The Walmart Dilemma

Now I'm no fan of Wallyworld, but I found myself there one day last week. I've got this cat, you see - he's an old male, and like some old male cats, he's prone to urinary tract infections. The only way to prevent them is to feed him special food. I can buy that food from the vet, but the annual food bill for the cat is over $1000 if I do. But Purina makes a reasonably priced brand that does the job. The problem is that no place in 30 miles of me other than Walmart sells it. So once every few months, I go and donate the price of a couple of bags of cat food to the cause of industrialization.

I won't justify it, except to say that I don't think spending four times as much gas to go buy it at a Kmart is really all that much better - Kmart being only marginally preferrable, and just as much money going to feed the monster of industrial civilization. And from a purely sociological perspective, Walmart is kind of interesting. For example, I was nearby early one morning, and discovered that really early in the morning, our local Walmart plays Christian devotional music on the PA system. How interesting is that - apparently, only Christians shop early.

One of the things that has interested me the most lately about Walmart is its turn toward organic food. Now this is the most industrial of industrial organics. And they've always had some - as long as I've lived out this way you could buy organic tofu, Stonyfield farms yogurt and organic goat's milk. But now there's a *lot* of organic food. For example, I saw some grapes there - 3xs the price of the conventional grapes, and packaged in a giant plastic clamshell box, lest one of the grapes (which cost 5cents each, I suspect) get squished. But it has a nice, earthy brown paper label, with a picture of a pretty farm, and that all important label "organic" on it.

Target has decided to compete, creating its own organic label. And helpfully, the USDA has relaxed the already not-very stringent rules on what constitutes organic in industrial agriculture. Apparently you can use a little bit of poison here and there, and add some petroleum distillates to your food - just not as much. And, of course, there are no limits on the amount of petroleum permitted to plant, harvest, package, ship, refrigerate, etc... your food. Very few limits on the inhumane treatment of animals, and none at all on the inhumane treatment of human beings, including migrant workers. In fact, organic agriculture often is worse for workers, who don't get pesticide exposure but do get massive repetetive strain injuries. Industrial organic agriculture is a disaster - just a slightly smaller, milder disaster than regular industrial agriculture. If you don't believe me, definitely read Michael Pollan's account of it in _The Omnivore's Dilemma_.

Now the good thing about Walmart and Target going organic is that millions of people who don't have food coops, or local farmers will have access to organic food. In fact, Walmart is committed to making it cheap (don't think too hard about what has to be done on the other end to make it cheap!), so that poor people can have equal access to organics. Lots of people are happy that now they can have pesticide-free food in their little town.

But here's a question. Is it reasonable to say that the only thing we have to do if we want a safe and sane and just food system is "create demand?" Because that's what the free market claims is the only obligation we "consumers" (think hard about that word - do you want to be known mostly for your capacity to consume things?) have. If we demand things, the magical market will supply them. But what is left out of this equation is that it won't really supply what we *want* - it won't give us the things we dream about, or that we hope for, or that we believe are good and right. Markets and corporations don't do that - they can't. They aren't people, they don't have a morality, or a sense of justice, or passion or love. Corporations are facsimiles of human beings, stripped of ethics, love, caring, justice and honor. So what they give us is facsimiles of what we truly want and dream of. Thus, you get the organic frozen turkey dinner, with paste-flavored mashed potatoes, instead of the turkey grown by a neighbor and roasted by someone who loves you. The same is true of industrial organic food - it requires so much petroleum, because it is essentially a plastic model of small scale organic food. We are told all we have to do is want, and open our mouths like a baby bird, and the market and corporations will drop something into our open gullets. But let us remember that if all we are going to contribute is demand and an open mouth, we should expect what is dropped into our mouths to be a worm.

The reality is that any decent future asks more of us than simply demanding and wanting. If your community has no access to truly organic, local, sustainably created food, then you need to help create some, not rely on Walmart or Tarjay to produce it. It is easy to rail against corporations, when in fact the reason corporations have so much power is that we have ceded it to them. We have said we don't have time or knowledge or energy to create just systems, so that we should allow markets to do our work for us. And then we act surprised and outraged when artificial human beings, motivated by greed, fail to live up to our principles. The only possible solution is for us to cease to subcontract our needs and responsibilities out to artificial human beings. Instead, buy things from people, ideally people you know, and put your own work into the system. If there's no food coop, start one. If there's no farmer's market, talk to local farmers about sourcing food or finding them. If all the clothing is made by slaves in the third world, buy used or make your own. Grow some food yourself, maybe even enough to sell. We cannot expect corporate ogliarchy to cease if we are not willing to make it stop, one dollar and one project at a time.

As for me, I'm looking into making my own cat food. As much of a learning experience as my trip to Walmart was, more is being asked of me. And you.

Sharon

Plan C, Community Solutions and the Most Important Thing Any One of Us will Ever Do

I left Megan Quinn, Faith Morgan and Pat Murphy off my "famous folk" post because I've been meaning to come back to the subject of the Community Solutions conference with everyone who bothers to read this. Because I want everyone here to read the Community Solutions "Plan C" and think carefully about how we can make this happen.
http://www.energybulletin.net/20501.html

As a nation, we have no choice but to change the way we live. Even if you don't believe in peak oil, it doesn't really matter. Because even if this weren't the right response to Peak Oil (and it is), it is the right response to Climate Change. And even if it weren't the right response to Climate Change or Peak Oil, it is the right response to the central injustice in economic globalization. And even if that weren't true, it is the right response to give Americans the highest possible quality of life.

I know I sound a little like a suck up when I say how impressed I am with Pat Murphy. After all, he invited me to be a speaker, and gave me what he called my "debutant ball." But if you've actually met me, you know that if I don't like your ideas, it won't matter a tiny bit how much I like you personally. I'm a no quarter asked or given person. Pat doesn't need any quarter - he's come up with something truly brilliant on his own.

What Pat Murphy did, in Plan C and in his Smart Jitney program was question established realities. Are renewable energies really underfunded? Pat demonstrates clearly that they are not - that their limited utility doesn't come from lack of research into them. Is light rail really the best alternative? Pat shows that when you add the long term energy costs of construction, it is easier and cheaper and more efficient to use the existing car fleet, and simply put many more people in them, and use them more efficiently. With Megan Quinn, who is the public face of community solutions and a brilliant thinker on peak oil in her own right, Pat and Community Solutions have started to reconsider received ideas and create a model of the future that could work, and that doesn't simply put off a disaster upon our own children.

