow through no fault of their own.

-AGITATE - demonstrate, write and speak in support of programs that encourage conservation and sustainability in your community, your state and your nation.

- SPEAK - tell others about peak oil. Warn your friends, your neighbors, your family. Get together with neighbors, church, synagogue, mosque members, family members and friends, and make plans for a future with a lot less.

- GROW - a garden, no matter how small. Every bit of your food that you can produce is one less calorie of oil we have to burn.

- TEACH - your children about the future, and prepare them for the skills they may need in the future. Teach them to grow a garden, to have healthy bodies that can walk and bike for miles, to live simply, to make do, to appreciate what they have.

- PREPARE - build a three month supply of stored foods for a balanced diet. Store water. Consider collecting rainwater from your roof. Take advantage of medical benefits now to get healthier.

- GIVE - your children a chance at a life as good as the one you’ve had, by using less and taking less.

Did World War III start yesterday morning?

The great thing about predicting human events is that you are so often wrong. In this case, nothing would make me happier than to be in error. But, G-d help us all, I think the odds aren't that bad that I' m right. It is possible that yesterday morning, we started World War III.

The beginnings of wars are often hard to identify. Which act lit the spark on the tinderbox? Which straw was the final one? Like peak oil itself, the beginnings of war are often visible only in retrospect. Why today? Why, when we might make the case a world war war began when the US invaded Iraq? Why when this particular cause might turn out to be just another brush fire?

We don't know. We can only guess. Yesterday morning, Israel invaded Lebanon in retaliation for the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, and began shelling civilian targets. Hezbollah is demanding the release of 9000 Palestinian prisoners. Israel is threatening to destroy Lebanon and potentially Syria as well. Iran and Syria are both making noises in support ofHezbollah, and our president and Germany are making noises in support of Israel. Iran has already threatened to close the gulf to oil transport in retaliation for any US or Israeli strike into Syria. Our government has been looking for an excuse to invade Iran, and here is one ready-made - Iran's long standing economic support and military support of Hezbollah. Moreover, American strategy in the middle east is deeply tied into Israel, and there is no questionthat we will provide support of some sort or another if Israel fully commits to war with Lebanon and perhaps Syria.

Another American beachhead, run through Israel, is likely to spark more conflict with Iran and other nations in the middle east, and encourage them to retaliate by cutting off oil supplies. And full-scale, multi-national war in the middle east is something no energy dependent nation inthe world (that is, basically all of us) can afford to ignore. As Iraq fragments and the US is increasingly over committed, China and Russia are caught between their economic and energy ties to Syria and Iran, and their desire not to antagonize the US. But if the middle east fully ignites, neither China nor Russia will be free not to choose sides. They will have to protect their own interests. And I believe nothing good could possibly come from so many people with big guns and nuclear bombs trying to decide which side they are on.

I could be wrong. This could all just peter out, or end in a peaceful solution. I pray it be so. But the crisis pattern we're seeing resembles things I've seen before in history books. I won't be surprised if someday, today is named the beginning of the next world conflict, the one that we've all known was coming. As I said before, G-d help us all, and may I just end up looking silly, making predictions that don't come true.

If not, though, the only thing that will stop this from becoming a greater disaster is the will and strength of people all over the world to say, "stop." Because this is madness. In Israel, I would pray you will say "Stop!" no matter how desperately your hearts are aching for those children/soldiers who were stolen from you. In Gaza and Iran and Beirut, I pray you will say "Stop!" and find a way that leads to peace. In the US, we must say "Stop!" and prepare to consume less and use less and absorb any oil shocks coming to us, rather than strike military blows to get our way. And those who could be drawn in so disastrously must stand up as the voices of wisdom, and also say "Stop!" and talk peace at those who are so hurt and angry they can only see war. Please G-d, we all have such wisdom.

Sharon

In Praise of Weeds

Last year I decided not to mulch a good chunk of our garden, in the interest of seeing how hard it was to maintain if mulch materials wereever scarce. I love permanent mulch - I love the way the soil improves under it, I love the way that the soil stays moist when it is dry and also handles heavy rainfall much better, and I love sitting on the warm mulch while I pick tomatoes or cucumbers. But I don't wantto be too dependent upon any particular gardening method, so I left a patch in front of the house (on the theory that sheer embarassment might encourage me to weed) unmulched and went about my business.

This was partly fueled by a discussion I had a few years ago with afriend of mine who is an herbalist and gardener at Sturbridge Village(an 1830s living history museum), who pointed out that most garden descriptions of the time are very unconcerned with weeding, and many permitted large quantities of weeds to grow up as mulch underneath plantings, just pulling them as they began to shade other plants. I've done that a few times by accident, but this, (besides proving that embarassment will not drive me to weeding if there is anything more fun to do ;-)), was my first formal experiment. I have to say, I think the weeds have done me more good than bad. Now obviously, ymmv, and those of you with moisture shortages or very tight spaces probably won't have this luxury, but my observation so far has been that as long as the weeds aren't allowed to take over completely, or to shade out food plants, that the competition isn't a bad one, necessarily.

