Caravan Dreams

Sometimes it actually becomes possible to act on a desire—to fulfill a pipe dream or a deeply held wish.  So, after innumerable years of daydreaming about owning an old travel trailer (specifically, a ‘60s era Shasta Airflyte), the planets and stars finally reached a favorable conjunction and we got one.

Sort of.

Last year I filed for Social Security benefits, realizing that what I’d acquire in extra benefits by waiting until age 70 probably wouldn’t pay off in the end (given my genes and the current state of the world). The tidy little sum I now get every month on top of my salary (I’m still teaching full time) has meant that we’ve been able to pay off significant debt and begin to allow ourselves a few luxuries we’d never have dreamed of before now.  Our frugality had, in fact, begun to wear on us, and we decided that rather than wait for actual retirement we’d try to enjoy ourselves to a modest extent before then.

I should also mention that just last summer we’d had some work done on the house (about which I’ll write anon), which included a new hog wire and cedar fence with two twelve-foot gates on the west and south. This was viewed at the time as rather fanciful, since we had nothing to pull through those gates and no real hope of getting anything any time soon: just planning for the distant future, we thought.

Then, after I had paid off the loan on Vera, it was the Beloved Spouse’s turn to purchase his final car (we don’t either of us imagine ever buying another). Quite coincidentally, the Shasta company had celebrated its 75th anniversary last year by re-issuing the little 16 foot Airflyte in a somewhat modified version at a price comparable to what we would pay for an authentic vintage job. And this version has a toilet, which is a significant issue for folks our age.

Of course, we needed a car that could pull a trailer—even one as modest in size as the Shasta—so we conducted research on Toyota FJ Cruisers and small trucks, looking for the most fuel-efficient V6 we could find.  In the end there turned out to be no such vehicle—and everything appropriate got about the same: 20 mpg or less.  And since we didn’t want anything fancy (my dream was to find something with as few electronic components as possible), we started looking at another company that had been making vehicles since 1941: Jeep.  The Wrangler Sport we ended up with has 4-wheel drive, no GPS, roll-down windows, and locks that require keys be inserted into them. And, it can easily pull our little 2500 lb. trailer.

It also turns out to be a terrific dog car, which we found out by dragging the Guthrie boys to California and back over our winter break.

More on that will follow, because it involves a visit to the Valley and some time at old haunts. But the fact that I can write anything at all is due in no small part to the fact that we were able to get away for the first time in ten years, and that having fulfilled the probably silly dream of having that trailer parked in the back yard (just as my grandmother had done in my fondly-remembered childhood).  Every time I go back there, it makes me smile.

First stop in an RV park, Midland/Odessa Texas, 21 December 2014

The last three photos are a bit cheesy (via Vintique on the iPhone), but they remind me of some taken inside Gram’s Shasta back in the day.

It's not quite Grandma's trailer (somewhat less substantial, and the back bench can't be used as a bed, even for dogs, because when it's pulled out it blocks the loo), but makes for a lovely little backyard retreat and a good place for sipping wine and watching sunsets.

Educating one's desire is an admirable pursuit, but it can lead to general angst and resentment, especially when one is surrounded by ridiculous extravagance on all sides. So while it's probably not inappropriate to question my philosophical purity, at least we didn't buy a behemoth truck to pull one of the colossal forty-foot toy-hauler monstrosities that were parked next to our little Shasta on the lot. And the important thing, I think, is that we wouldn't ever want to.

Summer Is Icumen In

Rather than celebrating the coming of this particular season with Medieval rapture, I'm tempted to substitute Ezra Pound's snitty little salute to winter ("Lhud sing goddam!") in place of "Lhud sing cuccu!" This is, after all, Texas, and it's only by the grace of some current climatic weirdness that we're not slow-cooking in our own juices already.

I'm generally a bit ambivalent about summer anyway, because I fully realize that what's actually happening is that the daylight hours are now beginning their long decline toward the winter solstice,  the "darkest evening of the year," and the end of my 67th--even though I'm "only" 66 (and a half) at the moment.

Until I read Akiko Busch's op-ed post in the New York Times last Friday (The Solstice Blues), I thought I was alone in not necessarily seeing this moment as some grand seasonal celebratory event:

The moment the sun reaches its farthest point north of the Equator today is the moment the light starts to fade, waning more each day for the following six months. If the summer solstice doesn’t signal the arrival of winter, surely it heralds the gradual lessening of light, and with that, often, an incremental decline in disposition. 

In North Texas, the end of June is usually marked by the onset of 100-degree days; but this year we've been treated to a bit of rain and temperatures hovering around 90 during daylight hours and low enough at night to sleep without air conditioning. Even the dogs don't seem all that uncomfortable with the humidity--although we do tend to hole up in a small room with a window unit to watch TV in the late afternoon/evening, by which time the house has heated up enough to make the humid air a bit heavy.  Still, by bedtime, it's tolerable again; with a breeze it's even better, because the bedroom has windows on three sides.