More than any single organization working on peak oil, Community Solutions offers hope and optimism. Faith Morgan's documentary, _The Power of Community_ offers Cuba as a model for what we could do and accomplish. And Plan C is, I think, the most hopeful vision of what we might get and achieve, if only we'd concentrate on what really matters - community, meeting basic needs, achieving a level of personal security, and finding a safe way down from the disaster we're teetering on.

I believe sufficiently in this that I've decided that my website will start a new program - the "thousand picture" program. Because if a picture is worth a thousand words, what would a thousand pictures of volunteers to live sustainably be? Because the major public opposition to any strategy of curtailment is the idea that Americans will never, ever go along with anything that means buying less, and living more simply. But I don't believe that's true - in fact, I think most Americans would like very much to live a simpler, more basic life, but don't know how to get there from here. If we who believe in good stuff like frugality, conservation, home economy and local development could stand up and say, "this is the way, and we're volunteers," there is no question we could transform the world.

If Plan C is ever to become public policy, the prejudice of public figures who believe they "know" what everyone wants must be overcome. So I'm asking for public sign-ons to plan C - to a voluntary strategy in which we gradually cut our consumption, and concentrate on creating stronger communities and happier lives. I'll have more details on my website shortly( www.ourvictoryathome.com). But what I want is for at least one thousand (heck, I'll keep paying for the space if I can get a million - or 10 million - why not aim high!!!) people to sign on to the basic ideas of Plan C, and with their signature, send in a picture of yourself doing something sustainable. Send your name, email and your picture, along with a few lines about who you are and what you are doing to make your life more sustainable, and the address of your web presence, if you have one, to me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com or sharondownonthefarm@yahoo.com, and I'll post them on the website. I'm going to chase down some celebrities as well, so we can all have fun flipping through the pictures looking for famous faces.

There will be prizes for the most beautiful pictures, the funniest, the weirdest and the cutest (at the moment I'm giving out hand-knitted mittens, but if you live in Florida I'll come up with something else!). I'll give out prizes once a month, or as fast as I can knit them. I want to see people in their gardens, kids collecting eggs, people riding bikes, trikes and unicycles. I'll take pictures of your homemade solar showers and your solar panels and your gardens that spell out "Victory." I want to see you wearing your own homespun, homewoven, homecrocheted, homeknitted clothing, and chopping wood. I want to see your homebuilt and home cooked products. And most of all, I want to see you - this is going to be, I think, a collections of pictures of the most beautiful, courageous, generous and amazing people in the world doing the work they do to improve upon it. Because if enough of us stand up and say we are willing, and our neighbors are willing, then our "leaders" will finally begin to follow.

So send me your pictures, and your info, along with a quick summary and your email and website. Show your face and the faces of your families, friends and neighbors. Help make it impossible to pretend that the world isn't full of willing volunteers.

Sharon

Get Chickens...but think too.

Someone on a list I'm on recently announced that he was convinced by peak oil, and that means he needs to get chickens. Now on one hand, I think that's a good idea. There are many compelling reasons to keep chickens. First of all, industrial chicken and egg production is one of the filthiest, most inhumane, most grotesque industries of all time. You probably already know that the chickens are essentially tortured during their short lives, living in filth, crammed in tiny cages, etc... I won't bother reiterating what we all already know, but if you buy eggs or chicken at the supermarket, you are, with your dollars, saying, "I'm ok with torturing animals and polluting the planet just so I can have meat." Organics, industrial kosher and "free range" (which really doesn't mean what you think it does) are marginally better, but much more like industrial production than not.

So what is a person who likes to eat eggs and the occasional bowl of chicken soup to do? If you raise four laying hens in your backyard, you will average 2 eggs per day - enough for a household of four to have an egg each every other day. 8 hens, which would fit comfortably in your average suburban backyard, will keep you in all the eggs you want much of the year. Eggs are a superb source of protein, and quite delicious. They enhance most baked goods. In addition, you will get chicken manure (in industrial concentrated production, chicken manure is a problem - in your yard, it is a blessing on your garden), and when the hens get older, and stop laying so well, if you are brave about this sort of thing, you can make chicken and dumplings out of them. Or you can keep the hen as a pet. They are friendly things, make pleasant noises (you don't need a rooster to get eggs, and in fact most people in close proximity to neighbors shouldn't keep a rooster) , and good natured. Children can pet them, and there isn't a child or adult in the world who doesn't get excited when they find an egg. All my children have grown up with chickens, but the excitement has never waned. Chickens will eat your scraps, including meats and things you can't put on the compost pile, and return you beautiful eggs. They will eat bugs, including japanese beetles, slugs and ticks that pester us. All they require is an area of grass to scratch on, the most basic housing (4 hens can live comfortably in a doghouse, but for gathering eggs and straw removal you might want something else).

Now some areas do not permit chickens, but surprisingly many do, and if they don't, this is something to take up with your town board or whoever is in charge. Get your neighbors to help - promise them as many delicious, orange yolked, lovely eggs as they want if they will help you. Show them how cute the baby chicks are, and how sweet natured a Buff Orpington hen is when a five year old picks her up and carries her around. 6 hens make far less noise, mess and trouble than one Golden Retriever for neighbors, and are infinitely more useful.

But - and I want everyone to pause at that but - it is worth thinking about how we're going to feed these chickens. Because a lot of people get chickens and think their work on the path to sustainability is done. But if your chickens are eating a lot of grains, it would probably be more productive for you to simply eat the grains. And if those grains come from long distances, and are not organic, you've done something, but not enough. If you are feeding your chickens GM corn and Roundup-ready soybeans, then you will both get out of them what you put in, and are again, with your dollars, tacitly saying "these practices are ok."

So how do we feed chickens so that they produce eggs and meat for us, but don't require us to violate basic principles about raising things sustainably? Well, chickens are always going to need some grain, but they can get quite a lot of their food foraging in your yard for bugs, eating grass, and from your household scraps. Most American households could easily feed half a dozen chickens more than 50% of their diets from their own scraps, lawn and bugs. Now presumably, you didn't want the bugs, mostly anyway. The lawn might bother you a bit - after all, if you live in a suburban neighborhood, you may have one of those lawns that looks like it was painted on, and the thought of chickens pooping on your lawn may be traumatic.

