52 Weeks Down - Week 20 - Think Longevity

One of the things we simply can't afford to have anymore - afford in either economic or environmental terms - is a throwaway society, in which things exist for short term usage. Instead, as energy and resource costs rise, we need to make our possessions last - ideally for generations.

I don't know about you, but my observation is that old stuff is generally better made than new. This isn't universal, but I'm often surprised by how sturdy old things are, and how beautiful, how well they last. Part of that is because people simply didn't have as many things, or as much money to waste on things that promptly broke, so lasting materials and solid engineering were the norm. And part of it is because form and function didn't always operate so seperately.

Right now, I plant corn and beans with a 120 year old jab planter. I serve bread and soup from transferware dishes from the 1870s that my grandmother kept in her kitchen. My kids read stories from an ancient McGuffey's Reader, and I teach them spelling from word lists copied out of the books my great-grandfather used to teach school in Connecticut at the turn of the century - and some of the books belonged to his father.

Of more recent vintage, I chop wood with my father's axe, about the same age as me, prune bushes with a pair of loppers that are at least 40 years old, and use a potato fork from, I would guess, the 1940s. My children keep their stuffed animals in my father's toybox, and read the books of my childhood. My kids play dress up in fur hats and feathered ones that my great-aunt accumulated over her lifetime. I keep my food in tupperware containers my husband's grandmother bought in the 1950s, and warm my kids beds with comforters whose err... aesthetic dates them to the late 1960s. My husband wears a lovely black suit his Grandfather bought several decades ago.

Now I'm lucky enough to have this stuff, but for me, it illustrates the possibilities of a pass-down society, where we concentrate our (fewer) purchases on high-quality items that last a lifetime, rather than focusing on mass accumulation. That is, when we buy things, we should be thinking "can my grandchildren (or someone else's grandchildren) make use of this?" Because we simply don't have the option anymore of treating our possessions as throwaways. Not only are the environmental consequences simply too great, but more importantly, the resource that has enabled us to have so much is getting more and more expensive and harder and harder to come by. That is, whether we want our children and grandchildren to have live with the things we pass down to them or not, they may well have no choice.

Think about it. If the next generation cannot afford as many things, or we cannot afford the environmental impact of those things, what will the consequences be? Will the dishes you eat off of, the clothes you wear, the tools you use outlast the next year? The next decade? The next generation? Whenever possible, they should.

Now some things are bound to wear out - your work jeans, your children's sneakers, and other best loved items. And sometimes buying used means using things up - for example, the Dr. Seuss books my great-aunt gave to me in 1975 are now falling apart - not from misuse, but from age and love, and I'd rather see them read than preserved in plastic for some distant future. But other things don't have to.

Good clothing for adults, for example, can often last a lifetime if you choose classic styles, natural materials and good workmanship, and don't have to wear it everyday. "Sunday best" means that good shoes get taken off and replaced with work clothes, things are washed right away and stains not allowed to set. One's tools will last if you clean and oil them regularly, put them away out of the weather and preserve the handles (says Sharon whose colinear hoe is sitting out in the garden in the rain - ooops).

Dishes and household goods, many toys, children's clothes (the ones that get outgrown before they wear out), and books can last quite a long time. Acid based paper and age will take its toll eventually on books, and many children's clothes get passed around (although I have some that were bought used, have been through four and still look new - and others that didn't outlast a single child). But how would our practices change if everything we bought had to either be either used, or to last at least one lifetime?

In many cases, that could mean spending more money, or not. For example, I find heavier, more solid garden tools to be well worth the additional money. My hand tiller and that hoe I left out are both from Johnny's, and excellent quality, that will stand up to any usage. But I've also found these at auctions and yard sales for a dollar a piece. A good quality winter coat that will last a lifetime could cost you several hundred dollars - or it could be bought in a thrift shop for five. Heavy wood furniture will last a century or more, while the pressboard will fall apart. Good quality new or fine antiques are pricey. But there's a lot of older furniture made of good materials and construction that isn't fancy enough to be an antique that can be prettied up with some paint and attention - or enjoyed as is.

But what it does mean is attention to quality, seeking out things that you will enjoy long after they are "in fashion" and taking care of what you have. It means thinking in the long term - buying a toy for your kids that will be enjoyed by grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and teaching those children to take care of their possessions. It means changing the way we think about our stuff. It means valuing "visually accessible" (that is, doesn't look weird), "easily repairable" "natural materials" and "lasting" over "I want it and I want it now."

I'm a simple sort. I read about things like "cradle to cradle technology" where people have elaborate plans for how cell phones will be taken apart and recycled into other cell phones when they obsolete, and I think "but couldn't you just make a cell phone that lasted 20 years?" I wonder whether we'll have the energy to recycle all those things, or the market to buy them when recycled in the longer term. And then I look at the toy bus my step-mother made for my son. It'll never be anything but a bright yellow toy school bus. My kids sit on it. They surf on it. They jump on it. It never notices. They push each other around on it. If it breaks, all it needs is a replacement wheel. I can lend it to my niece when my boys outgrow it, get it back, pack it up until the grandkids arrive, and it will be there. When it finally passes on its death (and I find that hard to imagine - it is very, very, very sturdy), you can burn it keep warm. Now that's cradle to cradle.

Sharon

Is It Normal To Let Your Kids Get Eaten By a Bear?

My neighbor and I were discussing a favorite children's book the other day. The book is Robert McCloskey's classic _Blueberries for Sal_ in which a mother human and her daughter go blueberrying, and have a minor mix up with a mother bear and her cub. The book is charming and wonderful, and one of my own childhood favorites, now beloved of my 3 year old. My neighbor was telling me that she loves the book, but can never read it without a frisson of horror at what a neglectful mother the parent in the book is. And she's got a point. After all, the mother of a child who is clearly a toddler tells her daughter to go pick her own blueberries and leave mother alone to pick hers, on a wildlife rich hillside, where bears are known to be. Mother, the book tells us, wants to pick blueberries to can for winter. And given such parameters, she can't spend the whole day watching her daughter, who is left to take care of her own needs.

But, of course, the book is older - it dates back to my own childhood, was released in 1976 when I was four. And my neighbor and I both remember from our own childhoods that the kind of parenting illustrated in the book was normal. By four my sisters and I roamed our housing project with other children, playing in the woods behind it or on the gravelled hillside. We weren't allowed to cross streets, but otherwise, we were remarkably free. Living on a busy, urban street at 6, my five year old sister and I and several neighbors of roughly the same vintage crossed several busy streets walking, alone to school. And yet neither my neighbor nor I permit or children to walk long distances, cross streets along, or roam the neighborhood without supervision. Now some of that, in my case, has to do with having an disabled oldest child who cannot be trusted. But most of it has to do with higher parenting standards today. Letting your children roam is perceived as unsafe, and to some degree it is.

Children's death by accident rates have fallen significantly since 1970, mostly in a reduction of deaths in traffic accidents. In Britain, for example, such accidents fell by 75% from 1970 to 2000, while the population and number of cars grew http://www.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,2097858,00.html. On the other hand, absolute numbers of deaths on playground equipment and by child abduction are about the same - in 2005, 25 children died on playground equipment in the US, in 1970, 28 did, on the old "deathtrap" equipment we used to use and love. So in some areas our greater caution is providing real results - several hundred kids each year who aren't dying in car accidents, for example.

The sheer number of cars on the road, the speeds they travel at and the reality that quite a number of kids did die from this means that we have a real reason to fear letting them roam the way our parents did. And yet, there's also a cost - by not allowing children the range of independence and freedom we did, our kids lose something. They lose maturity, judgement, independence, autonomy, time in the world as children. They lose contact with nature, and solitary imagination, playtime with other children. Their world is much more processed and managed by adults - safer, but less free.

And, of course, there are physical consequences - fewer of our children may die from road accidents, but more of them may have shortened lifespans from obesity, take medications for hyperactivity that in some cases (not all) is merely shorthand for not enough exercise. Richard Louv exhaustively documents the effects of nature contact on children, and documents the consequence of Nature-Deficit disorder, which include behavioral issues, depression, obesity, sensory issues, anxiety, and slower development of things like independence.

Historically speaking, we are the only parents in history to spend this much time and energy protecting our kids. And, of course, it isn't a hard sell - who doesn't want their kids to live. If you offered most parents the blunt choice "ok, your kid can live to 58 and die of obesity and diabetes related consequences from being kept at home and indoors too much or your kid can have a 1 in 100 chance of simply dying when a car hits him" who wouldn't take the 58? You'd be crazy not to. But, of course, those aren't the real choices.

During most of history, most parents provided either benign or not too benign neglect by the standards of the day. Most parents were more like Sal's mother than like I am - they expected children, from a very young age, to entertain themselves while they worked. There is some evidence that in the past, in some societies, many parents simply didn't allow themselves to become deeply attached until it was clear the children had left early childhood and the danger of death. Lawrence Stone argues this in _The Family, Sex and Marriage In England 1500-1800_, but Stone's conclusions have been disputed, and there is a simple dearth of evidence to be overcome. Many traditional societies that are or have been in existence until recently are deeply affectionate to their children, despite the high risks of infant mortality. But it is definitely true that most societies have judged children to require less care and attention by a primary caregiver after infancy than we do.

For example, women in all parts of society have always worked both in and out of the home. Historically speaking, poor women who worked often left their children home alone for long stretches, very small children left with nearly as young older siblings, or in the 19th century, perhaps dosed with alcohol or opium to keep them from doing anything dangerous. At home parents in the 18th century made babies where clothes with giant pillows embedded in them to keep them from getting too badly hurt - but still lost children to fireplace accidents, accidental ingestion, drowning, etc...