When I was looking for an image to illustrate this post, I had wheat in mind for several reasons. For one, a search for "summer" on Wikimedia Commons inevitably produces photos of wheat. In addition, I'm working on a new philosophical perspectives course called "Food and Culture," and my first lecture involves the early history of human victuals--inevitably involving the ancestors of modern wheat. Since a later topic in the course will consider food and art (or food in art), I snapped up the Carl Larsson painting (which I've probably used before) because it touches on both, and because his stuff always makes me think of utopia.

The Food and Culture course has been (ahem) cooking in my brain for several years, but it was only recently that I realized I could teach it without having to go through the bureaucratic effort involved in getting a new course accepted.  Years ago, when I helped design the general studies offerings for our baccalaureate program, I pinched an idea from SUNY Stony Brook and crafted a course called "Philosophical Perspectives," thinking that whatever philosophical types we might hire could then teach what they knew, from within whatever intellectual context they were trained.  I've taught several topics under this catch-all rubric (The Arts and Crafts Movement, Pioneers of Modern Design, and Technology and Utopia), and it finally occurred to me last quarter that Food and Culture could easily fit under the umbrella.

As it turns out, I'm only catching up with a trend that's been evolving since the '90s, and even in the immediate region there's a Philosophy of Food project developing out of the University of North Texas. What this means is that although I'm not exactly on the cutting edge of things, I can take advantage of the work people are already doing in order to locate resources for my students (30 as of the last time I checked). It also means that thinking about food and its cultural meanings is being taken more seriously than it was at first. In a Chronicle of Higher Education article I had saved from 1999, it was clear that the scholarly value of food-studies was somewhat suspect. Since then, however, a looming variety of food crises (scarcity, waste, obesity, malnutrition, and myriad others) has forced folks to start talking about the many ramifications of food consumption, including the effects of global climate change on the future of food.

William Morris's effort to move the education of desire into the center of our consciousness about how we live (and how we might live) fits squarely into the aims of my course: to get students to start thinking about the difference between need and want, and how understanding that difference can inform sustainable futures.  I'm not sure how this lot will respond to having to read and write and think about something most of them don't consider except at mealtime. But there's some potential here to poke a stick into complacency.  Since most of those enrolled are in a culinary management program, the results could be quite interesting.

We will, of course, be suffering through the worst part of this region's summer weather. But we'll be doing so within an overly air-conditioned classroom, sucking down cold bottled water, iced tea, diet sodas, and energy drinks--matters I'll have to design another course to deal with.

Image credit: Carl Larsson (1853-1919),  Summer (date unknown). Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Niklas Nordblad.

The Education of Desire: We are what we do, we are what we eat

Perhaps I'm a bit late in jumping on this particular bandwagon, because when I started searching for more information on a couple of closely related problems (obesity and food waste) I found more than I can handle in one post.  Other folks have also been thinking about the irony of this country's enormous waistlines and the equally enormous amounts of food waste making its way to the landfill.  We also hear talk of food deserts that help account for obesity among the poor, but I only recently began to wonder if anyone had been connecting the dots. Clearly they have.

This week's news media also reported on topics that are at least tangentially related to the waste/obesity problem: Herman Pontzer's articles in the New York Times,  pointed out that (as the Daily Poop version of the story put it) "It's the Sugar, Stupid," and that all the exercise in the world isn't going to make us as healthy as our distant ancestors if we're consuming crap. And in this week's New Scientist, the cover story ("Eat Your Way to Dementia") is about the relationship between type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. 

The last two months of house-renovation have increased my awareness of food waste because the combination of beastly weather, minimal air conditioning, and odd sleeping accommodations has put the kibosh on cooking (I've been way too hot and tired)--with the result that I spent this morning cleaning out my fridge, ridding myself of spoilt food, shriveled limes and carrots, and a couple of mystery life forms.  Mind you, the compost and the Bokashi bins can handle almost all of this, so that I don't really have to throw much away.  But that's not the point. 

This stuff was bought at a premium, represents many folks' labor and time (from farm to market), and bloody well should have been eaten.  Not only eaten, but cooked well and healthfully.  What the news articles have done is to fortify my resolve to accomplish several items in a new program of food-consciousness. 

First, it's really a good idea to plan one's meals and not rely (except on rare occasions) on serendipity.  My daughter bragged in a text message last night that she had planned a week's meals for two and spent $57 on them at Whole Foods. She's also tracking how they use leftovers--which isn't a bad idea either.  Simplifying food preparation in hot weather so that ingredients can be used more than once saves time, energy, and effort, and it helps prevent waste. So I'm going to set aside an hour or so one day a week (probably Wednesday morning) to plan the week's meals in time to shop on the way home from school on Thursday, when I have an early morning class. 