My weedy tomatoes have actually grown faster than the mulched ones, and set fruit earlier than mulched varieties ofthe same species. I've been managing the weeds, rather than completely getting rid of them. Some, we eat or use for medicinal purposes, and that takes care of that. I pull out the lambsquarters and wild salsify as I eat them, but don't worry too much about them when they are small. I'm lettingsome of the wild oats that aren't too much in the way mature, and will feed them to the chickens. I even transplanted a few over to a better spot ;-). The mulleins I left because I think they are pretty, and if there's ever a shortage, the leaves make terrific toilet paper. Some of the greens (extra plantain that we don't want, pigweeds, chickweed) go straight to the chickens and geese as harvested feed. Then, there are some weeds I'm actually delighted to see - I've never had them before, and I want them. I'm encouraging the wild yarrow to grow, since I find it better for medicinal purposes than the stuff I cultivate, and it is lovely - one of my favorite wildflowers. This is the first year I've had either purslane or stinging nettle anywhere on the property - I've always had to forage elswhere, and I'm more than a little pleased to see them. Both are fairly well-behaved (in that they don't really take over), and very good to eat (use gloves with the nettles, and cook them first). I'm also excited to seecteasel here - people in upstate NY used to grow fields of them for thewool processing industry, and I'm planning on harvesting mine for thesame reason. Plantain I like to let go to the green seed stage, and then harvest and dry the seed heads - they make marvellous free birdfood in the winter. Pigweeds and other wild amaranths are great for the same purpose. Bedstraw and Burdock are allowed to mature until just before they set seeds, and used for dyeing and eating respectively (ok, I don't always get to them before they set seed, which is a problem).

I also always allow some weeds to go to flower on the fringes of the garden. Along with the dill and cilantro I plant to attract pollinators, I notice that queen anne's lace and mullein are good insect attractants. Canada and Bull thistle get taken right out, as do a few others, like ground ivy, which are real pests. I reserve the right to kick out any weed that takes more than its fair share, or sticks me with prickers when I step on it. But for the most part, weeding is a desultory chore for me, done at a fairly low key. As long as the plants aren't too crowded or shaded, and the weeds are useful ones to me, leaving them be doesn't seem to do a lot of harm to *most* crops, and the weeds will generally get pulled for whatever purpose eventually.

There are exceptions -peppers here are easily shaded out by faster growing weeds, and carrots can't handle any weed pressure at all. But for every crop that needs hand weeding, there are those, like bush beans, zinnias,tomatoes and corn that on fertile soil, with adequate moisture, seem entirely untroubled by competition, and that will eventually shade out the weeds on their own. My math so far suggests that I actually take more useful plants off of my land when I plant a little further apart and allow some weed competetion than when I plant my own food plants more tightly together.

One of the biggest pests in my garden is the tomato. No matter how diligently I harvest, every year I spend more time pulling out fast growing tomato volunteers than I do burdock or thistles. They tend to shade everything out, because they grow so fast. I leave some, of course, but it does point out that even in my cold climate, I could probably rely for much of my tomato crop on volunteers, provided I didn't mind waiting until September to harvest (I do). I'll probably go back to mulching next year - after I transplant in my plantain and wild yarrows. But the other advantage of leaving the weeds, assuming you can afford the loss in moisture and fertility, is that pulled weeds make an excellent mulch. If I ever run out of straw and undercropping material, I probably will do just that and allow theweeds to grow up, pull them, and use them to smother the rest.

I think it worth praising the weeds, at least once in a while,before I squish them ;-).

When I started this blog...

...not quite two years ago, I announced that oil was at $50 per barrel. Early last week, it passed $75, and oil futures, I'm told, are being traded at above $80. The only good thing about this is that I stand to win my bet with my economist buddy, Steve (that oil will pass $100 per barrel within 3 years- a bet I made about 2 years ago) with plenty of time to say, "nyah, nyah." Small satisfaction that.

This is just the beginning, folks. We're looking from just before, or just after the peak, but things start going downhill pretty fast from here. I'm sure some readers believe that I'm just that wacky doomsday chick on the blog, but you cannot lose by preparing yourself now. By storing some food, and water, by adapting your home to low or no fossil fuel use. If worse comes to worse, you'll still be better off having that food, that water, that money you save. We're in an inflationary economic cycle - at a minimum, the food, woodstove and insulation you buy today will be cheaper than buying it tomorrow.

Please. If you read this, take me seriously for one moment. You can make fun of me later. You can call me a fool. But do a few things to keep yourselves safe in hard times. It can only help.

Sharon

We lost one today.

In wedding magazine rhetoric, and victorian prose, a wedding day is the happiest day of one's life. Now I had fun at both my weddings, the one that took and the one that didn't, but neither one ranked up there in the happiest days of my life. But there's a wedding that *did* rank up there - not my own, but my mother and step-mother's. The day they were able to legalize their relationship (at that point 25 years and still going strong) may have been the happiest day of my life, other than when my children were born. I remember telling my sons that someday, they would be able to tell their own grandchildren that Nana and Nunu (don't ask about the Nunu thing) got married on that day in May. That they were the first gay people in their town to marry, and that their children were so very proud of them and happy for them.