What is different about the way we parent now? One of the major differences is the sheer amount of attention we have to give our children - as domestic labor of all sorts has decreased, and many of the traditional functions of homemaking have been dropped, as Juliet Schor notes, we've transferred that time to parenting. People are still spending about the same amount of time they were on domestic labor 100 years ago - only this time, they are attending their children and vacuuming, both to higher standards, rather than making candles and baking bread.

Barbara Ehrenreich has observed that no human society has ever simply allowed women only the work of childcare and domestic labor - women were simply too valuable, and other needs so basic that the notion of an at-home life with children at the center simply didn't emerge until the 19th century. Which raises, of course, the question of whether any future, low energy, less industrialized society will be able to give to their children the same degree of safety attentiveness that we are now.

But this isn't the only difference. One of the major differences is the structuring of childhood itself. For example, my four year old sister was struck by a swing at the playground, and lost two teeth and received a concussion. This crisis was resolved by the fact that the playground itself was full of children, including children who to my five year old eyes were near-adults - big girls and boys of 10 to 12. One of them ran for a nearby neighbor, another carried my sister home across the road. One of the most important differences was that all the children of the neighborhood played together this way - it was not a matter of letting a four or five year old wander the streets alone, because older children could be counted on to be present. Similarly, there were many more adults at home, and a custom of adults sitting on porches and otherwise keeping a general eye on things. If we began to do something wildly unsafe, the chances were good someone's mother or father would stick their head out and yell at you to cut it out. And the chances were good you'd obey - adults had status.

We have learned, gradually, to relax with our children in places like our synagogue, and trust that if one of our sons goes out with a friend, there will be adults hanging about to keep an eye out, and that if someone misbehaves, a firm correction will be issued. But there are comparatively few places like this in our children's lives. In many neighborhoods, there is simply no one home for long hours, and children's lives are formal and structured. So letting your kids roam the neighborhood means letting them roam alone.

And, of course, there are those cars again. More cars, going faster, with less experience keeping an eye out for young kids, and less reason to expect that kids might be playing in the roads. I live on a rural road, and might reasonably expect that my street, with perhaps one car every 20 minutes except during commuting time, would be a paradise. But I've seen folks come barrelling over our hill at full speed with no awareness of who might be on the other side, and have had one close shave myself while walking it - I don't think I'm entirely ridiculous to fear what might happen to a five year old with less well trained reflexes and less fear of stupid drivers. On the other hand, I've seen how extreme our fears have gotten, and perhaps mine are just as excessive. I've seen parents say that their children can't be considered safe playing on their own front lawns, for fear that the child might run into a busy street. This is certainly true of toddlers and even four and five year olds, but I've seen parents make this argument about children who are 7, 8, 9 or older. I'm not sure in our reasonable desire to keep kids safe, we aren't doing more harm than good.

It is remarkable, to me, how much we've consented to sacrifice for our cars. Our children's freedom to run around is only one thing - our health, their health - cars are the leading cause of death in children, teens and young adults. Our rising asthma rates, and, of course, global warming are prices as well. In fact, it seems that we're willing to sacrifice anything, pretty much, to keep the cars coming down our streets. What if we weren't? We parents clearly think that our children's relationship with nature is something worth sacrificing to keep them alive, and I, for one, cannot say we're wrong. I want my kids *living* - but I'm not sure we're making the right trade off. I want my kids living and in nature, my planet to have a sane climate and my kids healthy. Might it not be wiser and more loving to give up the economic and social benefits of cars, in order to have fewer dead and maimed kids?

But all of that is, in part, a side issue, since this column is about the price of parenting while doing other things. What happens if more of us go back to large-scale domestic labor, if more of us go back to working from and at home, and fewer of us have the time to give our kids all the attention we have been? Does that mean that a few of them will get eaten by bears? Is the only choice neglect and death or not letting our kids out of our sight?

To some degree, I think the reality is that that is the choice - that we have to risk our kids lives to some degree to give them lives. What degree that is, I don't know. It isn't a perfect solution - and it isn't clear to me what the point of optimization is - the minimum number of children that have to die by accident so that the rest of the kids can have a meaningful childhood. Somewhere between the youth spent in a bedroom, wrapped in cotton wool and Huck Finn's trip down the Mississippi lies a happy medium, and I haven't found it. Nor do I know if it is possible to identify that point.

Going to a less industrialized society means reducing some risks (car accidents), and raising others (fire). It means most likely having less time to supervise our kids, and it means that some parents will probably experiencing horrible outcomes. It probably also means in some ways other of us will get physically and mentally healthier children. Depending on how non-industrial, some of the consequences will be more serious than others. It depends what we lose, and what we can keep up. Bike helmets? Ration vaccinations to those able to pay? Do we try and keep the cars on the road at the expense of things like education and health care? That seems to be where we're headed.

A few months ago, my autistic oldest son opened a locked door, opened a latched gate and, while Mommy was catching up on sleep and Daddy was changing a diaper, started walking down the road, bouncing his ball. It was 15 minutes before Daddy noticed that he'd gotten out and the gate was open.

We were lucky. Eli happily bounced his way down our rural road, and was not struck by a car. He didn't go off into the pond and drown, he didn't wander across the fields and get lost, where, unable to call out if we called him, he might of died of exposure. A neighbor spotted him, didn't remember who he belonged to and stayed with him. Another neighbor, on his way to work, stopped, seeing me frantically race around saying "are you looking for a little boy." I climbed into his car (not waiting to see if he wanted to drive me somewhere or not" and ordered the poor man to take me to my son. He did. My heart started beating again, and eventually I stopped crying and praying. Eli was fine. We got better locks. It was my personal vision of hell.

The irony is that this escape was motivated, I think, by my seven year old's desire to get out from under his parents's thumb. He's autistic. His judgement is impaired. We can't trust him to wander - which means that his father and watch him constantly, are always with him. But he also has a powerful urge to be alone, and an appropriate 7 year old's desire to explore, have adventures and do cool things. There's nothing wrong with his intellect and he's an ordinary kid inside, with ordinary desires to do stuff. It is hard to know what Eli was thinking because he can't talk to us, but I suspect that some of my fear was created by the protection I've so lovingly arranged.

It isn't an irony I know how to navigate, and I'm not sure how other parents should. But I suspect most of us are going to have to risk our children in some way, balancing one risk (not enough food) against another (accidental death) in a less certain, less secure world. I suspect we may get happier, more confident, more competent children from this harrowing by fire that demands they learn to keep themselves safe, but that will be no real consolation for those of us who pay too high a price.

But there are some things we can do to keep this freer world safer for kids - reduce the sheer number of cars, perhaps to nil in large chunks of our society. Perhaps most of us could have "walk only" areas in our towns or communities. More of us could risk a little bit more, so that there were more children of various ages working together to protect one another. And perhaps we can bring more adults home to work and domesticate, so that children need not be roaming their world unobserved or unprotected.

Sharon, who is perhaps reading too much into _Blueberries for Sal_ ;-).

How I Do It With Kids

I got an email asking me "How do you get so much done with young children? Can you give me some tips?"

Ok, the answer is that your knowledge of me comes from the blog, where when I say "I canned 9 quarts of peach jam and put up 200 ears of corn yesterday" sounds smooth, blithe and relaxing. And even if I tell you otherwise, people mostly think I'm joking.

In fact, the process of putting up 200 ears of corn and making 9 quarts of peach jam looks nothing like it sounds like when I take out the boring parts, like the 200 times I said, "Stop touching that!" while we were picking the corn and the kids wanted to play with the tractor attachments. Or the part where my husband did a very fast, very disgusting diaper-related crisis triage with a handful of corn husks. Trust me, it is better this way.

For those of you without children, or with children now grown who have forgotten the pleasures, I offer you a chance to model doing homestead work in my life. First, strap a 10lb bag of flour to each leg, to approximate working with a toddler attached to each side. Do not bathe for a while, until you feel rather icky. Eat all meals standing up. Then, add a troupe of untrained monkeys who have been swimming in mud to the mix. Carry one around while he yells "up, up, up!" Invite neighboring Huns to sack your living room and kitchen. Put a CD of Yoko Ono screaming horribly on at full volume in the background. Now sing "Do You Know the Muffin Man" 178 times. No, you are not allowed to scream. You must smile and answer questions about why John and Paul stopped writing songs together and why we only play with our penises in private calmly, while still cutting up peaches.

I just don't usually *tell* you about this stuff. So when people ask me "how do I do it?" The only possible answer is - I don't. My life doesn't look like what you are thinking. That is, the reason I put up that food was because yesterday, I blew off the book, 50 unanswered emails and 3 foot weeds in my garden to do food preservation. Today, I'm blowing off the still uncanned raspberry sauce, the weeds, and the book to write this post, and then homeschool the kids. Every time I am doing something, I'm letting something else lapse, usually something that probably shouldn't. Right at the moment, I'm praying that the couple who are renovating our garage into a goat barn won't have to pee at all, so that they don't see my bathroom. The house has been sacked. I have no idea what we are eating for lunch - we have tomatoes, eggplant and beer. I don't think good Mommies feed their children beer for lunch, so I guess we'll be having eggplant ;-).

The reason I can do what I do is that I have a committed (probably ready to be committed) husband who can do much of his work from home, because I'm always more than willing to neglect the housework, and because I work from home. But mostly, because I'm comfortable with chaos - I could look at this day and see only the mess, the failures, the mediocre parenting, the fact that they didn't learn about evaporation the way we'd planned.