But if you build something called a chicken tractor (that is, a small pen that can be moved easily), and put the chickens in a small spot on your lawn each day, you'll fertilize that spot, won't have excessive quantities of manure, and get your grass trimmed too. Or, you can build them a yard where they can poop their heart's content, and you can bring them your weeds, lawn clippings, as well as the scraps from your garden, and keep them blissfully happy.

For the other 50% of their diet, you'll need grains and a source of fairly intense protein, and maybe a source of calcium. If they have open ground, you won't need to worry about grit or Now we shouldn't be trying to duplicate commercial diets - the idea is not to maximize meat or egg production, but to get the most out of the animals without either shortening their lives or making your own life stressful.

Locally produced staple grains can feed chickens - you can grow them in your garden if you have enough grain. Dry corn, for example, is not hard to grow, and it wouldn't take much space to grow a year's supply. Wheat, oats or millet need not be threshed or anything. Just grow them (they grow like grass, because they are grasses), cut them down, and toss a bundle in with the hens now and then - the straw will make bedding for them and they'll scratch out all the grain. Even potatoes can be used, and potatoes are the easiest staple starch to grow in cold, rocky areas like the Northeast. Potatoes should be cooked, but you could easily boil a big pot of potatoes every few days and toss the rest to them gradually. Or you can buy grains from a local small producer.

As for protein, if you have enough land, you could use extra milk from goats or cows (chickens will also happily drink milk you let sour in the fridge.) If you can find enough scraps to support them and the chickens, you could raise worms in your house, and use them as a supplementary source of protein. Or, of course, there's soybeans, if you can buy them locally. Your own meat scraps will provide some. If you have spare eggs, you can even cook them and feed them back to the hens (you don't want to teach them to eat raw eggs, trust me). In any case, any shells you don't need should be cooked, crushed and fed back to the chickens for calcium supplementation. With that, you'll need only a little oyster shell or other source of calcium.

At most, you should be bringing in less than half of the chicken's total diet - because the goal here is to create higher-quality protein than you can get from eating the grain directly, while also using no more or even less grain. That absolutely can be accomplished.

Sharon

More on Exceptionalism

My last post got some interesting responses, and I think it would be useful to discuss them a bit more, in part perhaps because I may not have been fully clear, but also because I think this whole concept of exceptionalism is a delicate subject.

Deb's comment, that believing that you have the right policy strategies is, in fact, a kind of theory of exceptionalism is both true and untrue. It implies that your ideas are exceptional - in the sense that they are more right than other people's ideas. But I don't think believing that you have better policy plans than other people implies a theory of moral exceptionalism (btw, I was being somewhat ironic when I used the phrase "we who know better"). While Deb is absolutely right that no strategy will ever be perfect for everyone, it is also the case that we do need policies on every level of government for responding to peak oil. And yes, I think my ideas, and the ideas I admire are better than other people's ideas. I think this for several reasons. First of all, I'm not a moral relativist - while I think that human beings are all pretty similar, I don't think all ideas or schools of thought are equally good. Some of them are quite bad, in fact. Second, I don't think that because policy can't perfectly respond to everyone's needs that we're better off without it - people can articulate their needs, and help refine it.

I do think that a proposal like the Community Solutions Plan C (my own views are similar, if not exactly identical) or Heinberg's Powerdown have significant merits, and one of them is that they meet the criteria of "what if you are wrong." A solution that imagines us making enormous investments in alternative energies risks causing a disaster if peak oil and the associated economic problems are closer than we think, or if we rely on technologies, such as carbon sequestration, that are neither proven nor safe within any margin of error. But a scenario in which we engage in voluntary curtailment and relocalization has a number of virtues - if we're wrong, say, about peak oil, we're still probably right for the purpose of social justice and climate change. And the allocation of resources to social welfare, rather than to creating private wealth is something that can be changed if it turns out we're richer than we think we are.

I think Deb raises a good point - there's a level of arrogance and hubris (I've got a good bit of both) inherent in believing you know what is best for the nation and the world. And yet, someone has to do it. I think my ideas (which aren't really so much mine, but the ideas of better and smarter people like Pat Murphy, Richard Heinberg, Julian Darley, etc...) are better, and I'd rather see them implemented than the ideas of most of those presently in power. But it is hubris, and if the stories of greek mythology turn out to be true, I'll be changed into some animal and chased across the earth if I'm wrong ;-).

RAS's point is, I think, especially well taken. The psychological weight of learning that your lifestyle can't last is traumatic. Personally, I think these traumas are best handled by finding lots of useful work to do, and lord knows, there's plenty. But if the emotional consequences of understanding peak oil are too traumatic, they can be immobilizing. There's a website out there that I've criticized in the past - I think they encourage you to find peak oil depressing. But I'm famously skeptical of the theraputic model, being a therapist's child. So for those who come into contact with peak oil and can't go any further, you might check out www.peakoilblues.com. That said, however, I think that the psychological element will to some degree receed when more people are peak oil aware - that is, I think that when "everyone is doing it" the emotional trauma of peak oil, or the capacity for denial will simply change. Families who think they have too much going on to address peak oil will suddenly find they have a little spare time to make sure their kids get to grow up. Peak oil is deniable precisely because it is a minority viewpoint - but not, I think, for very long.

I agree with most of what Dougii says, although I think you misunderstand me when I say what matters is what you believe. I believe that actions are what matters (in fact, that's a basic tenet of my religion - Judaism presumes that actions, rather than intentions, are what is judged and what matters) - but you cannot act persuasively towards others if you believe that the general population is made up of people whose personal greed or selfishness would prevent them from ever learning what is necessary. Your actions are shaped by how you think and what you believe.

The next step, if we are to change the world, is to make what is necessary to address peak oil into the public agenda for the nation. My personal preference is to do so from the bottom up - as a grassroots movement that is open to as many people as possible - not just historical liberals, but the new environmentalists arising from conservative Christian movements, traditional American patriots who value America, and believe that America can lead the world - this time into sustainability and justice, and every ordinary person. We can't rely on counter-culturists - we have to create a collective culture. And if we're going to do that, we need a big tent, and a general message, and a way for ordinary people to act. Then we wait for the "leaders" to catch up.

