Obama Rally, Day In Photos

In line at about 2:30 in the afternoon, the line already stretches many blocks down the road. We're about 150 feet from the main doors though. Lawn chairs and conversation a must, the kids can run around and play and thank god it's not raining!






















The doors open at 6:30 and we got good seats in the first tier up from the floor. The Pit will be packed tonight!

















Mac Court, aka "The Pit" is one of the loudest basketball venues on earth. I think it was louder this night! Mackenzie really really wanted to see Barack Obama speak, even though he had to wear ear plugs and put his hands over his ears during the loudest bits...






An all-women's a capella choir rehearses in the basement before taking the stage (they were awesome!)
The Pit is packed! To the rafters. At capacity of 9,000 + 3,000 that couldn't get in at the door. That's about 10% of our town's population, turning out to see Obama



















The Man himself. Well worth the 7+ hour wait. As dynamic as he is on TV or video, he's 10 times that in person. Can't he just be president now??? Here's where I wish I had a better distance lens, though.

The Empire Has No Clothes - A Peace Rally in Pictures

Sunday's Peace Rally to mark the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War. You can visit my Flickr site for better resolution images.

Absolutely Brilliant Cycling Awareness Ad

This is well worth taking a moment to check out:

http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

Definitely food for thought, and raising awareness of this issue is a great thing.

Word of the Day: Ciclovia

Ciclovia is a Spanish term that literally means "bike path" but has come to be used to denote events (either one-time or recurring) where city streets are closed to all but non-vehicular traffic. Walkers, cyclists, unicyclists, wheelchairs, skateboards, rollerskates, etc. are allowed during these times, but cars are not. Bogata, Columbia has one of the biggest and longest-running events (over 25 years) with 2 million people attending (30% of citizens) on Sundays on over 70 miles of carfree streets!

Very few US cities have such events. Some, like Portland Oregon have one-day events like the Portland Bridge Pedal. El Paso, Texas is one of the few U.S. cities that have held a regular weekly event. But this week in our town, a group of people is getting together to organize such an event here. I'm hoping to be able to attend the organizational meeting (yes, in all my spare time, hah!) It's such a great idea, and the street here in town that they're thinking about holding it on is one of the worst in our city for cycling. Almost every route through town here has at least one good cycling option except for this one street. It has no bike lane, bad pavement, and lots of businesses whose driveways intersect the already-heavily-used sidewalks. So there's no real place for cyclists to go. A cyclovia-type event would not only be great for the whole city, but would also draw attention to the need for safe cycling routes on this street.

In any case, as a word junkie I just like the word "ciclovia" - it calls up in my mind the words "cycle" (of course) but also the Latin word for road, and the current usage of via as "by way of" or "by the means of". It also brings to mind the French word "vie" for "life".

It All Adds Up

Not too long ago, we started looking over our energy bills for the past year. One year ago, we had a renter in our basement apartment (a 650 sq foot "mother-in-law" unit). This has been our first opportunity to compare our current energy bills from those of the same season when we had the apartment rented. What we discovered was pretty darn interesting. Our utility bill is half of what it was when we had our renter living downstairs. Yep, four people in a 1670 sq foot house upstairs use about the same amount of energy as one person in the apartment downstairs. I've always been a mite suspicious of those carbon footprint calculators on the web (although I think they're a great tool for raising awareness), because they typically make assumptions about our energy use based on our house and number of people living here. This is the first time I've had solid proof that energy-efficient everyday living practices can make a huge difference in how much energy we use.

The things we do are pretty simple - our house gets great natural light during the day, so we don't use interior lighting in daylight hours. At night, we turn off lights as soon as we leave a room. We turn off and/or unplug appliances that we aren't using. We try to use energy wisely (like making an entire pot of tea instead of once cup at a time). We hang clothes out to dry instead of using the clothes dryer, and open the dishwasher before it enters the drying cycle. Our clothes washer is an efficient front-loader that does a ton of laundry in one batch. We conserve water in other ways, like turning the shower on halfway instead of on full, and we set our thermostat to 58 in the winter (using a heat pump) and don't use air conditioning in the summer. Probably our biggest energy drain is our chest freezer, but that gives us the ability to buy local organic pastured meats, and store all of the berries and other fruits and veggies we grow and glean during the summer.