Instead, I look at it and think "I got four loads of dishes done. I put up corn for the winter. We talked about how corn is different than other grains. The kids spent a lot of time picking. We took a long family walk. We ate homemade tomato and mozzarella sandwiches and 3 out of four kids wanted seconds. They helped time the canning of the peach jam. The boys picked chard for dinner. The boys got to go play with a neighbor's kids and Eric and I finished clearing the crap out of the garage. I answered two emails. I babysat the neighbor's son. We picked up 300lbs of organic grains and transferred them into buckets. We sang two songs that weren't "Do you know the muffin man" ;-). I read most of _The Logic of Sufficiency_. I set pumpkin leather to dehydrate. Eric played banjo with friends. I got the kitchens made presentable. I made rice pudding. I watered the container plants. I went to bed happy."

The thing is, that is a good day by my lights. If I look at what I didn't do, at the mess, the chaos, the exhaustion, the failures, it doesn't look so hot. So I try not to look, and hope to do better today.

So if I have one bit of advice for parents of young children it is this - do the best you can, trust yourself, and be pleased with what you do. Embrace the chaos. And for G-d's sake, don't hold me up as a model!

Sharon

52 Weeks Down - Week 19 - Reconsider What You Eat

The whole question of how to eat ethically can seem like a giant project. Do you focus on local? Organic? Grass-fed? Fair Trade? How do you find it?

We all are starting to wake up to just how huge an issue food is. Greenhouse emissions from CAFO livestock, local food security, soil depletion, water issues - the whole thing is complicated. Now I'm not going to tell anyone what to eat - personally, I think the most important thing one can do is adapt to one's personal and local realities. That is, what I eat, here in the cold, rainy, rocky northeast, on a farm, in a Jewish family of six with strong culinary ties to Asia is likely to be very different than the right and ethical diet for a poor, African-American family in DC, or a Hispanic ranching family in New Mexico, or upper-middle class Swedish Lutheran suburbanites in Wisconsin. What you eat is shaped by multiple factors - where you live, what you can afford, what you care most about, what culture you come from, what you grew up eating, how much water you have, what your climate is, how hard it is to get the kind of food you want, etc...

But I will tell you what we eat, and how we made our own choices. If you are struggling with these issues, and trying to figure out what to eat, I strongly recommend some books. First and foremost, Peter Singer and Jim Mason's _The Way We Eat_ - this is *the* book that works its way through the ethical decisions inherent in food. I don't agree with all their conclusions, but they really try to take all factors into account. I also like nutritionist Joan Dye Gussow's _This Organic Life_, and Michael Pollan's _The Omnivore's Dilemma_.

But if you don't want to wade through all those pages of material, the basic issues, in, what I think is the correct order of priority, run like this to me.

1. The health of my family - which includes the long term health of my family on a liveable planet.
2. Greenhouse gas emissions
3. Fairness for Farmers and farm workers (which includes support of local agriculture and fair trade)
4. Local food sovereignty - that is, making sure my region can support its population if necessary
5. Increasing biodiversity, the range of crops we rely upon and the range of species
6. Careful use of water and soil
7. Humane treatment of animals


Now these are my own priorities, and you might put yours in a slightly different order. But I think it is helpful to have sense of what you are trying to accomplish by buying food, and to have a way of making decisions. All of these are high priorities, and often, a choice brings all of the above together. But if I'm trying to decide between sources, this list makes it a little easier. And no, I don't ask fifty questions of everyone I buy food from - in fact, I rarely have to ask anything at all. The great thing about getting to know the people who produce my food is that I do know what they do. I'm lucky enough that I often get into their barns and fields. If you don't have those options, I'd say building a relationship with the farmers in your area, or even a long-distance relationship with a small farmer who grows what you want to buy (check out http://www.localharvest.com/ for sources).

Now what does this actually mean in terms of what I eat?

1. Absolutely no feedlot meat - period, no discussion. We do not buy meat that has ever been in an industrial feedlot. The greenhouse emissions of CAFO meat are one important reason - feedlot cows are worse than SUVs in many cases. But that's not the only reason - such meat isn't good for my family. The heavy doses of antibiotics used in meat production, the issues of contamination, antibiotic resistant forms of bacteria and evidence that we aren't doing everything we can to prevent mad cow are other reasons. It isn't good for my family, and it isn't good for the environment. It is also lousy for the farmers who lose their autonomy to corporate farming requirements, and to the slaughterhouse workers. There's really no upside here. It is cheap - but only in the short term. Feeding my family food that nurtures anti-biotic resistant diseases or potentially carries prion diseases is not cheaper in the long term. Global warming turning my neighborhood into a desert is not cheaper.

We keep kosher, and we only buy kosher meat, or butcher our own poultry in a kosher manner. But we do *not* buy industrial kosher meat, like Empire chicken. My own research into practices suggests that there are no large kosher producers that meet anything like my standards for humane treatment, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, etc... So we don't eat their meat.

Now I've had farmers argue, fairly enough, that where they live there aren't enough local markets to keep them in business and that they have no choice but to sell to the available packers. This is true, and a real consideration. But I only have so many food dollars (and we don't spend a lot of them on meat - see next point), so my choice is simply to choose only local, kosher meat that has been raised in a manner I know to be acceptable, and that supports my neighbors. I can't support everyone, so I give my dollars to those I think are most important.

If served meat whose origins I don't know by family or friends, I eat it, as long it meets our standards of kashruth. But if I go to a restaurant, I try to ask where the meat came from, and indicate that my family would gladly order different things and pay higher prices if the meat were not factory farmed. I don't order the chicken if I don' t know where it comes from, and I try to prioritize vegetarian options when visiting others. Ultimately, if I couldn't afford to raise my own animals, or buy locally produced, humanely raised, grass-fed meat, I wouldn't eat meat.

2. Much less meat than the average American diet, and what we do eat, raised mostly on grass, scraps and other non-human food.

We eat meat, most of the time, on our Sabbath - and not every sabbath either. We consider meat an occasional luxury, a pleasure and a useful flavoring. We are obviously not vegetarians, although we eat a vegetarian diet 20 meals out of every 21.

Up to a point, I believe that reducing meat consumption is extremely valuable. But there comes a point in analyses of polyculture in which animals occupy important niches, making use of plants and scraps that an all plant-culture cannot. So our goal is to create a diet that includes animal foods, but limits them to what can mostly be produced on our scraps, garden wastes, pasture, and other things people can't eat. To me, that means some poultry, which can be fed mostly on our scraps, pasture and small quantities of feed, geese, which mostly eat grass, and potentially goats and very thrifty sheep that can produce useful food on our steep pastures from land that is not especially well suited to tillage. If I did not keep kosher, I might try raising pigs in my woodlot on acorns and roots, and rabbits on my weeds, but neither animal is edible to us, so that won't help.

We also raise endangered breeds of livestock, giving priority to old style, landrace animals that were bred by their environments and human choice to survive and thrive in specific environments, without the need for heavy shelters and large quantities of food inputs like feedlot animals. 80% of our meat is raised here, on our land, and I suspect that number will rise as we add larger livestock. Our goal is to eat only meat we raise, but for now, we buy some kosher slaughtered lamb from a friend, and that's pretty much it.

I'm not happy about killing animals to eat. But neither do I believe that we have the luxury of not using our land optimally to produce food - there are simply going to be too many hungry people in the world. Given that pasture can also help support endangered wildlife as well, I think that diverse, native pastures are a good choice on land that shouldn't be tilled, like praries and rocky wet places like mine. And I also believe that if we are going to practice agriculture, we have a moral responsiblity to use the land as wisely as possible, getting the most food from the land we do use, so that what we don't can be left open for wildlife. So I think that *for us* it simply makes sense to add some animals to the mix. And since there is no retirement home for extra roosters, male sheep, etc... it makes sense for us to make use of them. We try and ensure that the animals we eat have the best life possible, and die quickly and as painlessly as possible. It isn't perfect, but it is the best system we've come up with.

When we do eat meat, we use *everything* on the animal - when we butcher a chicken the parts of the animal we don't use are fed to the dogs, or cooked down into broth. A chicken might make a meal of roasted chicken, a meal of leftovers, the last meat on teh carcass will be shredded and used in soup from the bones. The heart will go to the dogs, the liver be frozen and saved to be broiled and mixed with eggplant and spread on sandwiches some Shabbos. Any extra broth will be frozen for cooking, extra fat mixed into the dog or cat's food. Every bone is cooked down, and the heads are eaten by animals. The blood, when drained, is diluted with water and used to fertilize our soil. We believe that if an animal sacrifices its life for us, we should honor it by not wasting any of it.

Many of our neighbors hunt overpopulated animals like deer, and if we didn't keep kosher, we would do the same. I think eating animals that have lost their natural predators is better than letting them die of starvation. We do take some venison and rabbit scraps from our neighbors and feed them to our dogs, using the above principle. I know many people who eat only sustainably harvested, hunted meat, and this is a good ethical choice, IMHO, even though it isn't ours personally. I find the suburban prejudice against hunting to be particularly odd - I've met plenty of people who complain endlessly about the Canada geese on their ponds, but won't eat them, while they cheerfully eat feedlot chicken.

BTW, our dogs and cats eat the highest quality, organic diets we can find for them, but we're still not happy about this. We're working on finding some better options for them - because pets have an enormous ecological footprint, and feeding them factory farmed meat isn't a good idea either. Cats are obligate carnivores and must eat meat, dogs have some options, although I've not found a vegetarian diet that I've liked for them. But we're considering what we can do about this.

I believe vegetarianism is also an ethical and wise choice - it just isn't ours. If we didn't grow food, and couldn't find reliable sources, I'd be a vegetarian.