Sharon

Theories of Exceptionalism

One of the things that drives me crazy is the constant statement that we all know that people (or Americans, or first worlders, orwhatever subset of "people" we're talking about today) will never voluntarily change their lifestyles. Usually this is said by someone who has changed their own lifestyle towards greater sustainability and conservation, and is said of the rest of the people out there, who, it is either explicitly claimed or presumed as a functionof the conversation, are simply too stupid and greedy to ever voluntarily change.

But believing that most people won't change their lifestyle implies a theory of exceptionalism - that we who know better are better people, more moral, smarter, wiser, more compassionate, nicer, probably prettier too. We good people who know about peak oil and conservation, we are wise and noble, and the rest of the hoi polloi are disgusting morons, wallowing in their own excess. Well, frankly, I think that's a load of garbage, and a kind of self-aggrandizement, rather than anything useful. Because let's be honest - much as we'd like to believe it, we're no different than anyone else.

Or at least I am - I'm capable of a full range of stupidity, foolishness, selfishness, greed and pettiness. I have lied, cheated and stolen in my lifetime. I have been mean and ugly and cruel and done harm by both action and omission. Now I'm sure some of you have fewer sins than I, but I'm guessing you have your share too. So unless you choose to go with the "I'm noble and everyone else is crap" theory of humanity, then you must believe that regular people are capable of change. Because if *we* did it, so can others. If we changed our lifestyle voluntarily, because we wanted to and thought it was the right thing to do, or the thing that would give us the most happiness and security, other people must be subject to the same kinds of suasion. If we care about ethics more than personal comfort and privelege, so must other people. So why don't they?

Well, to a large degree, the issue is probably lack of comprehension. Virtually everyone on this list had a time when they too lived a normal life, standard to their nation (there are some exceptions, but they are mostly exceptions), class and culture. And they change their minds.

I know hundreds of people personally who have made a dramatic change in the conventional lifestyle and there are many thousands more who are acting, because of peak oil or global warming, or theories of justice or some other reason, from conviction and necessity. Those thousands, are of course, a drop in the bucket - but they are also potentially a beginning, the first step in a long, collective journey of cultural self-transformation. What matters is how we view ourselves, and what we believe we can accomplish. There is no fundamental difference between myself and anyone else, except that I have a little more information.

The issue is one of understanding, persuasion, and cultural pressures. And those are things we can work on. But any account of peak oil that begins with something like the statement "We all know that no one will do X until they have to" has lost me right there - because we don't all know that. Some of us may choose to believe it, because it is easier tobelieve that than to do what they would have to do to help others understand, or because they enjoy feeling exceptional. But it is not the truth, and not a starting point. We cannot begin to transform the world until we acknowledge that we as a people are ripe for transformation, and need only a catalyst to move on.

Sharon

I'm not a crier...

I can't think of another public event, since the two people jumping out of the twin towers hand in hand, that made me want to cry. But this one did. http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2531138&page=1.

So ask yourself - am I raising my children to have that much courage and selflessness? Do I have it myself? Am I raising my children to love their neighbor as they love themselves? If not, why not?

No, me neither. But we should be looking to learn what they know and we do not. I pray no one else's children will ever need that kind of courage - but wouldn't you want your children to have it, in the terrible event it were necessary.

If you pray, pray for their families.

Sharon

A Wonder Is What It Is

_A Warning To My Readers_

Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
-Wendell Berry

The first time I ever wrote anything good, I didn't realized I'd done it. I got mad. I had a history teacher in 9th grade, and he didn't like anything I did. I'd always done well in history, and I loved to read history. But I couldn't figure out what this man wanted (sadly, I can't remember his name - and I owe him a great deal). He'd have us read pieces and answer the questions, and I'd answer them, and he gave me Cs. And I got more and more frustrated - I was reading. I was giving the obvious answers - it never occurred to me he didn't want the obvious answers, because every single other teacher I'd ever had did. And then he gave me a section in a book about ancient Greece to read, that argued that the ancient Greeks didn't value manual arts, and crafts. And the piece based that argument in part on the fact that the Greek god of the forge, Haphaestus, was always pictured as dirty and ugly and crippled. Well, it happened that I read a lot of Robert Graves and Joseph Campbell in my early teens, and
I happened to know that Athene, a fairly high status goddess was also the goddess of most crafts - of weaving, and pot making and most kinds of artistry. So even though I was certain I'd be failed for *arguing* with the book, I got mad and wrote a piece about how the book as completely wrong. And I got my first A+. And all of a sudden, I understood what he wanted, and the teacher stopped being my tormentor and became the first person to teach me the most important thing I've ever learned - the answer to all questions is more complicated than it seems.

I got better at writing good things now and again, but it was not and is not a universal experience. Sometimes I write and when I'm done, I find that I've said something new, something I never knew I had inside my head. Sometimes I write things down and they are so far from the ideas percolating inside me that I can't bear to look at them. And every once in a while, I look at what I wrote and it is as though some other, better author was there to write it for me. I'm grateful when that happens. I consider it a kind of magic, or gift. It doesn't happen as often as I'd like, however. And the rest of the time I struggle along saying things that are bad, or stupid, or not what I want.

Why am I writing about this? Because, strangely enough, I apparently achieved a tiny modicum of fame the other week. People have very kindly invited me to speak to their peak oil groups, or to advise them on something. And I must tell you, if you are one of them - I don't know anything special. People say "I want to see your gardens" - and I wonder - that one? The one with all the weeds, that produced such a terrible tomato harvest? Or, "I bet you have wonderful children" - well, most days I like them, but I'm not the mother I'd like to be. Or, "I'd love to see your home - I bet it is beautiful" to which I can only scream, "NOOOOOOOO!!!"

My garden looks like yours or maybe a bit worse - messy, weedy, buggy, imperfect. My house looks much worse than yours, I'm willing to bet. There are cheerios ground into the carpet and boxes I haven't unpacked since we moved in, and neither of us cleans as much as we should. My children are ordinary children (ok, I think they are wonderful - but not, perhaps, perfect) - loud and whiny sometimes and weird and rude - and also sweet and loving and gentle.

And I don't know anything more than any of you about the future or what is to come. I write with a certain degree of authority because that's how I write. I'm funny and passionate when I speak because that's how I am - and because I write better than I talk in real life. But I'm also just plain stupid sometimes, and angry and foolish, greedy and petty and small. And this is not modesty, just the reality of me. Now I don't really believe that Wendell Berry could be crude, so I understand why you think that when I say I garden you envision something perfect. But I can't possibly live up to what you envision, and I'm bound to be a huge disappointment.