In addition, since before too long I'm going to be pinching food pennies again (i.e. when I retire, which could be as early as a year from now), I'm going to need to be considerably more mindful of how much I spend. I won't scrimp on quality, but if I end up paying $5 a pound for really good tomatoes, I certainly need to make sure that we actually eat them before they go off. 

My biggest challenge will be to address the issues that Herman Pontzer raises about what we've evolved to eat.  This is actually something I've been aware of for rather a long time, having conducted research on breastfeeding and maternal nutrition in hunter-gatherer cultures as a grad student.  I'm also really puzzled by what seems to be an increasing intolerance to the kinds of grains that our Neolithic ancestors domesticated for us.  Purely gathering cultures didn't eat these grains, which came along after people settled down and began to raise animals and crops.  Still, I do wonder if modern modifications to wheat varieties and increased refinement (the quest for gummy white bread) might be at least partly responsible.  I've already started using farro in pilaf and risotto-like concoctions; now I'm thinking of grinding some and trying it in bread. 

Another article, on the effect of modern European diets on Native Americans, makes a similar point,   as does a report on the Westernization of Asian diets. Both of these populations suffer mightily from diabetes in increasing numbers, and at least part of the culprit is radical dietary change over a relatively small amount of time in evolutionary terms.

It just seems like plain common sense to eat whole foods, high in fiber, low in--but not absent--fats, and free of transmogrified sugars and other chemicalized foodstuffs that have been developed to entice us to eat "food" that's not good for us. (See the 60 Minutes programs on "Tweaking Tastes and Creating Cravings" and the toxicity of sugar for examples of how we're being seduced into desiring what's bad for us.)

The simplest path to health seems also to be the cheapest: eat simply, grow herbs to enhance flavors and provide micronutrients, stay away from heavily processed stuff that comes in fancy packaging, and cook from scratch as much as possible.  New information about fermented foods seems to back up the practices of many simpler cultures (sauerkraut, kimchee, miso, cheese), so taking your dairy foods in the form of a good yoghurt doesn't sound all that bad.  Thanks to Mark Bittman, I've recently reduced the amount of cow's milk I drink and have since suffered far less from heartburn.  I haven't completely sworn off the stuff, because I love it (1%) in coffee, and am not fond of completely eliminating things that still offer some nutritional benefits.

While it's clear that eating more like an Archevore or following some version of a paleo-diet might well improve overall health, that's fodder (sorry) for another post. After all, if everyone suddenly abandoned wheat, corn, dairy foods, and minimized fruit consumption because of its sugar content, the American economy would collapse.  But we certainly do need to pay a lot more attention to what we eat and what we throw away, and make decisions that lead producers away from creating more and more junk.  Spending a bit of time reading Dana Gunders's position paper for the National Resources Defense Council, "Wasted: How America Is Losing up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill", or Jonathan Bloom's book American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of its Food (the link is to his blog, Wasted Food) can go a long way toward raising our collective awareness of the ironies and inconsistencies in American food-life; obesity, hunger, plenty, over-indulgence, and waste are all tightly woven into a culture riddled with greed, inattentiveness, consumerism, and advertising designed to make us keep doing what we're doing. But we ought not to be doing it, else we will become it.

I vote we stop. Soon.

Image credit: Vincent van Gogh's Wheat Field with Crows seemed appropriate for this post, not least because the crows can be seen as harbingers of his death.  I showed this in my Art History 2 class a couple of weeks ago, along with Akira Kurasawa's short film, Crows, via Biblioklept (from Akira Kurosawa's Dreams); the painting is from Wikimedia Commons.

Barbarians At The Gates

Every now and then a book comes along that not only reaffirms my faith in humanity, but confirms the conclusions at which I've arrived over my well-over-half-a-century life on this planet.

The other day I stopped by the "new in paperpback" table at Barnes and Noble, where I spotted Ellen Sandbeck's new book, Green Barbarians. It only took a single glance at the cover for me to realize that I'd happened on a kindred spirit--and one I can't believe I hadn't heard of before, since the list of her previously published books should have come to my attention by now: Slug Bread & Beheaded Thistles: Amusing and Useful Techniques for Nontoxic Housekeeping and Gardening; Eat More Dirt: Diverting and Instructive Tips for Growing and Tending an Organic Garden; Organic Housekeeping; and Green Housekeeping.

She also runs a vermiculture business at LaVerme's Worms. I felt automatic kinship, being myself the daughter of a vermiculturist. Well, sort of. According to my grandmother, my father once sold worms to fishermen in Big Pine, under the sign, "Worms, Tom." A worm composter is in my future, I can already tell.

At any rate, this newest book gives me permission, backed by scads of research and evidence, to do what I've been doing for most of my life. It also supports my contention that the environment in which I grew up has helped me to remain relatively healthy in spite of my crappy cardiac genes and all the toxic gunk the modern world seems bent on tossing my way.

Sandbeck urges us to throw away our hand sanitizer, eschew fears of rampant germs, trash our deodorants and air fresheners, and "live bravely" on our home planet: music to my ears, and fresh air to my phthalate-clogged nasal passages.