None of these things are particularly difficult or odious. We don't really feel deprived. We aren't living in left-field, or god forbid not showering to save water. Patchouli never enters our house and none of us particularly likes granola. But the little things do add up. Every year we try to add a few more of them to our pile of little sustainability stones. This last year we bought honeycomb blinds for many of the windows, especially the ones that get a lot of sun in the summer. Next year we'll try to add some more to the other windows. We're hoping that a homemade solar hot water heater is in the works for us sometime soon. We implemented the garage clothes-drying racks this winter which drastically reduced the amount we use the clothes dryer in this wet season. We changed out even more bulbs to CFLs. Incidentally, all of the light in the photo at the top of this post comes from two flourescents that are our main indoor lighting. We've changed them only once since we moved in eight years ago, now that's what I call efficient!

I'm excited to learn that all of our little efforts add up. I have friends, both on-line and in real life who are living the ultimate energy efficient lifestyles in off-the-grid or Net Zero homes. Right now, that's not in the cards for us, but it's great to know that making these smaller efforts can have a huge impact on our energy usage, and thus on our carbon footprint and overall environmental impact. I like to think that if regular ol' folks knew what a difference they could make (a family of four using less energy than one person!), they might be inspired to implement a few more changes themselves.

Go Lance! New Commuter Bike Shop in Austin

Not content with inspiring thousands of competitive cyclists around the world, Lance Armstrong is opening what sounds like the world's coolest bike store in Austin, Texas. It's going to be focused on bike commuters, aim at being friendly and non-intimidating, and have a cafe and showers and locker rooms for bike commuters who want to store their bikes there during the day.

"Armstrong, who still remembers being a trifle intimidated when he walked into a bike shop as a kid, wants to make sure that doesn't happen to customers here. He said he'd rather encourage rookies to start riding than sell a faster bike to a veteran cyclist. "

Full story here.

When Environmental Sustainability Goes Awry

To the two young hippies next to me in the DVD section of the library: I appreciate that you're interested in environmental sustainability. I don't mind seeing your dreadlocks, your piercings, your fair-trade hemp clothing, and your environmental stickers on your bags. And I appreciate that you might think it is saving the planet to not use water to bathe. But I think that's taking things a bit too far. Seriously, rancourous rancidity is not camouflaged by dousing oneself in patchouli (not to mention, some of us are allergic to that odiferous stuff). If you noticed people backing away from you, it was not a political or a moral statement they were making, it was self-protection.

Reducing Garbage, Part 1

A while back, someone on a list I'm on asked for tips on reducing garbage. I've been meaning to write about it for awhile, and every now and then a new idea pops into my head and I jot it down somewhere. It's amazing how little garbage you can produce, once you really become aware of what you throw away and start working on reducing it. We get the smallest can that our garbage company gives out, and we've shared it with our renter and the family across the street and had room left over. One thing you can start doing is becoming aware of what you're throwing away. You don't have to dig through the trash, but just look at it when you toss something else in and think about whether that thing could be eliminated, substituted, recycled, or composted. I'm sure this is far from a comprehensive list, but here's a few ideas at least...

1) Compost: One of the first steps you can take is to stop throwing away food scraps. Compost piles can range from big wire-enclosed areas, to small portable worm bins. Turning your food scraps into gardening soil is a great first step at garbage reduction. Resources for Composting and Worm Bins abound on the internet, and in many cases in your local community. There's even a worm bin specifically designed to turn your pet waste into usable compost, thus keeping it out of the landfill as well.

2) Return to Cloth: Perhaps the easiest thing to remove from your garbage is anything disposable - napkins, paper towels, baby wipes, kleenex, diapers, etc. These used to be the main culprits, but the past few years have seen a veritable explosion in the disposable market, with everything from bibs to facial washcloths, to Swiffer mops being produced just to be used once and thrown away. One of the easiest ways to stop throwing this kind of stuff in the trash is simply to stop buying it. Once I stopped buying paper napkins, I had to have something else in place to use. I started adding to my small supply of cloth napkins (and actually I used washcloths for awhile until I had a big enough stash). I found that if I had a roll of paper towels or a paper napkin handy, it was easy to reach for them. Without them around, you simply don't use them. I do keep a roll of paper towels in the garage for use in times of desperate measures (the cat just barfed on the carpet, that kind of thing), but I haven't bought a new roll since we moved into this house 8 years ago, so they last a long time that way. Cloth diapers, handkerchiefs, washcloths, mop covers, napkins, and bibs are long-lasting and relatively easy to toss in the washing machine (even the diapers weren't as icky and intimidating as I thought they'd be before having babies).