I am lucky in two things as a writer. Every once in a while I exceed myself and make a sentence or an idea or a paragraph that is a worthy offering to lay at the feet of some some better writer. And unlike Wordsworth and all romantics, I've never yet had that moment of disappointment when you look back at your younger self and think that you've lost a kind of perception. I was never a prodigy - I came into everything I did well in the fullness of time. And I never was nostalgic for anything of my youth - I'm still just as outraged and passionate as I was then - only smarter and wiser, I hope. So unlike Wordsworth and his ilk, I still believe, despite all the evidence of my mind, in the transformation of whole worlds by simple human will. But that's all I have - and none of it makes me a better person.

I keep writing because I believe I can have an impact, and because there's something heady about those moments when my other, better self takes the keyboard away from me and puts the right words or the right idea on the page. But I don't understand how that is connected to the real person of me any better than you do. I just wonder at the wonder of it.

Sharon

Now to the important stuff...yarn

I am, of course, firmly opposed to consumerism and corporatism in all its forms, and I believe that we are deeply confused about material needs and wants. Now let me explain how books and yarn are totally different than the material things that other people want ;-).... Ok, I'm working on my own little bits of consumerism.

As we enter our third month of not buying things, I'm not minding it at all. We've had our failures (we ate lunch out once because it was pouring down sheets of rain, there was absolutely no place to eat a picnic indoors, and the kids were hysterical with hunger; I bought a packet of lifesavers and a bean burrito over the course of my trip to Ohio, and I ordered the component parts of a Halloween costume for Simon, since I have no real desire or skill at making homemade chicken beaks), but by and large, we're not buying anything much, and we're dramatically reducing our consumption of gas and electricity.

The only things I really miss are books - I really, really wanted to buy both David Orr's new book and Richard Heinberg's new book at the conference, and I whined a lot mentally, but didn't - and yarn.

Now it isn't like I don't have any yarn. Actually, I have quite a bit of yarn. In fact, my husband would describe it as "an insane amount of yarn" - he has been known to ask me whether I'm collecting the stuff or knitting. And I'll admit to an occasional bit of doubt about the answer. But there are important reasons why I don't have enough yarn. First of all, it comes in many types. Perhaps other people don't understand why if you have blue sky alpaca's alpaca yarn and plymouth's andecita alpaca yarn, you would also want knitpicks' alpaca yarn. All I can say is that they are totally, utterly different, and I had excellent reasons for needing all three kinds. Plus, they all come in a range of colors, and it is important to have most of them. I'm not saying I need *all* the colors. I only need two or three shades of green, not all seven. Now multiply that by angora, wool, cotton, llama, quiviut, various combinations, plus various weights of yarn, not to mention special cases like sock yarn, and how could anyone (anyone here is named "Eric" just for the sake of discussion) not understand the need to have a full range of all these kinds of yarn, enough, perhaps, to remain warm and comfy during any major crisis, say, one involving the closing of many yarn shops.

OK, so I'm kind of kidding. I have to admit, my yarn habit (let us not even discuss the thousands and thousands of books that fill every available shelf in my house...those are practically the same as oxygen, and I'm pretty sure I'd die without them) got a little out of hand over the last few years. So now, I'm working my way through what I've got, and absolutely not buying yarn. But that doesn't mean I don't occasionally open a pretty catalog, sent to me from patternworks or WEBS or something, and stare longingly at something by Noro or Adirondack Yarns, rather in the way that teenage boys stare at underwear catalogs - that is, with a longing made only more urgent and poignant by the fact that the chance of the starer getting anywhere near the desired object is pretty teeny.

But I'm good with not buying yarn. I have only 10 more months to go, and in the meantime, I have fleece to dye and spin, so I won't suffer too much. But if I were buying yarn, here's what I'd probably buy...

More Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande - which knits up beautifully on much smaller needles than most bulky yarns (it is so soft that you can get away with this) and produces the warmest, softest, most beautiful hats in the world. I like their marled colors especially.

Cascade 220 in their really beautiful Colonial Green - I want to knit a felted skirt in precisely this color. That would take an enormous amount of yarn and time and be expensive and a real pain to do. But that doesn't change that I want to do it.

More Lopi - I may just get icelandic sheep and produce my own, if this goes on too long.

More six-ply bulky merino from Malabrigo (www.handpaintedyarn.com) - I was an early discoverer of them, and I still have more of their yarn than anyone else's. Now that the worsted is no longer available directly, and the prices have risen, I have trouble knitting it, because I know it is never coming back. But the bulky is nice too. I just wish I could get more of their super-saturated blue...

Ok, consumerism is bad. It is wrong. I will abase myself later. But I'm going to go pet my yarn first.

Sharon

The one thing we did right...Was the day we started to fight

I've been watching the rerelease of _Eyes on the Prize_ which I haven't seen since high school. And I recommend to everyone that you watch it to. Because not only is it a brilliant representation of our history, and one of the best documentaries of all time, it is also an inspiration for what could be the future of peak oil.

Because peak oil is not about petroleum geology, or economics when you get right down to it - oh, those things matter, but they aren't the center of things. Peak Oil is a justice movement, plain and simple. It is about fairness, morality and justice - we in the rich world have chosen to steal from the poor in our own country and other nations, and from our children and grandchildren, and we need to stop it right now. The stakes are very simple. Our children's lives. Other people's lives. The food in their mouths and the medicine that keeps them from dying unnecessarily. If we keep consuming resources as though there is no tomorrow, there will be no tomorrow, and those who are too young or too weak or too powerless to demand anything be saved for themselves will die. They are dying right now, today in third world countries as we in the west extract 38 billion dollars of wealth from them every single year. And that is a drop in the bucket compared to the number who stand to suffer and die because of climate change, peak oil and economic disruption. Don't believe me? Take a look at the actuarial projections the insurance industry is making - 40,000 extra people a year dead from climate change. It can't always be someone else. Your kids. My kids. Other people's kids - children just as loved as yours and mine.

And why? What do we get out of it that matters so much? Not love, or happiness, or freedom. We're not the happiest people in the world (the US the 74th happiest nation in the world - is that sad or what?). We have the 27th freest press. We're not the healthiest, we don't have the best marriages, we don't have the highest quality of life - by every measure of what we say matters, all we get out of this is things, and convenience.