I can now go forth to the Facilities guy at school and present him with documentation that the "perfume launchers" positioned outside the elevators will, in fact, interfere with the sexual development of any children that come in contact with them, and cause all manner of breathing problems to those forced to breath in artificial cinnamon particulates, or what I've dubbed "Eau de Los Angeles Bus Terminal Bathroom." I spent several weeks during my first Texas exile riding Greyhound buses to California and back, and grew quite used to (albeit not fond of) the aroma of the ubiquitous toilet-freshener cakes. Anyway, I needed some ammunition to support my claim that these instruments not only don't smell all that great, but are actually bad for us, and now Sandbeck has successfully armed me.

There is also support for my frequent contentions that living near an open sewer in Taipei probably inoculated me against just about every bug Asia has to offer--including seasonal varieties of influenza (and probably even H1N1). We lived around chickens and pigs in various places in and around Taipei, and undoubtedly inhaled every virus then in circulation--most of which make the rounds every few years. Most Americans never come in contact with honey buckets or pigs or even chickens, and this may explain the high rates of H1N1 deaths in the United States, compared with Asia. I checked FluCount.org and found out that the U.S. has suffered a higher rate of mortality (35.28 percent of cases) than a whole slew of Asian countries combined (I counted totals from Mongolia, China, North and South Korea, and Malaysia, whose total mortality rate is around 27 percent).

Despite warnings against doing so, I also frequently went barefoot in Taiwan. I did, as warned, catch round worms at one point, and then overcame them, as did most natives. But my gut has behaved as if shielded with cast iron since, and I've rarely been visited with intestinal critters of any sort. My general good health (as compared with someone undernourished) allowed my body to overcome the critters that sought to use it as an incubator.

Green Barbarians covers a considerable amount of ground, including our cultural timidity about dirt and odor, our current preoccupation with antimicrobial hand cleaners, and even our absurd, almost religious obsession with youthful looks. Sandbeck quite successfully rubs our noses in it all, convincingly enough that I will be a great deal more careful about what I put on my lips (to avoid my tendency to look like a corpse) than about how much dirt I get on my hands.

There are many reasons why we shouldn't be so concerned about cleanliness, not the least of which is that we use enormous amounts of water to flush away body waste, clean our dishes, brush our teeth, bathe our bodies, and prettify our landscapes. A healthy respect for dirt and what it can do for us (instead of to us), would make us all better dwellers on this planet. It might also help keep us from poisoning ourselves and our surroundings in our efforts to make things all clean and shiny.

So any of my students who want to complain about my edict against fragrance in the classroom, beware: I now have even better reasons for threatening dire consequences if you marinate yourself in cologne. Also, you'll have much more money to buy books if you stop buying expensive cosmetics, body sprays, air fresheners, and toilet bowl cleaners. Invest in a good bar of Castile soap and a jug of white vinegar, get more exercise to brighten your cheeks, and we'll all be happier and healthier.

Neither Sandbeck nor I are saying that you shouldn't wash your hands to prevent the spread of disease, or that you shouldn't bathe once in a while. But too little dirt is probably even worse than too much. And we only have to look at the lovey microbes that open this post to remember that there are positive and negative results to be realized from the organisms that populate this earth. We wouldn't be green (or even here at all) were it not for cyanobacteria--but too much of it leads to algal blooms and pond death. What we really need is to keep things in balance.

Read this book; it will change your life.

Image credit: this light micrograph of Cyanobacteria from Guerrero Negro, Baja California, Mexico, was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Vojtěch Dostál. More lovely views of tiny organisms are available on NASA's light micrograph page.

Power to the People

It seems to me that there are a number of ways in which to address community energy needs, so I’ve been thinking about local power sources for some time (see my earlier post, Not-So-Bad News from Nowhere) and was pleased to read about Hawaii’s efforts to do just that in yesterday's New York Times.

Of course, “local” in this sense is easy to identify, since we’re talking individual islands in a small archipelago. But the state's program to reduce its dependence on foreign sources of fossil fuels is laudable, since there are so many ways to generate power in this particular venue.

Wind, geothermal, wave, sun, algae: all provide potentially useful ways to run the fridge, without inflicting damage on our lungs, genes, or the environment, and they’re wonderfully diverse. One of the major stumbling blocks to alternative energy on the mainland seems to be a lack of imagination. It always seems to come down to one or the other, or maybe a couple of things. But fossil fuels are still big in the mix; nobody appears to be interested in completely phasing out the use of coal or oil or natural gas. Not when there are millions and billions to be made in fostering dependence on these sources. And don't forget nukes--the only "clean" alternative, as long as you don't count the problem of waste disposal.