3. Very little fish. This is very sad for me, because I grew up near the ocean. My grandfather fished, my step-BIL is still a fisherman, and I grew up eating lobsters and clams straight off the boat. But I've changed my policies on this one for several reasons.

I don't eat shellfish or bottom feeders because I keep kosher. I rather miss them, but I'm trying not to cherry pick my faith, to accept that even if the reason isn't clear to me, that I've accepted a certain set of parameters and I should live by them. My husband eats shellfish when he's out and it is offered to him, but then, if it were up to him, we wouldn't keep kosher at home. This is our compromise.

I don't eat fish from overfished stocks, particularly the large predatory fishes like tuna. I do this partly because they are overfished, and also to reduce mercury exposure. I have an autistic child, and there's some evidence that autism may be related to mercury exposure. Many people focus on mercury as a preservative in vaccines, but I suspect that my years of enthusiastic fish eating means that there is a considerable amount of mercury in my tissues as well, and as a still-breastfeeding Mom, I want to minimize this.

No freshwater fish from local rivers and lakes - the levels of contamination with PCBs are simply too high, and again, there are other people affected by the pollutants I take into my body - my kids. The national recommendation is that women of childbearing age and children eat *no* fish from our rivers, which is unbearably sad and horrible.

Otherwise, I eat fish occasionally, taken from protected areas, and from species not terribly overfished, but we are misusing the oceans so badly that even fish from species not overfished are depleted because their natural food is disappearing. One study suggests that in my lifetime, there will be no more fish to eat, effectively. The largest category of fish we eat (and this is very occasional) is wild caught salmon, bought directly from a cannery that serves native people who catch salmon in traditional ways. We order our yearly supply from them, and pay a fairly high price for it, but consider it worth it. And once a year, I eat sushi. That last isn't ethical, it is just a pleasure I'm not quite willing to do without.

I want to look into aquaculture myself, because we all love fish here. I wouldn't mind life without meat at all, but I do miss fish.

4. Eggs are all home produced - if our hens aren't laying, we don't eat them. That way, I know they've been produced with minimal grain based feed. Milk we're hoping to home produce shortly, as we're currently converting our garage to a goat barn. Until then, we buy locally produced milk from farmers who grow most of their own feed and hay. We haven't completely eliminated the use of grain in animal food, but we're keeping it to a minimum. We live in an area that is excellent for grassfed meat and dairy production, and we want to encourage those industries. The dairy farms around me are struggling, and many have gone out of business in the last few decades - we want to see them keep going.

5. For grains and beans, always organic, as local as possible, and direct from farmers whenever possible, in bulk. We store a lot of food, and it is important to me that our stored food be ethically chosen.

We can buy whole corn locally, from a farmer who is certified organic, so we do that. But few other sources of grains and beans are really local. Some organic beans we can get from PA, but our wheat comes from Nebraska. And once you get that far away, sometimes we consider fair trade over in-nation. There are a number of nations where export agriculture, as Peter Singer documents, provide much needed income. So, for example, instead of buying California Rice, which is raised in irrigated land in a place without enough water, we buy fair traded rice through our coop which is bought directly from a cooperative in South India. If at all possible, we buy direct from farmers, if not, fair trade (if from outside the US), or from small farmers with good labor practices who sell directly.

Because beans and grains can be stored for long times and shipped dry, they are much more efficient to transport over long distances. So while we don't eat meat or vegetables from far away, generally speaking, dry shipped materials, particularly shipped by rail, are pretty good from an environmental standpoint.

6. Produce is almost always local, homegrown first, then local organic, then local. We have the luxury of being pretty absolute about this - we have huge gardens, room for fruit trees and live in an area with a lot of small local producers. So, for example, my oldest son, who eats 3-5 apples per day, can indulge his pleasures entirely locally. We eat our apples first, since the only ones we are getting in any quantity yet are very early apples, then we buy local, starting in late August. In October, we pick at local orchards 15-18 bushels of apples, and store them at our house. When it gets too warm for our cellaring, we buy local apples, stored in refrigerated cases over the winter from our coop - the latter aren't optimal, but this is only for a month or two each year, and most apples in July have been refrigerated. Apples are the only thing we have to have - otherwise, we eat what is in season and available.

We do buy some organic citrus, some fair trade, organic bananas, the occasional pomegranite (a traditional food for Rosh Hashanah), avocado or mango, all organic and fair traded. But this constitutes a tiny percentage of our produce - very small quantities. Mostly, we eat what we have growing, what we store in our root cellar, and change our diets - so our salads might start out as wilted dandilions with garlic vinagrette in april, go on to spinach with radishes, steamed asparagus and baby carrots in may, flip to mesclun mixed with scallions and pea-pods in June, over to purslane, baby chard and arugula with cherry tomatoes and sweet onions in July, A classic full summer salad - tomatoes, peppers, onion, carrots in August and September, go to spinach with roasted beet, chopped apples and sunflower seeds in October, turn to potato salad with sorrel and wilted greens in November, a salad of mache and arugula in December, steamed kale with goat cheese and dried cherries in January, sprouts and steamed chunks of root vegetables in February, and the first cuttings of grown-indoors Minutina and mizuna with apples and carmelized onions in March.

We even grow some "tropical" stuff at our house. We have figs in large pots that are starting to produce, several citrus plants including a keffir lime (used in asian cooking for its leaves), meyer lemons and limes, and some tropical herbs like curry plant. This doesn't give us as much citrus as we want, but the occasional special treat of lemonade or lemon cake makes us appreciate it that much more. We're lucky enough that these things will grow fairly well in our sunny bay window, cleaning our air and providing us with a great deal of pleasure, along with some fruit and herbs.

7. Local beverages. We drink local apple cider as our juice from late August until January. We put up some local grapes as grape juice for our sabbath and have experimented with making current and wild grape wines. We drink local, kosher wines whenever possible, and local beers. We make our own soda, with mostly local flavorings (we buy an occasional hunk of ginger for gingerale), on the rare occasions we drink it - mostly at birthday parties. We do buy some concentrated, organic orange juice as a treat, but mostly, we try to drink water, homemade herb teas and the juices of local fruit.

Not quite a beverage, but the other thing besides apples that my autistic son is addicted to is popsicles. We make popsicles from local, organically grown juices whenever possible, and sometimes make them from concentrated organic juices, although this is not as good a choice, since it is shipped cold. And sometimes, we run out and buy locally made, sugary crap popsicles made from artificial flavors that we can buy at our local convenience store. We're not perfect!

I do drink some "real" tea. Because spices, chocolate, tea and coffee are light, shipped dry and high value, they are excellent trade items, perfect for fair trade. I buy fair trade, organically grown tea in bulk, to minimize packaging, and make it in a reusable tea ball. I consider this money well spent - tea plantations and coffee plantations that are managed well are good crops, low water, reduce soil erosion and can enrich poor people. We buy our vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and other high value items the same way. We don't drink coffee ourselves, or would do the same. We'd rather use less of these items, pay higher prices, and ensure that the value gets to farmers.

8. Local sweeteners whenever possible - honey and maple syrup are big ag products around here. Whenever possible, we use these instead of sugar. We do buy some organic, blackstrap molasses, shipped from far away, as well, but are trying to prioritize local sweeteners, as well as eat fewer of them.

We buy organically produced, cold pressed canola oil from just over the Canadian border, and some California organic olive oil. We also make butter from local cream (oddly, I've not found any butter more local than PA). We also use the extra fats from our occasional meat meals to cook with - for example, extra fat I pull out of the chicken can be used to make fried potatoes. This is probably really bad for you, but it tastes quite good, and it means that we're making full use of the occasional meat meal.

9. As little processed stuff as possible, and that in bulk from people we like. As I said, we're not perfect. If I'm going to eat junk food, which I do occasionally, I'd rather eat potato chips from the local potato chip factory. It still isn't good for me, it still shouldn't be a big part of my diet, but at least it is local. And I buy my cheerios in bulk bags (we call them "inferios" because they really don't taste nearly as good as the real thing, but the kids will eat them fine) from my local bulk store, and rationalize that at least I'm supporting a friend. For those of you with very young children, don't start them cheerios - they are like crack for kids ;-)!!!

When we visited family in Boston, we went to Ye Olde Pepper Company (everything is ye olde where I grew up - don't ask ;-), the oldest candy company in the US, and bought lollipops to offer as potty training bribes to my still-training 3 year old and perpetually training disabled eldest. The sugar and artificial flavorings are from who knows where, but at least I'm supporting them. I grew up in Salem, and ran in and out of their store after school for years. So at least I can help keep them in business - it isn't perfect, but it is kind of sweet.

I'm trying hard to lose weight right now. The reality is that a world of scarcity can't afford people who eat too much food. I've been letting myself off the hook on this one, and it isn't eithe healthy or wise. But the good thing is that almost all the choices I'm making right now are better for me, as well as the planet.

That's what I eat. It is complicated. It is a pain sometimes to figure it out. But it is worth it - because I'm voting with my dollars for the kind of world I want to live in, and because I believe that most of the time, the right choice for the planet is the right choice for my family as well. My job, as parent, is to keep myself and my family healthy, and to make sure there's a decent place for my grandchildren to grow up.