3) Look For Less Packaging: Often we don't have the option of buying something with less packaging - it seems like you need a pair of gardening shears and an expert safe-cracker just to get into the packaging for your basic CD these days. But often we have an option to buy something with less packaging or substitute something reusable. Rechargeable batteries for instance, not only save you from having to dispose of toxic batteries, but also all the packaging that they come in. Buying meat locally means that it comes straight from the butcher wrapped in white paper, instead of resting on styrofoam trays. Buying produce locally avoids those nasty plastic clamshells that are becoming popular in places like Trader Joe's, and if you can swing it to get stuff like milk and eggs from a local source, you can also eliminate egg and milk cartons from your garbage stream and re-use glass bottles instead. Even if you don't have a direct source, there are still local dairies that use and re-use glass bottles (usually with a deposit).

4) Borrow, Barter, Buy Used: If you need to buy something, you can think about whether or not it's something you can borrow, or barter for, or buy used first. Not buying stuff new eliminates packaging, transportation, and possibly having to deal with the remains of whatever you've bought. If you think about it, there's usually no reason for every person on the block to have a hedge trimmer, or a particular best-selling book, or even a pickup truck. Sharing with neighbors or friends is a bonus to all (including the environment). Our chicken tractor is on its way to the 3rd family we've lent it to. Our power-washer has made the rounds of every deck and fence in the neighborhood, and we've borrowed our neighbor's truck or trailer when we needed to haul something. Our daughter is clothed entirely in wonderful hand-me-downs from the neighbor girl down the street, and the clothes keep right on flowing from her to a smaller friend a few blocks away. Thinking outside the box when it comes to consumer goods is also a great way to boost your budget, while reducing your impact on your garbage can and the earth.

Bits and Blurbs

If we ever end up needing a really great commuter car, here's one, the Aptera, I've got my eye on:

I just read an article about it and they said that in track tests it has been exceeding their expectations, topping out around 300 mpg in some cases! Message to Detroit, hello! Is anyone listening???

And I have to say, I'm pretty excited about yesterday's primaries here in the U.S. (though in Orygun, we won't be voting until May. May!). I'm pretty strongly in the Obama camp, largely on account of his stances on the war and his environmental scorecard from the League of Conservation Voters (highest among all the Dems). It doesn't hurt at all that he is inspiring hope for the first time in a long time among people disenfranchised from our current political system:

Good Things Happening In My Home Town

One of the things I love most about my town is the fact that so many people here are awake and involved, working for change on all fronts - peace, sustainability, community, transportation. One glance at the "What's Happening" pages in our weekly newspaper shows the wealth of avenues we have here to become involved. From conferences on human rights to the annual Bicycling and Walking Summit to the "Clearcutting the Climate Conference, you literally have a whole handful of things to choose from in any given week to get involved in issues that really matter to our planet and community.

This week I saw an article in a local running newsletter about the Eugene Marathon "going green". Employing everything from a solar-powered finish line to Master Recyclers, the marathon here is planning on being as environmentally sensitive as possible. As a runner and athlete myself, I think it's great that people are thinking not just of their own experience in the lovely outdoors, but of the environment that they're running through as well.

Bringing Back the Aesthetic of the Useful

Ordinary Days: Clothesline

One of the most common objections I hear to implementing more energy-efficient solutions in our everyday lives is that people don't like the way they look. Standing at a solar panel display at a home and garden show, you could hear people talking with one another about how solar hot water would be nice, but who wants such an ugly thing on their roof? Neighborhoods in many parts of the USA have CC&Rs prohibiting hanging out one's laundry, and vegetable gardens in the front yard are equally forbidden. Right now, our country is caught in the last thralls of the Aesthetic of the Useless.