Several things occur to me that might help solve our collective problems. One is to reduce our population, and thus our future power needs. Folks who are understandably worried about the debt we’re leaving to our grandchildren might want to consider reducing the number of people who will potentially suffer from our current profligacy (and this isn't just about energy, or even The Deficit). Some people like having lots of kids, and I can understand that. But having a couple of kids instead may be a much more sensible option these days, given not only the cost of providing a passel of young’ns with a decent education and standard of living, but uncertainties about the future as well. I guess it's a sign of optimism that I see so many three- or four-kid families these days, and that was probably okay in the past, when a parent (read: Mom) could stay home with the little ones during their early years. But having big families in problematic economies, when steady jobs with a future are still in question, seems at the very least unwise.

In most developed countries, populations are staying fairly steady, or even dropping (causing problems with maintaining ways of life that have been supported in the past by large numbers of offspring, and requiring influxes of foreign workers). This, of course, opens a huge can of lumbricids, and requires its own set of solutions. But one of these solutions leads to the second of my recommendations for the power problem.

We really need to re-think consumption patterns: not only our use of power for electricity, heating, transportation, and the like, but also our expectations about stuff. How much stuff (plastics come to mind immediately, but all other consumer goods should be under the microscope, too) do we really need?

Now, I’m an avowed materialist. I’m also a packrat, a family historian, a passionate recycler, and a lapsed archaeologist. I tend to keep stuff. Which means that I shouldn’t keep getting more stuff, but I do. Books and notebooks are stacked on either side of this laptop as I type, and I show few signs of beginning to manage my addiction. But if I were, according to my own advice, to think carefully about how much I really need that new book on marine algae formation and climate change, I might be able to reduce my related needs, such as more bookshelves to hold the books and magazines (which I’m really reluctant even to pitch in the recycle bin) that keep ending up on my desk .

Happily, I’m not also addicted to buying clothes or tchotchkes, and have long been able to resist buying stuff just because it’s cute, even though I sometimes rue not having picked up the funky bird bath at Tuesday Morning that would have looked great in my silly garden.

Cheap stuff is, in the end, no bargain. We should all be following William Morris’s rule about having nothing in our houses that we don’t know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. That might not exclude the birdbath (it does, after all, bathe birds), but maybe it would keep us from buying some piece of useless crap just because it’s cheap. It also costs energy and resources to produce, and if it isn’t useful or beautiful, it probably shouldn’t have been made in the first place. After all, I can always make a birdbath out of the bent-up copper fire pit the neighbor’s tree fell on, or an old bowl and a tree stump.

In addition to not having so many kids and not buying stuff we don’t need (I know, putting those two items together seems heartless and unsympathetic, not to mention somewhat crass; but I simply must maintain my reputation as a snark), we really do need to be less single-minded about energy production in the first place.

Source diversity is a really good idea in its own right. Why can’t we all have nifty wind generators or solar collectors on our rooftops, or small windmills in our yards? (Well, here's one reason why the latter might not be the answer.) Why can’t we go back to using waterwheels to grind grist where it’s practical, or steam generators in places with geothermal activity? Why can’t there be smaller, less-centralized power plants that reduce the possibility of widespread blackouts?

If the problems are complex, I see no reason why complex solutions can’t be viewed as a challenge to entrepreneurial imagination and embraced in their multiplicity. As I rail to my students every quarter (to explain why lots of people make houses that look like pueblos, and why it didn’t take aliens to inspire pyramids in so many cultures), similar problems lead to similar solutions. But those solutions don’t have to be one thing. They can be many, and regionally appropriate, and focused on the actual needs of the community.

And if we stopped thinking that the only way to reflect progress is to “grow” bigger and broader suburbs with outrageous power needs, we might already be on our way to energy independence through a practical combination of conservation and innovation.

I know I’ve left water out of this disquisition, but it’s a different (although related) problem. And right now, after more than a week of rain, I’m up to my nose in it—so I’ll save that issue for another time.

If I've piqued anyone's interest in either alternative energy sources, increased energy efficiency, or distributed power generation (a term in wide use that describes the decentralization I'm talking about), here are some sources:

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory
The New Rules Project: Designing Rules as if Community Matters, especially its article on Distributed Generation in Local Plans (also linked above)

The Survival of and Potential for Decentralized Power Generation, by Harry Valentine, at Electric Energy Online

Image source: Landscape with Windmills, by Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900), via Wikimedia Commons. Check out windmills around the world on Wikimedia while you're at it.

Limits to Growth Revisited

Saturday's article by Catherine Rampell in the Economics section of the New York Times sounded another encouraging note for those of us who have come to realize that constant economic growth spells doom for the planet. (A segment of the article was reprinted without a byline in the Dallas Morning News this morning, on p. 13A.)