Sharon

Busted: What the Economy and Peak Oil Have To Do With Each Other

My bills are all due and the baby needs shoes/But I'm busted
Cotton is down to a quarter a pound/And I'm busted
I've a cow that went dry and hens that won't lay
A big stack bills that gets bigger each day
The county will haul my belongings away
'Cause I'm busted."
-H. Howard, Sung by Johnny Cash

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2896#more

I strongly recommend that everyone here read Stuart Staniford's analysis of the relationship between the credit crunch and our peak preparations. Staniford is one of the most balanced and careful analysts out there - he's been a voice of moderation and reason among peak oil thinkers. But reading Staniford's analyses over the last year, I get the sense he's increasingly worried. Here he says,

"and just lay out what has spooked me over the last couple of weeks, which is the whiff of financial panic... Clearly, we have a situation in which financial system players have started to lose confidence in each other. The public has not lost confidence in financial institutions, but they are losing confidence in each other. They are probably better informed than we are, suggesting that as the chain of bad debt and overpriced assets continues to unwind, we could see more institutional failures, and more public loss of confidence in the financial system... The last financial panic of major significance in the US was was the Great Depression..."

Precisely because Staniford isn't prone to panic or overstatement, I think people should take this very seriously. The comments, including the criticisms of Staniford's analysis, also are worth a look - predicting the future is difficult, and Staniford is doing something rather difficult. Staniford's deepest concern is a dramatic reduction in our ability to invest in infrastructure changes, alternative energy, alternatives in transport. If we find ourselves dealing with an economic crisis, our ability to invest on a large scale in alternatives will fall dramatically. And if
oil prices fall in the short term due to conservation motivated by us being poorer, it will make alternative energy investment seem like a bad deal - and we don't have a lot of time left on that one.

Personally, in some ways I worry more about demand destruction *not* happening than about its occurrence. Because the reality is that most Americans I know are so deeply tied into the energy system that they will probably cut back in almost every area but their shopping and commute to work. Matthew Simmons, at ASPO this year, observed that demand destruction simply wasn't happening in places like Australia and Kenya, where rising gas prices resulted in people cutting back on other things. I'm sure we'll conserve to some extent. But human beings don't behave rationally, and we've become so dependent on cheap energy that I suspect most of us will give up our meds before we'll give up our cars, let the groceries run out at the end of the month before we turn off the lights. And with food prices set to rise 50% over the next five years http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/food-prices-set-to-surge-50-per-cent/2007/09/01/1188067435964.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1 and UN scientists warning that within the decade we're going see hunger on a scale we've never seen before http://sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=spreading-deserts-threate&chanID=sa003&modsrc=reuters, we're on the cusp of a sea change that is about to sweep the middle class of even the affluent nations into the well-charted, if sad, territory of poverty.

Stanford is still working the details out, and I personally don't claim to know whether the current market tremors are a large earthquake or something to be shortly forgotten. But I do think that the reality is that our economy and government are so overextended that all of us should work under the assumption that we are going to be left holding the bag, be left figuring out how to get along as systems fail. There will be some big and showy projects. But I suspect the simple truth is that instead of nicely organized rail systems coming in to fix the car problem, most of us will simply be deciding "if I've still got a job, can I afford to get there."

For a very long time, I've been making the very simple argument that we're about to encounter "ordinary human poverty." I take the term from Sigmund Freud, who once said that the goal of psychoanalysis was "replacing neurotic suffering with ordinary human misery." Freud's claim is that most suffering it ordinary, normal, human. And I think most of us in the rich world, who thus far have been comparatively isolated from ordinary human poverty, are in danger of encountering it. We're in danger of not being able to put enough food on the table, of finding that after we pay for gas and food and medicine, we're in the hole every single month. We're in danger of getting a little further behind and more desperate each month, of losing our houses and getting evicted from our apartments, and more and more entering the world of the poor.

Staniford quotes Paul Krugman of the NY Times several times supporting the point I made recently that the market is to a large degree a matter of confluent fantasies, known officially as "confidence" - that is, if we believe it works, it does. But the moment someone says "the emperor is naked" too loud, the whole thing can come crashing down. And even if you've got nothing in the stock market yourself, chances are your employer does, your Mom was planning on retiring on her investments and your own job depends on selling things to people who get their money from the stock market.

I'm no prophet, and I don't claim this is what will happen, or that any particular outcome is inevitable. But if I could suggest a single project for all of us, it would be to begin to strengthen poverty mitigation systems within your community and region. That means finding local food sources for your food pantry, or becoming a food pantry grower yourself. It means working with your neighbors to create local clinics, and local "meals on wheels" programs. It means "adopting" an elderly neighbor or a disabled community member, making sure that they have food and support and medical care. It means getting together with your neighbors and storing food and ensuring clean water supplies. It means getting your church or community group, synagogue or club together and looking into group discounts for big orders of things like food, bicycles, water purifying devices.

It means getting together and having "work weekends" where you reinsulate one another's homes. It means starting "goods pantries" and "community exchanges" for things like old clothes, tools and other extras. It means recognizing that your own security depends on the security of your neighbors - and all of them are equally vulnerable. It means remembering that the old "the life you save may be your own" is literally true here.

Staniford's analysis, if true, is just another reason why we simply can't expect this to be fixed from on high. And as frustrating as that can be, in a sense, it should be liberating. Because if the solution isn't going to come from government, and the stakes are this high, there's nothing to prevent you from plowing through the red tape and speaking up, taking the lead and stepping up to preserve you and yours and those around you. There is nothing to stop us now, from recreating those things we have relied on governments for within our own, new, shadow economies and governments. That is, there is no reason for us not to reclaim our power, because we have very little to lose.

Sharon

Technology Addicts All

Technology Addicts

I really liked Dale's essay a great deal. I admit, I've had exactly the same thought about the bees and cell phones - I think it is a compelling example of just how addicted to our comforts we are, because I think Dale is right that few of us would have voluntarily given up our cell phones simply to keep our food supply coming. Our "have to" is too close and "food" is simply too abstract in this society.

That may be the single reason that we most need to begin growing food. Not because we might starve (although that seems a serious and compelling rationale to me), but because unless we reconnect our brains and bodies with natural cycles like the food cycle, we'll never be able to recognize our collective technological death drive for what it is. And yes, I know that writing this on the computer is a great irony - and one I have to start dealing with. Here's my essay on that:

The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged, Either

Ned Ludd kinda had a point, no?

Sharon

Right, Schmight, Left, Schmeft

I had the pleasure of reading an advance copy of Richard Heinberg's new book, _Peak Everything_ recently, and I found it to be typical Heinberg - engaging, wise, scrupulously balanced. It comes out this month, I believe, and it is well worth a read.

My personal favorite thing about it, however, was not the writing or the subject matter, but the subtitle, which (on my copy), included the phrase "Transitioning gracefully from the Age of Excess to the Era of Modesty." I admit, I was struck by the sheer aptness of the phrase "era of modesty" to what we're coming to. Now I gather that in the process of revision, the subtitle was changed to something else, but I keep thinking about the term he coined, both because it is great piece of phrasing, but also because it manages in three words to invoke a great transition in political and social thinking. It should be no surprise that Heinberg is ahead of the curve again, of course, but I am impressed by the way the very title invoked not just an era of more modest usage, but also social, sexual and cultural modesty, subjects that, if they are discussed at all, tend to be thought of as discussions to be had on the "right" rather than throughout the political spectrum. With that one word, "modesty" Heinberg manages to invoke a confluence of left and right. I admit, I'm impressed, and sorry the term doesn't appear on the actual book (I wonder if Heinberg will let me steal it for mine ;-)).

Now the peak oil movement has been called the "liberal left behind" movement - the apocalypse of the left. Of course, it is no such thing, and never has been. Former Bush energy czar Matthew Simmons is no leftist radical, Republican Congressman Roscoe Bartlett never dated Abbie Hoffman and the US Army is not, as far as I know, handing out "Free Mumia" buttons with its rifles. And yet all are among the first to recognize the immanence of peak oil. While it is true we've got our share of aging hippies, we're also flush with survivalists, Petroleum geologists, investment bankers and other bastions of the right and center. And this is all to the good - the end of cheap oil is not a political fact, it is a simple, practical reality. The same is true within the climate change movement - we are all moving rapidly to the recognition that no matter what your political position, the hard, scientific truths about sea level rise, aquifer depletion and drought really don't care whether you prefer Bill O'Reilly, Thom Hartmann or Stephen Colbert.

But it is insufficient to say that these issues cross party lines, because what they actually do is destroy party and political lines, and the divisions we've carefully worked out to decide who is "left" and who is "right." Now it is worth noting that these have always been artificial distinctions for most real people. I've been very kindly called "a voice of the left" and I take some pride in that designation - I value the history of leftism, including my own family's history, going back to the early twentieth century union movement and through my parents. But "left" has never been more than a shorthand for my positions on some issues - and had we drawn the circles other ways, I might have spoken, at times for other constituencies, even, perhaps, for some segments of the much dreaded "other side." All of which is simply proof, that, while it isn't true that we're all exactly the same under the skin, neither designation is sufficient to describe most people's political and ethical thinking. Most of us are political hybrids.

Where, for example, did one put the leftist nun putting her life on the line for economic reform in Latin America - and equally passionate about ending abortion? Where does my passionately pro-drug legalization, harsher sentencing police officer neighbor go? How about the gun-toting, anti-tax radical environmentalist I know? The disabled neighborhood activist who opposes abortion and euthanasia because she sees it as the genocide of the disabled? My neighbor who believes that his sons have an absolute obligation to defend their country - and that their government has an absolute obligation to stop the war? My pro-public education, feminist, Orthodox friends who believe that modest women cover their hair - on the protest lines? My conservative, fundamentalist neighbors who believe that Jesus demands devout Christians hold no private property and resist corporate power? Where would you put me? Feminist, pro-social justice, anti-growth capitalist - and yes, pro-private property (in some senses), pro-modesty, pro-personal responsiblity farmgirl who used to help her father make bullets? The reality is that most people are more complicated than our current designations will describe.