And even people within the peak oil movement often believe we can't give up our convenience, even to save a life right now, today. Not even if it were life of our own child, our own grandchild, our own niece or nephew. I hear reasons - from my own voice - why I can't do X or Y thing that would save something for the future.

But if you or I believe we can't give up our cars, or our heat or air conditioning, or our jobs that produce nothing and give wealth to the corporations we pretend to deplore, watch _Eyes on the Prize_ right now, and watch a 65 year old maid with diabetes and varicose veins tell with pride how she walked 8 miles round trip to her job scrubbing floors and serving people, and never, ever took a ride on a bus no matter how tired she was. Watch a 7 year old girl walk past a row of people screaming obscenities at her and throwing things. Watch an old man face death threats to walk into a courtroom to testify. See people face down dogs and firehoses and men with guns who want to kill them and link arms and march forward. We all know people did this, but what EOP does better than any other single source is show how ordinary those actions are.

Those people were no different than you or me. They were ordinary people with ordinary fears and an ordinary degree of courage. What they had is integrity in the literal sense of the word - the belief that their deeds must be fully integrated with their beliefs and sense of ethics.

What would the world look like if all of us who worry about peak oil and climate change showed true integrity? What would it look like if the millions of people who know what is coming refused to participate? What would happen if had the courage of our own convictions and stood up and said "I will no longer steal from the future and the poor, I will live only on what is mine by right and in justice."

There is no doubt in the world we could do it. I'm trying to find my way there. Who wants to come?

Sharon

Creating an American Communal Culture

It seems pretty clear that we have no choice but to change not onlyour economic and political systems in the US, but the very ways in which we think about ourselves and others. We are, in the name ofAmerican-ness discouraged from deferring our own desire for more wealth, more stuff, more comforts, even if such a desire is destructive to someone else. We won't do it for the poor of foreign nations, who are harmed by our excesses. We won't do it for our neighbors, but will proudly go about flaunting what we have that they don't. And we won't do it for our children and grandchildren,who will have less because we had more. But that isn't an inevitable result of our humanness - there are cultures all over theworld which prioritize the general good, rather than the individual good, where making sure everyone's basic needs are met is moreimportant than selling the fantasy that you can be one of thefortunate wealthy.

And no, this isn't exactly about capitalism and communism - oh, it could be if you wanted it to be. But there is nothing in either economic system that prevents us from prioritizing the general good before the individual good, much as economic theorists would like us to believe so. You can have a form of capitalism that begins from the premise of mutual responsibility - that ownership creates a requirement to serve those not priveleged with access to the same resources. Feudalism began with precisely that assumption, but it could easily apply to capitalism. Or you could create a socialist economy that applied state ownership only on one particular level -as the Chinese one does. We tend to assume that economics and politics are bound up in one another, and they are to some degree, but only to the point that we lack enough imagination to make our tools meet our needs.

Our local newspaper had an interview with half a dozen gas consumers, asking how they felt about rising gas prices. And every single person they interviewed answered questions about drivingless, reducing pollution, etc... with "I'm American/this isAmerica." Not one person seemed to believe that "American-ness required them (or even made it desirable) to defer their own immediate desires in order to improve the future and present for others. And I don't think this is unusual - Americans routinely believe that America stands for freedom (even when it doesn't) - but we never think of America standing for responsibility. We've bought a bill of goods that tells us that freedom is about buying things, about freedom to purchase, rather than freedom from hunger, for example. But this system clearly cannot continue to work without bringing about profound harm - and its moral bankruptcy will mirror our own collective economic status.

In a world of dwindling resources, the "get what you can for you and yours and don't plan for the future" theory is bound to end in fire. So here's the question. How do we change ourselves from a people who believe that our freedom is bound up in consumption, and in the right to become rich, regardless of the consequences, to a people who think it is more important to ensure that their neighbors also have food and shelter? How do we make ourselves into a people who willingly endure some hardship for the greater good? How do we make self-deferral a virtue?

Ideally it would to start in the cradle and the home, of course, as everything does. What do we teach our kids? What do we tell them is valuable? What do they see us doing every day? What do we buy, grow, show them? What do we send them off to learn and do with others? Are we teaching the right things, giving them an ethical worldview that prepares them to live and thrive in a hard future?

And how do we convince adults to look critically at the consequences of their own actions? To defer the wants they've been taught to have by Madison Avenue, and replace them with a vision of success that is cooperative, less materialistic, and ultimately, less about what you have than the responsibilities you fulfill and therelationships you've created?

I'm an eternal optimist. I believe we *can* do just about anything we want to, including transforming our culture. We simply have to want to, and then one person has to start living that life and telling others about the beauty and joy and virtue of living well and rightly. That's all there is to it. So why does it seem so very hard?

Sharon, who is trying

Hey, Engineers!

Ok, I have a project for you technical folks. It won't get you the glory of developing the perfect hydrogen fuel cell or the newest wind turbine. But it might have a bigger impact than either. And it will make you rich. So I need someone out there to develop, perfect and patent the reusable condom.

This is not a joke. The condom is the most commonly used form of birth control in the world, especially during sexual activities that pose a high risk of pregnancy or disease transmission. The people who are most likely to use them are more likely to be poor than those using other forms of birth control. They are more likely to be in temporary or at least unmarried relationships, so that the pregnancies that result are more likely to lead to single parenthood for women. They are cheap by industrial standards, but expensive by the standards of most of the developing world. And because they are single use, and most human beings have sex fairly often, keeping yourself in condoms can be pricey. Lack of a condom, or lack of funds for condoms, is a classic reason for accidental pregnancy or disease transmission.

So what if everyone had their own? What if condoms could be reused hundreds of times, like diaphragms, or menstrual cups? What if you could wash it was soap and water, squeeze out a drop from a little tube of spermicidal lubricant, and have sex without worrying about breaking the condom budget. What if everyone in Africa could afford condoms, because they only had to buy 1 per year? How many unwanted pregnancies would be prevented?

It has got to be possible - both the menstrual cup and the diaphragm already exist, although both are made of materials thicker than most people would want in a condom. But there are very fine, very strong materials out there that would also be impermeable to disease organisms.
Regardless of your take on the population issue, I think we all can agree that the world is a happier place when people who don't want to have children don't get pregnant. So c'mon, engineers - save the world, change a condom!