In the essay, "Shift to Saving May Be Downturn's Lasting Impact," Rampel notes that "a culture of thrift" is emerging that may well last beyond whatever Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue determine signals a recovery. I've already noted that thriftiness and a real frugality (beyond the coupon-clipping, bargain-hunting at Nieman's Last Call norm already in place) have become more and more commonplace, and practices that resemble those engendered by the Great Depression are making their way into our collective modern consumer consciousness. But the longer the recession lasts, the more likely, it seems, we are to discover that saving gives us the same rush that buying once did, and that having the money to pay for something before we actually purchase it may become a genuine all-American habit. Even pop-culture Sunday paper mainstays like Parade Magazine are printing stories by well-known writers, like Alix Kates Shulman, about "Finding Joy in Frugality"--in which the author wryly notes that what used to be called stinginess is now considered a virtue.

But the real impetus for this post comes from an article I read in Seed magazine earlier in the year (Issue 20, February 2009): Benjamin Phelan's "The Ecology of Finance," which got me to thinking back to the '70s and the Club of Rome's publication, Limits to Growth (an update of which is available in .pdf with tables that compare 1970s predictions with data from 2000. A recent article in New Scientist summarizes the results of the newer studies.) Using the principles of ecology in order to understand the market offers a useful, if limited model. At its best it can provide some real insights into how economic systems resemble natural systems; like all useful metaphors, however, it doesn't fit perfectly, but where it doesn't, it might be even more helpful.

One of guys who does this best is Herman Daly, professor of ecological economics at the University of Maryland (and former senior economist in the World Bank's environment department). His 2008 special report for New Scientist, "Economics blind spot is a disaster for the planet," made the best use of the metaphor I've seen yet:

The economy is like a hungry, growing organism. It consumes low-entropy natural resources such as trees, fish and coal, produces energy and useful goods from them, and spits out high-entropy waste such as carbon dioxide, mine slag and dirty water. Mainstream economists are mostly concerned with the organism's circulatory system, how the energy and resources can be efficiently allocated, while tending to ignore its digestive system.

I should probably stress here (again; this is one of the points on which I rant frequently) that the root of both "economics" and "ecology" are the same: the Greek oikos, or "home" or "dwelling place." Economics refers to the nomos, "that which is in habitual practice, use, or possession" of the home, sometimes used in the sense of a law or convention. The logos in "ecology" is a little harder to pin down (it takes up five columns or two and a half pages in Liddell & Scott's Greek-English Lexicon), but the first examples of usage in Greek have to do with accounts or reckoning--keeping tabs on the home, in a way. But it's also the root of "logic" and of all those "ology" words that refer to sciences (geology, biology, archaeology) in the sense of "study of." Other definitions include "reason," "explanation," and "rule." (This is why we need to know where our language comes from--so we can actually understand all the nuances of what we're saying.) At any rate, both of these words involve knowing something about the world in which we live, as well as something about those who share it with us.

We are, of course--humanity itself--the perpetrators of limitless growth and the use of metaphors to describe it. The very notion of economic growth is based on an analogy with the natural processes of biological organisms. But beings have a finite existence: birth, growth, decline, death. Modern economic theory is predicated on a model of constant growth when it would better be served by analogy with steady-state systems. True sustainability requires both growth and death--not one without the other.

One thing to be said for us as a species, is that we're really good at taking over the oikos, because we do seem to like to spread ourselves around. Perhaps the most successful adaptive strategy developed by homo sapiens sapiens is our ability to fill an enormous variety of niches, and to take them over successfully, often to the detriment of existing occupants. This happens both on a biological scale, in terms of supplanting species already adapted to a given biome, but also sociologically, in terms of phenomena like the gentrification of city neighborhoods, in which original occupants are supplanted because property values rise and they can no longer afford to live there.

This latter success is frequently welcomed by city governments, especially if it results in the revivification of "blighted" communities. Sometimes inhabitants are shunted into low-income housing, but often they end up in homeless shelters or on the streets--or in jail. A better solution would involve moving into a neighborhood that needs to be revitalized and helping to improve and sustain it without tearing apart whatever might be left of the original community.

A good example of our adaptive abilities can be seen in the continuing dilemma--currently slowed by the mortgage crisis--of urban sprawl. Evidence of sociobiological "success" is apparent in the spillage of suburbs into deserts, onto mountainsides and into canyons, and onto flood plains. These at-risk habitats that owe their existence to the forces of nature (heat, fire, avalanche, seismic activity, flood, and numerous other events) are not particularly friendly to human beings, with our attachment to permanent dwellings and infrastructure, coupled with general ignorance of the processes that produce the sheer beauty that makes these places desirable in the first place.

But deserts need artificial sources of water to support golf courses. Hillsides, especially those populated with species of fire-climax vegetation (chaparral, jack pine, etc.) and the seductive banks of rivers, lakes, streams, and oceans all require constant management: fire suppression, or at least controlled burns, flood protection (dams and levees), artificial jetties, beach renewal, and myriad other engineered "solutions" to "problems" that wouldn't exist if people weren't trying to live where they really shouldn't, and if people who should know better weren't encouraging them to do so.