The last decade or so has blurred things further. Which party again is the big government, tax and spend one? Which party is the party of genocide, the Dems who killed half a million children in Iraq with the embargo or the Republicans who killed half a million civilians in Iraq with the war? Now it is the left who is screaming in horror about the dangers of big government (and some of the right is screaming along with them). Where were the feminist voices of anger about sexual harrassment so evident during the Clarence Thomas hearings when the democratic president was in the hot seat? The conventional political lines are shifting.

And at the same time that this shift is happening, those of us who forsee the coming crisis have to make major internal political shifts as well. For example, in _The Upside of Down_, Tomas Homer-Dixon observes that to deal with all of the coming crises, we'd have enact,

"...a global society that I've come to call 'Holland times ten," with vastly more sophisticated, pervasive and expensive rules and regulatory institutions than anything the Dutch live with today. Do we really want such a future for ourselves and our children?"

Homer-Dixon, not exactly a right winger, recognizes the simple reality that a vastly more repressive beaurocracy might actually be worse than the collapse. He observes, following Joseph Tainter, that institutions created to deal with crisis invariably stick forever, leaving us laden with ever more oppressive layers of government. What is remarkable about Homer-Dixon's book is that it, like Heinberg's title, shakes off conventional left/right thinking and simply allows the data to lead him to a conclusion that is neither. I'm not sure I agree with Homer-Dixon, but I find him a particularly creative example of the ways in which these problems shake up our traditional assumptions.

The same could be said of Rod Dreher's book, _Crunchy Cons_. Dreher too is motivated by the honest recognition that the current realities, including peak oil (which he describes) and the environmental crisis have changed things. He tries very hard to slip all the good stuff under the rubric of conservativism, for example, arguing that traditional social welfare programs that support families are conservative. I'm not convinced he succeeds, but he does one of the most remarkable analyses I've imagined, and his work has real power among conservatives who haven't fitted into the exact mold around them. I know many of these people, and I believe that generally speaking, Dreher is one of the first people to seriously reconsider, in a popular and accessible way, how to reconfigure politics to deal with the future.

What is disappointing in Dreher, of course, is his longstanding allegience to the politics of balkanization. That is, instead of seeking a middle ground, he wants to shove environmentalist, agrarian conservatives into Republicanism. Personally, I think he'd be better off abandoning that territory and seeking a new one. The reality is that for most of the people who work in these issues, left and right stop becoming fully explicatory categories. Heinberg himself writes about the problem of doing so in _Powerdown_ where he discusses his preference for anarchism and minimal government, while arguing simultaneously that no societal powerdown can occur without a large, invasive government structure. And that it cannot succeed without that large structure eventually voluntarily handing out power to smaller, localized units of power. This represents a remarkably hybridized vision of government - personally, I don't necessarily believe it to be right, but again Heinberg has allowed the realities of the system to override his personal political preferences and at least to imagine how we might enact the changes required.

Like Homer-Dixon's rejection of large government structures and Dreher's rejection of unfettered capitalism, Richard Heinberg's call for modesty, at least to me, raises some fascinating questions. One of the most fascinating is why it is that the word "modesty" so powerfully invokes sexual modesty, almost overriding the notion of modest desires, expectations and practices outside the realm of sexuality. I admit, my personal theory about why we have abandoned all other senses of modesty along with traditional sexual modesty is this - modesty of all kinds is, to a large degree, about choosing not to be looked at. Both sexual modesty and economic modesty reject the external gaze of others, saying "don't focus on me." Historically speaking, many of the rules of sexual modesty have been applied to women, with the assumption that the burden of rejecting the gaze must lie upon women, because it is their sexuality that draws the eye. Feminism rightly rejected the idea that men should not be required to limit and control their own gazes and desires. But it also rejected the notion that there should be limits on the power of the gaze - popular feminism focused on the notion of the powerful female "I" at the center. But a world of people walking around trying to draw gazes and be powerful creates a superficial culture, intent on "self-expression" in a visual sense - the house, the clothing, the car, the membership. That there might be power in not being at the center of the gaze itself, that modesty might also carry power was overlooked.

This is because feminism's rejection of the origins of modesty also happened to coincide with the largest capitalist expansion in history. Feminism was as successful as it was, precisely because it served the goals of capitalism (I've written about this in more detail before here: ) And growth capitalism is, far more than feminism, about the rejection of the notion of modesty. That is, if all of us are not constantly calling out "look at me" there is no market for designer clothing, fancy decorations to make our house an expression of our "self," fancy cars to express our wealth.

In a culture that rejects modesty of all kinds, that demands the gaze rest upon us, that validates the notion that the "I" is at the center of the "eye" all the time, markets flourish. In a culture that values modesty of all sorts - that rejects the gaze, the notion that the self is at the center of everything, there is no place for endless growth. Thus, the notion that the culture of modesty was bad, because it derived from the sexual repression of women was wrong - what was bad was the notion that women were "drawing" male gazes, and thus had to regulate their bodies, rather than expecting men to regulate themselves. But the actual assumptions of both sexual modesty (as it applies to both men and women), and economic and cultural modesty is simpler. It is "My worth is not in what is visible. I am one among others, I am not the center of everything." We threw the baby out with the bathwater. It is true that one can read "don't make me the center of things" as "I am powerless" or as a form of silencing. But it is also true that modesty can represent that power of self-deferral, the placement of others before the self. Undoubtably, one can have too much of that. Equally indubitably, in western society, we don't have too much of that sort of self-abnegation - far from it.

At the risk of alienating people on both the left and the right who read this blog, and ending up with absolutely no readers at all, I'm going to observe that none of the problems we are facing can be fixed from the right or the left, or even through discussion of things in those terms. And speaking to the left, to which I have a longer and deeper alliegence, there are things that we really ought to reconsider. Here are some of the places where I think leftists might want to look to the right to find, if not common ground, some useful tools.

1. I believe passionately in the importance of personal responsibility, and of fair accounting for one's choices. I do not mean by this that one's situation is wholly a product of one's personal choices, and thus tough patooties if you were born poor. What I mean is that each of us needs to take greater responsibility for our present, societal circumstances than we do. I often hear people lamenting the power of corporations - as though that power does not derive from our dependency and willingness to give them cash. Walmart isn't powerful because they are an evil corporation - they are powerful because they have great stinking wads of money and those wads came from you and me. Stop buying their crap and guess what - Walmart won't be powerful. I also hear many voices call for public policy solutions, when what they really mean is that they want the government to take care of peak oil and climate change for them, without being personally inconvenienced. Again, this is a failure of personal responsiblity, because if we tell governments that what we want is solutions without personal sacrifice, we will get only inadequate solutions, that will fail us and the next generation.

I believe that everyone has a degree of personal responsibility, and that the level of responsibility is increased by every advantage given to you. Were you born into a family that loved you? Guess what - you got a present, or a gift from G-d, and you owe a little more than someone who was beaten daily or neglected. Did you get a decent education? There's another level of responsibility - if you were either lucky enough to get a good education at good schools with teachers who cared about you, or you were born smart enough to be an autodidact and compensate for the inadequacies of what was given to you, bow down to diety or thank your lucky stars, and get your ass in gear because you owe a little more than those who didn't. And so it goes.

Full scale, straight out, honest accounting of responsibility is important. That means that yes, people are responsible for what they do and do not do, the choices they make. And those who shape the choices other people can make, or don't shoulder a greater degree of responsibility in privelege are also responsible.

One of my professors, when I was complaining about some terrible personal situation I was enduring, once pointed out to me that most of the great deeds of human history were performed by people who were having really bad days and extenuating personal situations. That's not to say no one ever has an excuse for anything, but the more excuses we make for ourselves, the more we say "well, I deserve just a little extra because..." (and who doesn't), the less likely we are to have any extra for the quiet people who have learned to expect nothing and who truly need our hand up.

Ultimately, we need to be held responsible for our choices. The Peter Parker system should apply here - with great power, should come great responsibility. The better off you are, the more you need to take full responsibility for your actions - to stop asking for tax breaks and accomodations. But this goes all the way down.

2. I sure as heck don't expect the government to save me in a crisis. Ok, I'm going to tell the truth. I don't understand why it is that people in Florida don't have any bottled water or boards for their windows, and are standing in line for it the day before the hurricane. For cripes sake, you live in Florida! The same is true with people who are unprepared for blackouts during winter storms in up near me, or earth quakes in CA. I'll grant you, one of the better uses for government is to get the helicopters up and make sure people don't die of typhus after the disaster, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Look, we all watched the footage of Hurricane Katrina, and it confirmed what everyone on the right has been saying for generations - our present government isn't going to save our asses in a crisis. Now there are good and useful reasons to want to try and get what government does better than anyone else done right by them, and I'm all for that. Agitate for change - yes. Because there are always going to be people who can't protect themselves and situations we can't prepare for.

But ultimately a certain degree of self-sufficiency is merely common sense. Now there are people who may not be able to afford extra food or blankets, or a way out of a dying city - and we need to help those people. But it would be really helpful if you aren't one of those people, if you aren't elderly or disabled or desperately poor, if you'd get your act together and be prepared to meet your own damned needs for most predictable situations, so that you won't clog the system.

3. I don't want to see power centralized any more than strictly necessary anymore. Ok, let's be honest - this used to be the big old left/right debate - social welfare or not, big government or little government. It is no longer a right left issue. The current administration has a bigger government than the last one, with more debt and beaurocracy, and now the dems are calling for restraint. No one has a monopoly on this one.