This aesthetic can be seen everywhere from the starving fashion models on the cover of magazines (in countries where food is scarce, thinness is hardly to be valued - only in a culture of plenty can we exalt in emaciation) to the sterility of the bark mulched and shrubbed subdivision landscapes, devoid of any biological diversity let alone food-growing potential. I think a sea change is blowing in, but people will hold tightly to their last public displays of uselessness.

Myself, I'm finding that the more I live around people who value utility, the more aesthetic I see in this kind of lifestyle. After all, how many fabulous photographs of clothes dryers do you see? Meanwhile, Flickr has entire groups dedicated to beautiful pictures of nothing more than drying laundry.

Benvinguts a Sant Andreu
Originally uploaded by TalkingTree

In the caption for this stunning image, the photographer tells us that "Nearly everyone in Barcelona, if not all of Spain, hangs their clothes to dry from balconies and roof tops."

Meanwhile, photographer g. s. george shows us an image of well-utilized urban space in Venice:

Clothesline City II
Originally uploaded by g. s. george

And homeowners Stan and Priti Cox in Salina, Kansas have transformed their suburban front lawn into an edible paradise, paving the way for other homeowners to embrace the aesthetic of the practical in this Edible Estates project. In returning to more sustainable lifestyles, we might shy away from making such bold moves, worrying about "what the neighbors will think". I've had people ask me whether my neighbors mind my chickens roaming the front yard, or my wintertime laundry solution of hanging clothes in the open doors of our south-facing garage. But often, it just takes a few "early adopters" to turn the tide in the other direction from where things are currently headed. So go ahead, hang that laundry, grow those tomatoes!

Peering Into 2008

Jim Kunstler (author of The Long Emergency) has got his 2008 predictions out there, and it's worth a read if only for his hysterically funny descriptions of what is really a very unfunny situation - the state of the world as we know it heading into this coming year.

For those of us who have known this is coming for a very long time, there's no satisfaction in the "I told you so"s that will be ringing out as the oil prices rise and the ice caps melt. For every time I've been told my views are "extremist" or "hysterical environmentalist", I've always known in my heart that what I really was was a realist in a land of dreamers. Yet what can we do, but do the things that we can do to the best of our abilities, and hold onto love and happiness and all of the positive things that we can.

Our family watched a movie last night, an old Disney flick called Miracle of the White Stallions, about the saving of the Lipizzaner horses during the last dark days of WWII. Any time I see or read something about WWII, the parallels always hit me. I wish I was better at remembering movie dialogue, there was one place in the movie where they were discussing the impending fall of the Reich, and how they had gotten to such a place where Hitler was allowed to dictate whether or not they could play music by Mendellsohn. The quote was something like "Don't be too hard on the people. It didn't come all at once. A little at a time, these things were eroded away, and everyone said "that's not so bad".

I'm looking toward the caucuses on our East coast with hopefulness today, but the hope is that we can at least start turning around the eroding of freedoms and the warlike countenance that has pervaded my nation's identity in the last regime. For the rest - the peak oil and the ice caps and the rainforests and all of that, I'll be planting my gardens and crossing those fingers, hoping that the coming crises will bring out the best in people, not just the worst.

The Environmental Impact of Feminism

On a discussion board I frequent, there is currently a largely civilized debate about the value of what used to be called "women's work". Since nowadays, either partner can choose to be a stay at home spouse, that phrase has gone by the wayside. But the reality of the situation is that this work, that of the "homemaker" is largely devalued by society. Some people have put forth that a person with no children, or children old enough to be in school have no business even staying at home, and that such people are not paying their own way in life.

This has been going around and around in my brain all day, and even though it doesn't really apply to me (homeschooling/unschooling is more than a full-time job!), it got me thinking of not just the economic value of such work (replacing everything I do would probably cost a fortune, even if one could find someone with the diverse skills of chicken midwifery, robotics coach, and violin tutor, LOL), but of the environmental value and impact of this work.

Now before I say another word, I want to make it absolutely clear that I am in no way advocating for some return to the June Cleaverism of yesteryear. I don't think a societally enforced imprisonment of women in the household with an apron and a copy of Betty Crocker is the answer. And I fully understand that for many families in this era of haves and have-nots, having both parents work is a financial necessity (and that of course is a whole 'nother topic, on the Walmartization of the workforce where so many people are not paid a living wage). But I do think it's imperative that we look at the true value of this work, and the repercussions that abound when homemaking is farmed out to the likes of McDonalds, Eggo Waffles, and Swiffer.