Unlike the effects of other "industrious" species, such as the beaver, human transformation of landscape seldom results in improvement in the ecological sense. Beavers dam streams and create meadows and feeding grounds for other species; but when we dam a river, we destroy indigenous habitats and force other species to adapt or perish. And we do it not to ensure our continued existence, but to magnify our comfort. The market for human commodities (houses, food, goods) is driven by desire, and we really need to be more conscious of how to accommodate our true needs without killing the proverbial goose. Or beaver. (Sorry, sometimes the metaphors get out of hand.)

It's not that we can't be more sensible. We're perfectly capable of figuring out how to live more harmoniously with our environment. Human populations in the past have adapted to desert living, for example, with little impact on their surroundings. But most modern, industrialized nations have failed to limit their growth in any meaningful way, resulting in precipitous extinction rates and habitat destruction, in addition to the manifold increase in the use of fossil fuels and other limited resources which further stress our poor, beleaguered planet.

It's probably ironic (the word is highly overused these days as a synonym for "coincidental") that the economic downturn may in fact kick us in our collective butts and get us to rethink traditional market capitalism. Perhaps what we really need is an ecological analysis of the world economy to help ameliorate the current situation. As Phelan points out in his Seed article, the stock market crash of 1929 forced an overhaul of the financial system; some of these changes prevented the wholesale collapse of the world economy this time around. If only we could learn to use these big brains of ours to figure out how to live within our means, both economically and ecologically, we might not have to worry so much about how our grandchildren and great grandchildren are going to survive what we have wrought.

Photo credit: Earth at night, showing the spread of light-generating cities throughout the world. The image is a composite of hundreds of pictures made by U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellites Program (DMSP) compiled from October 1994 - March 1995. NASA image via Wikimedia Commons. For a better version, click here.

Eating and Being

I think it's time to begin a series of essays that look at what we gain, and what we stand to lose, by adopting behaviors and practices that can help us all heal the world. Tikkun Olam involves continuous rethinking of how our being in the world affects its other occupants, and aims to address that impact with measures that heal rather than continue to harm.

Economists sometimes call this sort of examination a "cost-benefit analysis" but such a notion doesn't work here, because both the costs and the benefits are often hidden (we don't know what will happen, so we can't gather enough beans to count), and so we can't project numbers or statistics--and that's what's wrong with most of these analyses anyway. They're only interested in numbers. If something "costs" (in terms of money, mostly) more than it "benefits" (especially if these are long-term) then what's cheapest wins, regardless of whether or not it's good for us.

In harsh economic times, suggesting an expensive, though beneficially promising, alternative often lands us in the dust bin. We don't have any money to spend, so we sure as hell can't spend that much money now, even if it will clean up our air, our water, or make better food available to us in the long run.

So I thought I'd begin by looking at some of the issues popping up around us. Some come from the President's campaign promises, some come from common sense, others from my particular interests (permaculture, for example). All have been proposed by different people or organizations as means for cleaning up the mess we've made over the last half century or so. The first of these general topics I'd like to tackle is food in general, but I need to divide it up into food sources and food consumption: how we get our food, and what we do with it.

It was a bit depressing that my first trip out since coming home from the hospital had to be to the local Super Target, where I could get the best bang for my buck in terms of picking up most of what I needed to buy in one spot. I can get around pretty well, but I tire rather easily, and I was damned if I was going to scoot around on one of those electric carts (I'm probably still afraid of getting a speeding ticket). So, knowing that I could buy organic milk and eggs, and a few other basics there, as well as some arthritis-strength acetaminophen (onto which I'm trying to wean myself, away from the real narcs) Owlspouse and I sallied forth into the afternoon.

I'm not in the store ten minutes before I'm almost overwhelmed by the depressing amount of sheer crap that's available in these places. The level of food-processing alone represented in one section of Target says more about American gluttony and waste than one would ever need to learn. Every package (over-packaging is the first of many sins committed by food manufacturers in this country) hides a much smaller amount of food than appears on its cover photo, and every ingredient list contains up to hundreds of chemicals added to preserve "freshness" or "maintain purity." Except in parts of the "healthy" sections of the refrigerated zones, every label also includes sweeteners (mostly high fructose corn syrup), way too much salt, and trans- or saturated fats far above reasonable daily allowances. Some of these actually look like they might be pretty good--until you read the label and see the amount of processing that's gone into a simple idea, like lemon-pepper tilapia, or some kind of "Mediterranean" pasta.

In a way this exercise was good for me, because I didn't go home with a couple of frozen entrees like I had planned (so we could eat if I didn't feel up to cooking). I went home with basic ingredients instead: a couple of whole wheat pizza crusts (can't roll my own yet), some fresh mozzarella, and a bit of natural, minimally processed ham. I bought frozen berries to mix with plain low-fat yoghurt. I did spring for some organic ketchup and a new ligher mayo made from olive oil (it had some sugar in it, but no HFCS). At some point I'll get back to making my own of both, but for now (with no tomato garden yet) I have to get 'em off the shelf. So the fridge is now stocked with a versatile collection of dinner possibilities, and I got to leave the store before I needed another nap.