And let's be honest, whether you hate the Clintons or the Bushes (or both equally), every single one of us can see exactly why we want to decentralize power, and exactly why we should be getting rid of political dynasties and the system that locates private armies and our own right to justice in the hands of any one person.

In fact, both peak oil and climate change require, absolutely mandate a reduction of scale of government - just as conservatives have been calling for. Yes, we also need to expand some central projects - but the general movement has to be towards local sovreignty and local power and resources being kept in the communities.

4. We're going to have to develop better family relationships and a strong focus on family units, and ASAP. I'm not talking about getting into people's bedrooms here, I'm talking about getting people to take care of aging parents, disabled family members, to stop whining about "what about *myyyyyy needs* and to start thinking a bit more of other people. Those of us who had ordinarily fucked up families (as opposed to transcendently so) are going to have to start getting along again, and recognize that biological and chosen family are going to be much more important in our lives for a long, long time. And we're going to start having to value and honor the work of caring for others - instead of acting like helping grandma to the bathroom or breastfeeding your kid is a pain in the ass to be shoved off on other people, we have to start realizing that this *is* the point - the reason we're here. To be of use. To do good work. To care for others.

We're also going to have to parent better, and stop telling our kids how special and perfect and wonderful they are, and tell them to get their asses out from in front of the tv and get to work helping out. Instead of telling Jimmy and Jenny that the best thing they can do is to get good SAT scores and go to Tae Kwon Do, tell them the truth - that you want them to grow up to be good and righteous people, who care about others, are hard workers, honorable and generous.

5. If you harbor any lingering prejudices about blue collar work with your hands, get over them now. It is not, in any sense of the word, more noble to be a tax lawyer than a plumber, and it doesn't mean you are smarter. If you call the middle of the country "flyover states" cut it out now - you won't be flying much of anywhere anyway, and they grow your dinner. They might get pissed off and stop growing it.

The reality is that most comparatively well off, well educated people have been doing things that aren't very useful and are soon going to stop being done. Most of the people we have been told we are smarter then are actually doing good and useful work - feeding people dinner, keeping houses running, building things, making things, growing food. It is likely that we have been so firmly told we are smarter simply because it was a good way to avoid pointing out that we are, as my husband likes to put it, "the surplus population."

And if you think all religous people are the same, and religion is the cause of all problems, and religious people are idiots - ok with me, but shut up about it. As we're less and less able to control our future, more and more people are going to be praying in their foxholes, maybe even you. Get over it, and stop feeling superior.

And if you reject religion, don't want to see it flourish, but aren't working to provide community support, care for the sick and dying, festivals of celebration and release, and a way to think about why the world is so screwed up, expect to fail. Don't blame it on religion - blame it on the fact that you aren't very good and doing the things that religion does very well for many of us.

6. We're going to have to start talking about sex differently, and say a hard word for many of us to swallow - "Don't." I'm not talking about today's rather ineffective forms of abstinence education - I'm talking about the unpleasant reality that poverty means less health care, which means more STDs, less access to reliable birth control, more teenage pregnancy, more complications, more AIDS. I'm going to be blunt - unless we completely change our government's attitudes on these subjects, we're going to enter into a society where the ability to mitigate the dangers of sex are radically reduced - a society which for many resembles the pre-pill society.

Ignoring the moral issues, let's be practical. Birth control is expensive - a really reliable set up requires a woman to have regular medical check ups and access to pricey medicines. Condoms are expensive to your average poor teenager. Heck, they are expensive for my budget. Abortion is really expensive. A truly reliable system for young people requires a form of birth control for the woman and a condom for the man - pricey, and hard to come by if you don't live near a drugstore - which thousands of us don't.

Now the ideal for some people might be to use government to make all these things available and free, and to place no restrictions on sexual practices, age at onset, etc... But the reality is that our present system is as much a product of cheap energy as everything else - if we don't want to rely on a universal system to keep our actual kids from getting pregnant or diseases, we have no choice but to change the way we think about sexuality. If we want to ensure that AIDS in the US doesn't come to mirror AIDS in Africa, we need to be very careful about what we teach our children about sex.

We have become a society in which personal restraint is unimaginable, and abstinence education will always fail as long as a small minority is struggling against a society that calls every form of sexual restraint repression. But we need to think and talk about this - even though most of us who grew up in the age of birth control aren't exactly the poster-children for such restraint. But we can't afford to have our kids get pregnant earlier and earlier, to have outbreaks of diseases we can't afford to treat, to create an expanding underclass of children born to other children. So we're going to have utter the words "no" "don't" "wait." And we need to talk about how we can get there - talk to the people who were there all along.

7. We need a new sense of personal freedom, one in which limits in the form of things like honor, self-discipline, modesty, courtesy, and public order are perceived not as acts of repression, but as structure in which culture can bloom. The notion that there are things we should not and ought not do is likely to be a painful one to those who spent their youth practicing iconclasm and smashing idols. The notion that we should follow our bliss, support our own self-esteem and do what feels best to us has to be replaced with the notion that we should regulate our desires, limit our choices and do what is best for the community.

Our culture has grown to reject hypocrisy as the ultimate sin. Hypocrisy in the popular (rather than the moral) sense, of course, is defined as doing things that you don't believe in/expressing feeling you don't have for the sake of the community. But, of course, communities run on just such self-restraint, and in tighter knit, more strongly bound communities, how you feel about things may not matter that much all the time. It may be that what you do, how you treat others, and how you regulate your own feelings and intentions is more important to your own survival and success than the following of one's bliss.

In my religion, we believe that feeling follows form. Instead of the Christian (and popular secular) notion that what is in your heart will lead you, instead we believe that you do the right thing, and that practice in doing the right thing will lead you to be able to feel the right way doing it. That is, when your failing mother needs help, you care for her because it is the right thing to do, to honor your parents, and in doing so, you open up the possibility that you will do it purely from love. But unless you do the work itself, you have few opportunities to change your feelings and develop that sense of love. I personally believe that a shift from relying on how you feel to what you do is necessary to success on the community level.

Again, capitalism has enthusiastically supported the notion that we should follow our hearts all the time - just as it has rejected modesty of ambition, of lifestyle, of desire. Because if you believe that your feelings are authentic, immutable, and natural - that is, that you feel the way you do about X for some fundamental reason of self, then there is no reason to limit one's desires. But if you believe that one's desires are shaped by your actions, if you believe that, for example, you might come to feel love (I do not claim this is inevitable, by the way, merely possible. Nor do I claim that everyone should love their mothers - not all mothers are even possibly lovable), where there was none before, if you were to care for your mother, spend time with her, know her better by virtue of helping her, you open up the possibility that our instinctive feelings are not necessarily our most reliable guide.

There are more, but now that I've traumatized everyone on the left, eliminated all readership and gotten my book contract revoked ;-), I'll stop for the moment.

Now does this mean I've gone right on everything? Nope. I still believe that sex is one of those things that is none of my business, I'm still pro choice, pro-reallocation of wealth and regulation of markets and rabidly environmentalist. But perhaps, just perhaps, we can disagree on these issues and agree on others. Perhaps we can put a few of them to the side, and get together some of the time, fight tomorrow and talk today. And perhaps, just perhaps, we can find a way to talk from less fixed positions than right, left and center. And I'm going to email Richard Heinberg and tell him how much I liked his original subtitle ;-).

Shalom,

Sharon

Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

One of the great tragedies of the current environmental crisis is the present and potential loss of about 50% of everything, including everything we never knew existed and now never will. Most of the estimates of the impact of human behavior on the world suggest that over the next century, human beings will destroy about 50% of the life on earth. That is, more than 50% of all frog and fish species. Almost 50% of all plant species. Tens of millions of insect species. All those large mammals we purport to care about.

These may be the last years of the Polar Bear, the Great Apes, the Elephants, and those, of course, are the poster children for extinction. But we will probably miss as much or more, in our own way, the native British bumblebee, the spearfish, or the dozens of South American tree frogs. Some of these creatures we will not grieve because we will never have known they existed. Others we will miss, but we won't be able to identify what we miss - we'll miss the beauty of the wild animals gone extinct, but our children will remember them only as story creatures, the dinosaurs of their days. What name will we put on "the quality of loss that one generation feels for something that seems imaginary to another?" I'm sure some language has a word for this, but ours, as yet, does not. Or perhaps we'll miss them when we suddenly need them. We'll miss the wild plant that might have provided the only cure for a newly developing epidemic. We'll miss the landrace species of potatoes that would have prevented worldwide crop loss from a new disease. We'll miss the old breed of cows that would have allowed the current Jerseys and Holsteins to live through a new infectious disease. We'll long for the seeds of the past, the wild plant that would have meant enough vitamin A in our diets and sight for our grandchild. We'll miss the species that would have provided for another species that would have enabled the pollinators to survive and provide us with fruit. Novelists will coin words and create a poetics of the loss of things we never really knew we had, and thus, did not value.

The reality is that we don't fully grasp how much we depend on other species - for example, some species support as many as 200 other species by pollinating the right plants, providing food for others, etc... We don't grasp how vulnerable we are to a worldwide plague, or blight, as our crop varieties get narrower and narrower. We don't fully grasp how vulnerable *we* are to the loss of our ecosystem. Because, if we understood it, we'd have to stop - even if the price of stopping were high. How much easier to ride gaily towards extinction - whose extinction, we shall not know until we know.

It may be too late for some species - the black rhino, for example, has already probably fallen below the number required for long term survival. But before we keen our song of mourning, perhaps each of us should ask whether we've done everything we possibly can to ensure the survival of our own share of the world's diversity. Because, after all, all of us have a little bit of control over the world around us - maybe just a very small amount, perhaps enough to save one breed of plant, one meter of wild space, one single species. But, as they say in my own faith, he who has saved a single life, it is as if he has saved the whole world. Now that was spoken of human lives, but it may be that some portion of the whole world depends on your personal commitment to diversity.