Sharon

Dancing with the Elephant

I thought about it for a while before I put the fact that I have four children in my biography and my talk. It would have been easy enough to leave out - no one else mentioned their kids, and that's probably the cultural norm, especially for women. Mentioning your kids in a professional thing is considered a sign that you are not a serious sort of person, just a Mom, in many cases.

But in this case, I really thought it was important that I put it in both my talk and my bio - because the population issue is such a BIG DEAL in the peak oil and environmental movements. I certainly didn't want to be accused of attempting to conceal it later, and also, for me at least, my children are the sole and primary reason I'm so involved in this. Don't get me wrong - I like life, but what drives me is their future security. Being a parent shapes my thinking in a lot of ways that I think it would be intellectually dishonest to leave out. Finally, I think copping to the things you do that don't fit the "can everyone do it and have us survive" model is important - because we tend to be very protective of our personal little pockets of greed and privelege - and never more than when we're talking about our kids. So I very intentionally put it in. I expected it to come up for critique and comment (it did), and that was fine.

What I didn't expect was to have more than 30 people come up to me and tell me how glad they were that I put the population issue on the table. Some of them had lots of kids - an older woman with six children who has been involved in the environmental movement for decades told me about how she tried never to mention the number of children in her family. An Amish gentleman pointed out that by his standards, my family of four was quite small. Some of them were on the other side - I talked with several people who have chosen not to have children, or who only have one, a man from Zero Population Growth and quite a few others. Some of those were quite fierce on the subject of my choices, and that's ok. But everyone, on every side of this issue said, "I'm so glad you brought it up - we have to talk about it." And the more I watched, the more I thought that while there are quite a few elephants in the room in the peak oil movement, this one deserves to come out for a trot around the floor - and soon.

To be fair, I didn't bring it up. It was raised earlier in the conference as a panel question to Julian Darley, Richard Heinberg and Pat Murphy. Pat called for voluntary population reduction, Richard called for policy initiatives without naming them, and that was it. But that's not enough. No one was sure what Richard Heinberg was suggesting - is he suggesting China-esque policy initiatives or tax penalties? No one talked about what we would have to do to achieve world-wide voluntary reductions - that is, raising the cultural status of women, providing them with education and enough medical care to make sure that their children live to adulthood (there's a long post from last year on this blog somewhere on just this subject, if anyone is interested). How would we fund that? Is there some way to accomplish that goal, or do we just have to give up on it? The generalities are not sufficient.

Nor are the questions that aren't being discussed. It is very easy for discussions of population to demonize women in general, and poor women (especially poor women of color) in particular. Are we going to talk about American consumption rates, and they way they alter the population equation - the way that American children consume the resources of many non-American children. Are we going to talk about immigration? About life extension techniques for the elderly? Are we going to have orphanages? Rationing? Free sterilization? Mandatory sterilization? What about the disabled? What about people who lose their children? Are we going to talk about the care of the elderly in a society with a drastically lowering population? Are we going to continue to subsidize the fertility business? What will this do to adoption? To family structures in general? How will we handle growing poverty rates? Ensure equal application, so that the rich and poor are both evenly affected? How shall we persuade people of this, and enlist the support of things like religious organizations? And there are a thousand other questions. And we have to talk about this. But nobody is.

To his credit, Julian Darley seems willing to both put it on the table (he told my friend from Zero Population Growth that he could organize something and he'd speak), and to talk about his own choices (he has one child, and plans no more). So is Richard Heinberg (none, no plans). But that's not enough. First of all, ultimately, this discussion MUST include women, perhaps a majority of women - a bunch of men, no matter how thoughtful, wise and brilliant, cannot set policy that will so deeply affect women in their bodies, without including them.

Every single person I spoke to said that we had to talk about this - even the Amish gentleman admitted that without prompting. Not one of the people who talked about their children denied that population was an issue that had to be addressed publically, and perhaps with policy initiatives like tax penalties for having more than two children. Not one of the people who wanted to constrain childbearing denied that there were compelling issues of freedom involved. And like most elephant-in-the-room situations, it is made much worse by silence. Everyone is scared to speak - the population limitation crowd "knows" that we can't talk about it because we're too religious, or it is too sensitive a subject. The people who have more than the official set number of children (as Darley put it..2, 3, or...even 4!) are afraid to talk about why they have children. And that needs to change.

I do know this. No mainstream movement can ever function if it makes women like the wonderful, wise, engaged, activist woman I spoke to with six children, or the young farmer with 7 feel ashamed of themselves. Nor can those of us who had more than a fair share fail to face that reality, and talk to the people who are concerned about overshoot.

Personally, my proposal would be that family energy rations be pegged to a family of four. Heinberg has a detailed plan for this in his new book, and he outlined it at the petroleum depletion protocol. What I suggest is that biological reproduction wouldn't get you any increase in your yearly energy credit, whereas non-biological reproduction would - bring your Mom to live with you, and you get a fifth person's energy to work with. Adopt a child, and you get a fifth person's energy. Give birth, and you have to make do with what you've got (this *ONLY* works with good access to birth control and basic medical care - if we lose this, we simply end up penalizing the poor and unlucky even more than they are already penalized). Thus, those couples who elect to have more than two children would either have to be able to pay for it by buying extra energy on the markets, or they would have to be very frugal, and consume much less, which knocks out the very worst effect of having a child in the US anyhow - the obscene rate of consumption. Most of the larger families I know are very, very frugal and I'm going to bet that they'd still have spare energy at the end of the year to sell back into the community at large, or to save for the next year (when allotments drop at the same rate as oil production drops). I'd also be fine with tax penalties, but I suspect these may function less well as the nation gets poorer and poorer. I will tell the simple truth - I would have paid any amount of money I could possibly have produced in order to have children. But for those who would rather have a more comfortable existence than more children, this will provide further incentives (overwhelmingly, people in the US cite money as a main reason for not having more children anyhow).

I do believe however, that no movement can afford to make people ashamed of the children they already have. Nor can we afford to be anti-child, or anti-elderly, or anti-disability. If we can't find a moral way to deal with the population issue, than we've no hope of dealing with it at all. But nor can we lie to ourselves and say, "it was ok for me to do X - just not those women in Bangladesh."

I'm going to lobby Pat Murphy or someone to put on a public discussion of this at next year's conference, if I can't find a venue to do it sooner. Actually, when I first spoke to Pat, I suggested to him that I talk about peak oil as a woman's issue, and he told me that he doubted anyone would attend my talk if I did. After this conference, I don't think we need just a talk on that subject - we need a whole conference. But however we do it, the elephant needs to dance for a while, and we need to think about a coherent way of both valuing children, women and people in general, and also addressing the fact that the planet has biological limits.