I was shifting some stuff around in the freezer today, and looking at the neat packages of frozen blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, and cherries that fill half of the shelves. They stand next to the meat I picked up from the butcher (a local 1/3 pasture-raised organic beef), and the baggies of pancakes and waffles that I make up ahead of time so the kids can have healthy easy breakfast on days when we have little time. This is one small microcosm of the environmental value of a homemaker.

If I hadn't taken the kids to the berry patches and roadside fields and fruit stands this summer to get local organic foods to fill our freezer, we'd be buying more fruits trucked to a plant, packaged, and trucked to our local supermarket. If my husband or I didn't have the time to find and build a relationship with the local people who supply our raw milk and organic meat, pick it up when needed, and then thaw and prepare nutritious meals for the family, we'd be driving through a McDonald's like so many Americans on the go. I did that once last year, when we were on vacation and I was completely staggered by the sheer amount of waste products generated by one fast-food meal. And that doesn't count all the trucking and non-sustainable agriculture that went into producing that meal. Likewise, if I wasn't cooking nutritious sprouted whole-grain wafffles and pancakes with our own organic eggs and raw milk, I might be opening a pack of Eggos for the kids before we rushed out the door to get to our respective jobs and school. I won't bother typing in the ingredient list, but suffice it to say that they barely resemble food and I can't even imagine the environmental impact (let alone the healthcare and economic impact) of so many of the nation's food choices being such pre-packaged dreck.

Of course, we shouldn't ignore transportation. Although I'd like to think that most two-income families go merrily carpooling out the door, this isn't the case for most in America. Our old neighbors were a prime example - both parents and the teenage child left the house in three separate cars each morning, bound for three separate places, all less than five miles from each other. But their hectic schedules were too overwhelming to coordinate, so three cars it was. And for two-working parent families, it might be completely necessary for either parent to have to drive kids to after-school activities or daycare.

There are many more incidental environmental impacts. As the hours spent on the job by members of the workforce creep up steadily, less and less time is available for simple household tasks. Thus something like the time it takes to wring out and clean a mop becomes so stupendously valuable that products like Swiffer hit the marketplace with a bang. It seems there is nothing out there that can't be made disposable. Diapers have been around for a long time, but now you can simply throw your baby's bibs away without having to take the time to wash them. Facial washcloths - who knew that they made them disposable? After all, taking the time to throw in four or five more washcloths to your laundry could be the straw that broke the overworked camel's back. And not only fast-food meals are served on disposable dinnerware. People are sometimes so time-crunched that paper plates and plastic forks are used for regular family dinners to save time on washing dishes.

All of these seemingly disparate things don't cause us to blink our eyes when taken one at a time. These things you might look at separately and say "what's the big deal, if someone wants to use a Swiffer instead of cleaning a mop?" but when you take them together, when you take them on a national scale, it's clear that the environmental impact of the absence of homemakers in so many families becomes huge. And there's no easy answer or quick turnaround (though the rising prices of fuel in a post-peak economy may turn around the Swiffers, multiple cars, fast food and such all on its own). As such things no longer seem "cheap and easy", the work of a homemaker becoms much more apparently valuable in a monetary sense.

So what can be done to jump-start this change? For one thing, think about the homemakers you know and make sure that when you talk to them you do not disparage their role, even inadvertantly. They are valuable, not just to their families, but to our society and to the earth itself. They play perhaps the most important job on the planet. If you hear someone else act dismissively to someone with a homemaking role, bring the issue to discussion. It's often a very quiet discrimination against people who are "just" housewives or homemakers or "just a stay-at-home mom". It seems that official job titles working out of the home carry so much more prestige and importance, and anything we can do to reverse this trend will be better for our communities, our society, and our environment.