It wasn't just their children, either. My phone rang off the hook all that day with friends and family members calling to wish joy to my Mom and Sue. Members of my synagogue called. My neighbors in our rural farming community called. Friends I hadn't seen in years called. My ex-husband (and good friend) called, with wishes from himself, his wife and his parents. On an internet list I've belonged to for years, where a lot of the population is conservative Christian, people wished my mothers joy, no matter what they thought of the issue in general. I don't think I've ever wept with happiness before, but I did that day, not just because my mother and Sue were able to enter into legal protections they've never had before, but because this was an act of justice and delight, and everyone who knew me, and knew my family was shared our happiness. My friend and honorary brother Jesse was there in Cambridge when, at midnight, city hall began to issue marriage licenses. He hollered and yelled and laughed and danced at one of the biggest parties he'd ever been to, and called me to share the joy.

New York missed its chance to be the second state in the Union to adopt gay marriage. It missed its chance to lead the nation today, when the state supreme court argued that there were compelling reasons, mostly about parenting, for the state to limit marriage to heterosexuals. Besides rehashing a whole lot of unproven speculation (no one has ever successfully demonstrated that children of gay families are any worse off than the children of any other families), New York missed its own chance to be right, and just and *JOYFUL* - because in a sense, that's what it this is about. Yes, it is about civil rights and politics, justice and mercy. But a wedding (at least a state sanctioned one - we can leave sacredness and holiness to those who concern themselves with faith, not legality) is a party, and a good one, when it is done right. People laugh and dance, they drink wine and sing, and celebrate love and trust and happiness. And the people getting married in New York, who have been denied and reviled and left out for decades would throw the best party anyone has ever seen. Love is a many splendored thing, and its greatest splendor is joy, delight (in the true sublime sense), happiness.
Four bitter judges cost a hell of a lot of joy today.

On a personal note, I've long hoped to convince my mother and Sue to move here for their retirement someday. That won't happen unless the New York State Legislature fixes the errors of the court. I hope it does. But what New York lost can't fully be replaced - a chance to spot the error, fix it fast, and turn to the party and a celebration of human love. I know I'll be there dancing on the day it does, and my children too.

Sharon

The rain is raining all around...

The rhymes and poems of my childhood stuck around in the back of my head until I had children of my own to read them too, and now they are back faster. Simon challenged me to recite as many poems about rain (since I constantly recite odd bits to the kids) as I could, and I got to 9 before breaking up. The one most appropriate at the moment is probably the old nursery rhyme about Dr. Foster, who went to Gloucester. As you'll recall, "He stepped in a puddle up to his middle/And never went there again." Well, if you had been here this past week, I think there's a good shot you'd never want to come again. The puddles weren't quite as high here as closer to the Mohawk, Hudson and Schoharie rivers, but there was enough rain that our occasional patches of sun have never dried the ground enough for me to mow the lawn in the back. Thus, Eric is scything it down for hay. This is not a part of the property that is *supposed* to be growing hay.

Still, we're fortunate. We're too high for the floods. And the Gilboa dam, a few miles west of here, has held through all the spring and summer rains. We're not in the flood path, but if the dam breaks (and it may), we're on the escape route. As far as I can tell, after much angst about whether and when the dam might break, the major result has been a bunch of signs saying "Flood Evacuation Route" pointing up. That's helpful.

What else is going on here? We're harvesting peas, onions, greens of all kinds, radishes and baby carrots. We usually try to have our first tomatoes ready by the fourth of July, but everything is so late this year that I have no hope at all of success. We're working on the fall crops - we've had so much wet weather and difficulty that I fear we have to give up on many of the earlier summer ones.

The boys were delighted when the sun came out for a bit today - it gave them a chance to splash in the little wading pool I got at a yard sale this year. And, of course, there's the playset. Grandma sweetly gave the children an *enormous* playset, and the kids in the neighborhood swarm over it like bees. It is a wonderful blessing, enabling us to cut car trips (Eli has a strong need for sensory stimulation and playgrounds fill it), and giving us a neighborhood play area. One of the houses on our road just sold, and rumor has it, to a family with *10* kids - I'm delighted. More playmates for my kids, more pickup baseball games, more friendships, more grownups to chat over the pleasures and angst of parenting. Our neighborhood is clearly an odd demographic - our 8 house street will, if this rumor is correct, have 23 children on it, at least 8 of whom are homeschooled.

We're currently plotting how best to reduce our energy consumption and adapt our home for lowered inputs. We have, of course, limited funds and many desires. Do we renovate the old kitchen to make it completely non-electric, so that we can use our existing wood cookstove and cisterns to cook? Do we convert the addition to passive solar gain? Replace the crappy windows on the sunporch? Add a greenhouse? Add a masonry stove? An outside wood furnace and solar panels to run it? Convert entirely to indoor wood heat? What shall we do?

That's about the excitement here!

Sharon