Sharon in upstate NY

12 Months of Naked Men

So like most of my "brilliant" ideas, this was conceived in a moment of madness, and committed to without really any plan. On Saturday, I slipped out for a bit to see former grad school friends, and while I was waiting for them to arrive, I met Andrew, the CSA farmer of song and story. We were chatting, and some how I got on to my theory that the peak oil movement needs to pander more. I had been very much annoyed by a section of David Orr's talk (not because it was in any way inherently annoying, just because it hit one of my buttons) describing all the terrible ways that the current administration, corporations and the right use sex and power amd fear to manipulate us. And this reason this annoys me is because I hear that outrage so often. But let's be honest - all of us, even we environmental and peak oil activists, like sex and power. I like sex, and I think I could get used to power too. To me, when we complain that the "other side" (a misnomer, but I'll use it) is using these terribly unfair techniques, that we won't use because we're so high minded (and really, that wasn't what David Orr said at all - this is just me riffing) and noble, we really mean that we're bad at using those techniques, so we're going to call them out of bounds.

Seriously, PETA has become a mainstream movement in large part because of a lot of naked models who will strip rather than wear fir. They could be our role models (that's really the only good thing I may ever say about PETA). So could the anti-tobacco campaigns showing the woman in her 30s dying. We have, as I said in my talk (I have largely forgotten my talk, and will never ever be able to reproduce it, except for this one short section, which I sort of remember, and a quote from Thomas Paine which I had to write down anyhow), got all the good stuff on our side (I'm going to write much more about this later, because I think it may be centrally important) - the images of the farm, and world war II levels of cooperation, of victory gardens - and truth and justice. I said something about pictures of cute kids holding baby lambs, I'm fairly sure. And then I think I mentioned sexy dairy maids and muscular men planting vegetables (the whole thing is really a total blur - that I didn't fall on my ass is a miracle). All of which came out of this conversation with Andrew the day before, where somehow we'd gotten to joking about a "Men of Peak Oil" Calendar. And G-d help me, I said something about it on stage. It definitely got a laugh. And I was still wired and insane enough to actually ask Richard Heinberg to do it (I'm sure the covering of his face and turning away in horror was a "yes").

But now, 30+ hours later, I still think its a good idea, from a slightly cooler perspective. First of all, because peak oil needs its first fund raiser - if we're ever going to get people to start associating us with lambs, muscles and little house on the prarie, which is absolutely essential (here I am not joking), that costs. And while women are the traditional models on these things, there are two reasons not to do that - a. It would be 12 months of Megan Quinn (no bad thought, certainly it would get a following, probably a big one, but that seems really unfair to her, and there's no one else) and b. the boys started this - they should skin for it.

Actually, the real reason that this would work is simple - the peak oil movement needs women more than anything in the world. Think that's an exaggeration? I don't. Because an enormous amount of the social capital (I hate that word, but we'll use it) in the world comes through women. They tend to be the organizers in small communities. They run the church functions, the synagogue sisterhood, cook the food, administrate the PTA, call people in emergencies, drive the carpools, spend time with the kids when their values are forming, talk about their worries with friends and families - including peak oil. They pick the clothes and decorate the houses - they do the grocery shopping and run the appliances - most of our energy consumption is managed by women. I don't mean to stereotype, but whether they work or have kids or neither, they probably do most of the household labor and most of the "processing" and maintaing of relationships - and those are big, big things for us. This cannot be a guy's thing and succeed. There were many, many, many women at that conference who I know just from speaking to them have organizational skills that this movement should be tapping, who have contacts and power that they don't think of as a potential asset but that they should. And because a lot of women (not all, there are plenty who can) don't have my willingness to talk loud in front of crowds, those skills aren't seen and gathered up and in.

I have no idea whatsoever whether any of these women really want to see the gentlemen who have done so much for the peak oil movement naked or not (actually, a few of them told me they did, but I don't know if they constitute a quorum or not ;-) - but what they want is to *laugh* (no, no, they aren't going to be laughing at your ummm, accoutrements...I'm talking about the kind of good natured laughter that women...oh, just go rent The Full Monty if you don't understand.) But the calendar would make some money, it would bring peak oil to some more mainstream people in a lighter, less scary way, and it would also say we're serious in a different way - that we're willing to embarass ourselves for a good cause. The other thing that I do remember from my presentation (oh, lord, I rather wish I didn't) was me pirouetting, showing off just how fat and flabby I am, in order to prove that many, many people can grow food - that it really isn't that hard. If you don't think that that scared me to death, well...let's just not talk about it)

I'm sure there are better ideas - in fact, I've got quite a few more serious ideas. For example, if you pushed me I might admit that we could get even further with some of them, and that I'm just fixating on this because it is so much fun. But I think that something funny-serious might not be a bad start. Because peak oil isn't just a fact, now its a movement, and people aren't they want to move when the whole thing is so depressing. Lightening things up just a little might do some real good. I keep thinking about the "Scenes From a Liberal Apocalypse" article in Harpers a few months ago (about last year's conference), in which the article attempted to dismiss peak oil because the whole thing seemed so humorless, so sincere. That article is the one thing that no one talked about at this conference (we should have, IMHO) and that no one talks about on the lists I'm on. We're afraid of being made fun of, because we think it takes away our credibility. But we're a lot less easy to be made fun of if we make fun of ourselves first. Satire is powerful. So let's steal it for a good cause.

I'm going to ASPO. I'll be seeing Richard Heinberg again (I was wondering if he'd remember me, but now I suspect he will ;-), and I'm going to ask him to introduce me to Matthew Simmons. I wonder if *he'll* take his shirt off ;-).

Sharon in upstate NY, who has had very, very little sleep in the last few days, and may regret this post later, particularly when she finds out that no one important in the peak oil movement will ever speak to her again.

Return from Ohio Part II - Famous Folk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sharon

Back from the Community Solutions Conference - Part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sharon

Website is Up!!

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

Thanks,

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

Peak Oil and Credibility

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

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

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

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

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

Sharon

Astronomers are Weenies

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

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

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

Sharon

Cookbooks for the Future

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sharon

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

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

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

Shalom,

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