A Blogging First

For the first time ever, I'm going to duplicate a post across all three of my blogs. Usually, I keep them pretty separate, figuring that people reading my Ironmom blog might not be all that interested in my vegetable-growing and chicken-farming adventures. Or that people interested in my family's unschooling days might not care what kind of swim workout I'm using these days. But this one post cuts across all lines of interest in my life. It's about homeschooling my kids and the amazing things we get to do, it's about alternative energy, and it's about teamwork and fostering a positive approach to competition. And I'm so proud, I'm not just going to post a link, I'm putting the whole thing right here as well:

So, my kids' robotics team, the Solar Dragons, went to the regional tournament last weekend. I knew that they were very well prepared, their robot was solid, they had put in a lot of time perfecting their programs, their runs on the challenge table, their research project and presentation, and I knew that they were operating as an exceptional team with respect for each other and for the other teams. What I didn't even imagine in my wildest dreams is that they would WIN THE WHOLE TOURNAMENT! Yep, that's it. They really did it!

First of all, their runs on the robot table went very well. They practiced their approach so many times that there was no fumbling or nervousness at the table, just a smooth running of all the things they needed to do (remove and replace attachments, add cargo, aim robot, select program, run robot). They had decided that they would all run their programs at the table, but according to Lego competition rules, only two of them could be at the table at any given time, so they took a tag-team approach. They helped each other out, and as each kid was done with their turn, they tagged the next.

They also faced three panels of judges. One teamwork panel that asked them questions about how they worked as a team (my favorite moments, when they asked things like "who is your team leader" and the kids said "we operate by consensus", LOL.) One panel was technical judging, where they had the kids run their programs and asked them about their programs and robot design, and a third panel evaluated their research project (they had five minutes to do a presentation, and another five minutes of Q&A - they actually knew their stuff so well, the panel ran out of questions to ask them!). When we saw the research projects of some of the other groups of kids, I knew that our kids would do really well. Many kids from school teams had used their classrooms or part of their school building for the energy audit. While this was probably technically admissible, I think the real goal from Lego FIRST League in setting this as a project for this year was to get the kids out and interacting with the community. Since our team really did choose a big and complex public building to audit, and researched extensively on alternative energy solutions, I knew they'd wow the judges (and they did!).

I am proudest of the fact that they scored a perfect 100 on teamwork. I know they're a great group of kids and they have worked so well together and have had so much fun together, it really showed. Whenever they've made a team decision, it has almost always been unamimous. I think it also really speaks volumes that we have two pairs of siblings on the team (not always the easiest to work with your own family members!) and that the kids come from different educational venues (two different schools plus some homeschoolers). They also got the highest score on their research presentation, something they've put so much time and effort into (see my previous post for a description of what they did). The got the 2nd highest score on the robot table as well, garnering 195 points with their seven mission programs.

So without further ado, here's some pics of these magnificent kids in action!

Here's the table setup in the main competition hall. Two teams compete against each other in timed table runs.



Their first run at the table, Claire and Asa work together to send the robot out on a mission to plant trees.



Time for their technical presentation. Whoops, I forgot to bring the folder with printouts of their programming. Good thing I'm a trained runner!




Waiting for their turn.



Mackenzie and Daniel get the power lines in place, the rest of the team waits behind for their turn to be tagged.




Waiting outside the presentation judging room. It was cold enough to snow and the poor kids were shivering. They're holding the photos for their research presentation.




Presenting to the panel of judges.



We were all so impressed with this kid, Thomas. His entire team backed out, but he came and competed all by himself!



We can't believe it, we won the whole thing!

Taking a Page From Johnny Appleseed

As the news stories careen towards ever-scarier pronouncements (now even mainstream presses are admitting we might've passed peak oil, and objections to global warming have become the feeblest murmurs), one might wonder "What the heck can I do?"

When I was a kid, my grandparents and parents owned a theatre. During the summer months, they also did children's theatre productions. So I was a toy in Babes in Toyland, a dancing skunk in Johnny Appleseed, and a singing Gretel in Hansel and Gretel. Remembering the story of Johnny Appleseed (even though the version in the play is much dramatized from his real life), it occurs to me that we could all take a page from his book. Johnny Appleseed is known for planting orchards of apple trees, as well as fostering community, and helping out those less fortunate than himself (to the point where if people gave him clothing, he only kept the worst pieces for himself to wear and passed on the nicer items to others in need).