First, there are seeds. Even if you only grow in windowboxes, or a tiny garden plot, you can save some varieties of seed. And if you take up a variety of seed that isn't one of the most common (you can get many of them by joining Seed Savers Exchange at www.seedsaver.org, or join a local seed saver's group) ones, you may well be preserving a food plant that would otherwise go extinct. The best estimates suggest that over the last 200 years, between 50 and 80% of the known domesticated varieties of common vegetables were lost, including their precious genetic material, and their adaptation to local coniditions. The potato, the pea, the squash you grow in your garden may be the last in the whole world, and the seeds you save the only ones that can keep it going, or perhaps you will adapt a new variety to the conditions you and others most need.

Because, of course, seed saving and plant breeding are the same process in some cases. The farmer who selects her best plants, best adapted to her soils and conditions, is creating genetic material slightly different from the material that you started with. Your "Hopi Blue Jade" corn, grown in your own soils, in your own climate for a few years will be appreciably, notably and genetically different than the Hopi Blue Jade someone across the country or the world has adapted to their place. It may have resistance to different diseases, a greater cold or heat tolerance, an ability to adapt to particular types of soil.

We breed seeds when we consciously select and choose our best, as well as when we set out to create something new. Each act of seed saving is an act of creation, of selection, the transformation of something that is continually, eternally becoming, a selection shaded by time and climate and soil and water, but also human intention, wisdom and commitment to the future.

One of the most important things we can do, then, is preserve old varieties and also breed new ones, whether by formal plant breeding or by wise selection of plants to save seed from. The best books on these subjects are Suzanne Ashworth's _Seed to Seed_ and Carol Deppe's wonderful book _Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties_. Even if you've never imagined yourself as a plant breeder, Deppe's book is well worth a read for a deeper understanding of plant genetics and selection.

The more we grow out old and uncommon, forgotten and lost varieties, the greater the degree of genetic variation we preserve. There are seed banks, of course, to preserve them, but the best way to keep seeds alive is to grow them, eat their products and plant them again.

We also should grow as great a variety of crops and as many kinds of each crop as we can. Some of us in very small gardens will not be able to grow a large variety of anything, but those of us with space should hedge our bets, growing more than one kind of each thing whenever possible. There will be some accidental genetic crossing, but that isn't necessarily bad - while we want to preserve old varieties, reasonable care can allow us to grow multiples. And the simple fact is that if we ever have to rely on the products of our garden for our food, we are safest with a wide variety of plants and animals in our lives.

So, for example, it is easy to grow many varieties of beans and peas without worrying about crossing. Tomatoes can be spaced apart a small amount. Even that difficult cross-pollinator corn can be grown by time sequencing in many climates - two or three sequential crops can be grown and the seed saved.

The reason for this is twofold - to keep as many varieties as possible alive, but also to keep your garden going, and your belly full, even if you have an attack of pests or diseases, flood or drought. You may not live in a tepary bean climate, but that unusually dry year, it might be the only one that produces well. My Purple Peruvian potatoes never fail me, no matter what the weather, even if I prefer Green Mountain as a staple.

Besides growing multiple varieties within a species, growing a range of crops makes a huge difference. I'm fond of the phrase "belt and braces" - that is, as much duplication of purpose as humanly possible. Redundancy is your protection. So besides your potatoes and wheat, add some Amaranth, Corn and Buckwheat. Besides your apples, try Medlars or Mulberries. Add groundnuts and jerusalem artichokes to go with your peanuts and sweet potatoes.

And don't just get fixated on food - a good garden needs wild places, to increase diversity as well. Even a tiny yard can have a patch of multi-purpose attractive insectiary plants - dill and cilantro gone to seed, along with bee balm, echinacea and hyssop and some tall grass or wildflowers to provide a place for ground nesting birds and wild pollinators to live. Or perhaps you can leave that dead tree standing to provide nests, or some brush piled up near your compost to make a home for birds.

Instead of having your local park mowed every other day at great expense and with great exhaust, perhaps consider campaigning to let the grass grow longer, to plant a meadow or simply leave some areas wild. Perhaps you can get your city to let you turn a vacant lot into a wildlife garden or bird sanctuary, a seed saver's garden or orchard. Perhaps you can convince them not to build that access road that takes out so much wildlife, to preserve those wetlands, to keep what diversity is left going. But don't forget the overarching issue - we've lost so many environmental battles by focusing on the animal we want to preserve, not the larger issue of human impacts. Wearing your Wildlife Federation t-shirt while driving to the mall and home to your McMansion is missing the point.

What about animals? Oddly, I sometimes hear the argument that domesticated animals don't "count" in the diversity game. And if we had to choose between domesticated animals and wildlife, we probably should choose the wildlife. But most of the endangered and landrace species of domestic animal are the answer to the terrible environmental impact of today's industrial livestock breeds. The Icelandic sheep, bred to winter on four bales of hay and the fat on her back, and still bear a healthy lamb in Iceland's difficult winters is a far better answer to our desire for good protein than either infinite fields of GMO soybeans or feedlot cows. Pasture is generally the most diverse ecosystem on a farm, with more wildlife than cultivated fields that get run over by heavy equipment. Animals that can primarily or solely grass, and are adapted to climates where it is difficult to raise crops or till soil are the logical things to raise on prairie lands that turn to desert when they are tilled or on hilly, rocky, cold wet ground like the northeast. We can produce much needed food, fiber and manure on soils, while still leaving them open to use by as much wildlife as possible.

The reality is that the preservation of genetic diversity is one of the most important and urgent projects we have. We need as many species, wild and tame, of as many plants and animals as possible. The more we cultivate them, preserve them, save their seed, spread them around, even guerilla plant them into uncovered soil, the better the chance that we and our children will have a world to grow up in.

As you are designing your land use, as you are working within your neighborhoods and community, remember the watchwords - diversify, diversify, diversify. It is as if you have saved the whole world.

Sharon

52 Weeks Down - Week 18 - Get On A Bike

Will you all forgive me for the indelicacy of pointing out that the first time I got back on a bike after a while, I noticed that, umm, my butt is no longer as umm, refined, as it once was, and that skinny little bike seats are a literal pain in the tuchus? Will you promise not to laugh too hard at the fact that sometimes I *walk* my bike up the giant hill that I live on (I was once way too cool to ever walk a bike)? And when I say that bike shorts will never come near these thighs, may I hear an "Amen."?

All of which is not an argument for staying off your bike. What I am saying is that if I can do it, most of you can too. You do not have to be in shape (biking is actually easier on your body that walking), or look cool in spandex, and they make bike seats and are comfy for those of us who have, ummm...back. In fact, there's a bike for everyone, even the imperfect.

Now why should you get a bike? Well, first of all, it is without question the most fun way to travel. There's something about speeding along on a bike that immediately returns you to childhood. Now I don't recommend you return so far that you, like my husband, try riding down a street no-hands, with your eyes closed (hit a parked car) or like me, tried popping a really big curb (knocked out two teeth, needed complicated dental surgery). The great thing about being a grownup on a bike is that (probably) you aren't an idiot anymore. It is a taste of childhood without the necessity of doing regular stupid things ;-).

It is also the most efficient way to travel, bar none. A human being on a bike uses their energy more efficiently than a walker, a driver, someone on a train. It is good for your health, good for the environment, and a good bike is infinitely cheaper than a car. Most people's cars will set them back 3K this year in taxes, maintenence and repairs, not to mention the gas, which is more. I've bought good bikes for $20, and got them in good road condition for another $20, but optimally, you might want to pay a bit more. Even if you buy a really nice bike, you are way ahead.

Now if you haven't been on a bike in 5 years, 10 years, 30 years, you will remember how to ride, but it isn't quite like getting back to being a teenager. As I say, a comfy seat is good, and you might want a bit more stability than you did as a kid. If you have a bad back, you will want a good seat, or perhaps a recumbent. And it takes some time to get your body up to long bike commutes. But the reality is that many of us may not have anything in easy walking distance, but do have shopping, a job, public transportation or family in biking distance. And every trip you don't need a car for saves you money.

For older folks, the disabled and those hauling heavy loads up mountains, electric assist, or even fully electrified bikes are available. For people worried about falling and stability, there are three wheeled trikes, and some of them come with child seats behind them. My family is looking into adult trikes with two double seats. I recently heard someone describe a bike with wheelchair attachment in which an able bodied person could convey his wheelchair bound spouse around. There are trailers for small children, and tandem and side hitch arrangements for kids who can do some but not all of their own biking. Bikes are a technology whose limit is still being plumbed, and there really is a bike for almost everyone.

We're working on teaching the kids to ride. We're hoping eventually Eli, who doesn't have traffic safety skills will be able to be tandem hitched to Eric or me, and pedal along while we handle the driving. Eventually, I envision a family of four teenage boys, my husband, with their poky mother trailing behind yelling "wait up!" It is a nice image.

Like everything, if you've gotten out of the habit, you start slow, and work your way up. My goal is to run local errands entirely by bike. Given that we live fairly far away from nearly everything, that's a bit difficult, but we're working on it. I'm not quite there yet -we're still figuring out if we can afford to build double trikes so that when we have to or want to take the kids with us, we can all go by bike. But the reality is that pedal power is the way to go, both to save money and the planet. Oh, and it is good for me, and my slowly shrinking behind as well ;-).

Cheers,

Sharon