Right now, community and local food are two things that will be increasingly important as we head into an energy-poor future. For most of us, whether we live on suburban lots or in the country, we've got places we might be able to plant sustainable food sources for future harvesting. Of course, what is available to you to plant as part of your permanent landscaping will vary depending on your local climate, which direction your lot faces, how many shade trees you already have, and other variables. In our area, there are lots of options open for planting, including nuts like walnuts and filbert trees, a huge variety of fruit trees, and fruiting shrubs.

In a last fit of fall gardening, I picked up five more huckleberry bushes and three of a new variety of evergreen blueberry that fruits for 10 weeks a summer instead of fruiting in one short intense burst. I'm determined to both squeeze in more edible landscaping into areas that we have, and also to replace some of my least favorite shrubs (legacy of the previous owner) with fruit-bearing raspberries, huckleberries, blueberries, etc. We also planted a cherry tree this year, and I'm thinking of squeezing in a filbert somewhere. We have a yellow plum, purple free-stone plum. asian pear, and two red apple trees already.

Better Biking

Fall is here and we've had some exceptional biking weather. We've taken a nice family tandem ride - about 17 miles, the longest we have gone with the kids so far. And I got the kids out on their own bikes and we did a nice ride one sunny day. We noticed the new bicycle markings that are going up around town. Check out these lovely reflective bicycle route markers that are popping up. I also noticed some great new signage for popular bicycle routes through town, but haven't gotten any photos of them yet. It's nice to see our city is still working on making bicycling even easier and more convenient. It's the kind of investment that will definitely pay off over the years.
One thing I really like about our town is that certain streets are designated as "bicycle only" and all cars except for local traffic are shunted away onto other streets. It can be really frustrating to drivers, and since I often bicycle through town I have occasionally found myself in my car at one of these shunted streets cursing under my breath that I can't get through where I thought I could (I also occasionally end up in my car at the bike path realizing that I really can't drive home the same way that I bike home!) But overall, it's something I'm grateful for as it makes bicycling through town much safer and more pleasant.

Who can argue with a safe, friendly bicycle ride on a street as lovely as this one?

How Long Will We Believe in the Silver Bullet?

While there is a small glimmer of hope in the fact that both the media and big agencies like the International Energy Agency are finally acknowledging thatPeak Oil and Global Warming are upon us, it's frustrating that in article after article, the emphasis for change is still on investing in alternative energy solutions, like solar, wind, and hydrogen cars. Why is there still not even any lip service paid to investing in real, meaningful societal change: viable low-energy mass transit, bicycle and pedestrian-friendly cities, local food sources, permaculture, de-centralizing the food and commodities industries??? It's like they're saying "Yes, there is a fire in the theatre, but you can all continue to watch the movie, don't worry about it. Please, stay seated." And while people start to pass out left and right, they'll quietly drag the bodies away so as to not disturb the other people who are still engrossed in the fantasy before them. By all means people, keep driving 500 miles a week in your gas-guzzler. You'll be able to buy a hydrogen car in ten years and continue living the fantasy unchanged.

Wake up world, there's no silver bullet. Your life will have to change. The fantasy is just a fantasy. Start changing now. Start a garden, plant some fruit trees, find a local farmer and support them. Bike to work, meet your neighbors, carpool, never shop at Walmart again. We will either change, or change will be forced upon us.

Two Fun Things In One - Bicycle Light DIY Kit

I found this fun little kit while looking up info on bicycle lights. I remember when I was in college, most bicycle lights did not have batteries, but friction generators that used a small wheel that ran along your rear rim to generate power for the light. They were somewhat heavy and cumbersome, and didn't produce a very strong light (this was, of course, in the days before LEDs). Now there's a kit out for frictionless dynamo lights for your bicycle. Nothing like combining some science learning with DIY ingenuity and reducing waste (batteries) as well! While I run rechargables in my bike lights with good success (the LEDs draw so little power that good rechargables actually last a long time in them), I can't resist the draw of free power from this little magnetic generator. I think I might have to order one!

Leaf Blowers....Devil's Spawn

If there truly is anything on this earth that was spawned straight from the maw of the devil, it's not Harry Potter, it's not kids in costumes trick-or-treating, it's not New Age shamans, it's leaf blowers.

Yes, it's that time of the year again. The time when the leaves fall gloriously from the trees in all their pretty dresses of red, maroon, orange, and gold. I love this time of year. I love the harvest activities, the crisp mornings, the fog that rolls in at night, the nerdiest un-partnered lone crickets chirping their last amorous ballads to the dusk. I hate the leaf blowers. They make their appearance at this time of the year too. They've replaced the kindly shopkeeper sweeping his front stoop and turned him into a headphone-clad hunch-backed animal making the most horrendous noise on the planet. I once turned away from a park that I like to run at because a man with a leaf-blower (paid for by my tax dollars no doubt!) was there. I ran for over half a mile before I could no longer hear the drone of this nasty CO-belching beast.

Leaf-blowers are the antitheses of joy. There is no enjoyment in leaf blowing, I'm convinced. The happiness one would feel in the cool autumn air, the crunch of the leaves, all the tactile loveliness of the season is blasted away in a haze of fumes and fury. Your neighbors avoid you, pedestrians and cyclists detour around you, you are deaf and mute to the world as you blast away at small pieces of dead photosynthesized plant matter with all of your blood-for-oil-powered might. Leaf blowers separate humans, instead of fostering connections. They proclaim dominance over the natural world, yet nature has the last laugh. When the man with the leaf blower turns around, shuts off his machine and walks indoors, the gust of wind appears almost mischievously and whisks all those leaves back onto the sidewalk, obliterating man's mechanized work. I can't help but see it as a metaphor for things to come.

Shedding Hopelessness

Through Blogger's own focus on earth and sustainability blogs, I found myself reading Earth Meanders, and a post completely infused with the despair that is hard to hold off if you have any inkling at all of what the words "peak oil" and "global warming" really mean for the earth and for humanity as we know it. It's a sad conundrum that the very people who care so deeply about the earth and who understand the joy and beauty that surrounds us are often plagued by depression and actual pain as we contemplate the coming debacle.

Coincidentally, on our Crunchy Unschoolers list, we're discussing the novel Ishmael, which I admit I haven't read in over a decade (note to self: re-read this most excellent book and see what it has to say to you now), and the discussion turned along similar lines: why bother pursuing a sustainable existance when all around you are Hummers rocketing towards WalMart to buy the latest shipped-from-China unnecessary products? How do we hold onto joy and yet simultaneously hold the knowledge of what is happening to the earth?

Our family is currently watching Ken Burns The War and so my thoughts have turned often recently to Nazi Germany, to what people endured there, not to mention the frightening parallels to our current eroding democracy and the almost willful giddiness and faith in the rightness of their lives that ordinary people seem determined to stick to in the face of all evidence that we have tipped over the brink of the cliff. I am reminded of the stories of the ordinary German people reported by Milton Mayer in his book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 , people who proclaimed their days under Hitler as the best in their lives. And of Sebastian Haffner's amazing observations in his (unfinished before his death) manuscript Defying Hitler. Written in 1939, before most of the rest of the world even understood the tragedy that Hitler would wreak, he writes about people retreating into a "small, secure, private domain" and of this individual withdrawal contributing to the ease with which Hitler took control.

Such historical examples make it clear to me the importance which even a few dissenting voices can hold. And a read-through of Corrie Ten Boom's amazing auto-biographical book The Hiding Place shows a path to maintaining serenity, love, and grace even in the face of unspeakable horror. Clearly these historians show us that we do have a choice that does not include despair and descent into depression over our current circumstances. The choices we make hold importance, and even the emotions with which we make them can strongly shape our experiences and those of others around us.

As I have been reminded strongly by events over the last week or so, none of us knows the number of our days here. So living a joyful life in congruence with our values seems to be to me the only path that makes sense. I feel a qualitative difference about the things I can do, make, cook by hand or by cooperation with others. Things feel more blessed, more infused with joy. If there is any path out of the current madness, I think the light will have to be held high by people who are already starting to walk down that path. Others will be thrust upon it, scared and angry. A serious environmentalist I know sees herself as one who is learning so that she can show the way to others. Perhaps some pockets of sanity will remain, perhaps there will be good born from all of this, maybe a new society will form. I have to think that these things are still possible. Some of my relatives left their homes in Germany and moved to Russia over 100 years ago. Then war came to Russia and they packed up and came to South Dakota. They farmed, a hard life on the plains. Built a sod house. My great-grandmother who was born there was one of the most joyful people I've ever known. I have to think that joy can survive such hardship.