Another depressing element of the trip was noticing the vast number of clearly obese human beings who buy the most inappropriate foods. I'm hyper conscious about my weight now, since I'm progressing toward a point where I can get back to losing the tonnage I've acquired over the last three years of feeling too lousy to get any regular, meaningful exercise. I am painfully aware that my bad eating habits (rather than my diet itself) are to blame for both diabetes and some aspects of my ongoing heart disease. Diabetics need to pace their meals and eat frequently to avoid glucose spikes and shifts--but I had been going entire mornings without eating anything, and then having a quick lunch and then eating again only when I was starving. I know full well, that small, nutritionally dense meals to keep me away from drugs and insulin are what I need, and that effort has begun despite my current wonky taste buds (another reason to get off the narcs).

But many people, even (as I discovered in the hospital) nurses, fall into a similar trap: too busy to eat well. This an issue that needs attention on its own, and I'll probably attack it in future. But for now, we need to become aware--as a nation--that "fast food" almost always equates with "bad food" and because it's often cheap, we end up with poor people in bad health because that's all they think they can afford. There's probably a great deal of literature out there on "the starving fat" and we need more than one book or documentary (Fast Food Nation) to knock some sense into our heads. If the only stores around you are convenience quick-stops and Taco Bueno, it's hard to buy nutritious food; and I don't see a lot of Whole Foods stores opening up in marginal neighborhoods.

Eating habits simply have to change. But how do we do this, bombarded as we are with advertisements that make all manner of grandiose claims about goodness and freshness and giving us "more time to spend with our families," or by all the cutsy promos for animated films that come "free" with a cheeseburger Happy Meal?

Goodness and freshness can only really be achieved by starting out with minimal processing. That means no fancy boxes and cute plastic containers that "steam" your food for you in two minutes in the microwave. If you don't have a way to steam something at work, then take a sandwich and a piece of fruit. Or take a container of soup or leftovers if you want to eat something hot (most offices have access to microwave ovens these days--but we don't need to keep manufacturing ways of making them do what they weren't designed to do if it means increasing the amount of plastic heading for the landfill).

The counter argument to all this is that Americans demand these conveniences and innovations from industry. Baloney. We're taught to demand them! Every day we learn about some new "necessity" on TV that we didn't previously know we "needed." Do people really wake up every morning thinking, "Gee, I wish somebody would invent a way for me to steam food in a microwave because I really need to be able to do this"? The microwave oven itself manages to have won me over by the fact that I can actually save a good deal of energy by "nuking" home-made frozen soup, or cocoa, or last night's dinner for lunch. Even so, if the Environmental Apocalypse came and I had to give it up to save the planet, out it would go.

Human beings aren't stupid. Or we weren't until TV was invented. We've managed to cook food ever since the Paleolithic, and all we've done through all those thousands of years is to invent more complicated, more dangerous, and more expensive gadgets to cook in and on. Yes cooking on a natural gas range is better for the planet than cooking over an open fire. But I doubt if simmering your evening meal on a six-burner Viking industrial model will win you any points in save-the-planet heaven. Cooking out-of-doors seems to spring from some sort of primal recognition of our ancestral roots, but cooking in an "outdoor kitchen" seems to defeat the purpose. Nor have I figured out quite why people find charcoal-lighting fluid a tasty addition to the flavoring of their slabs of brisket.

Once again William Morris's education of desire come to mind: What do we truly need, and what do we merely want?

If all of the fancy gadgets and maximally processed foods available have brought us to the point of being a wealthy nation of very sick people, why is that a good cost/benefit ratio? Sure we have more stuff. Sure it might be easier to whip up a meal. But what do we gain? I mean, besides weight and larger body/mass indices?

So here are my suggestions on how to combat the advertising industry's assault on our brains and our waistlines--without unduly taxing our wallets or decreasing the amount of time we have to spend with family and friends.

1. Invest in a really good cooking magazine. I know this sounds silly, but magazine subscriptions are generally quite cheap, and a single magazine that comes once a month can provide endless inspiration--especially if you sit down and talk to your kids about potential menus, what sounds good, what's in season, etc. My favorite of these is Eating Well, but Cooking Light and others can also be helpful. When you're finished with the magazine, pass it on to your doctor's office or a nursing home, or to a friend. Or (what I end up doing) create notebooks with your favorite recipes and put the remains of the magazine in the recycle bin--after the kids have made collages out of the pretty pictures. Some of these magazines have high-quality websites, too, providing access to recipe archives.

2. Take stock of your larder (pantry). Know what's in it, and focus on tinned tomatoes and beans, plus whole grains in moth-proof containers, whole wheat pasta, a couple of bottles of good pasta sauce, olive oil, dried beans, and ethnic bottled sauces--as well as the food you put up yourself from your own garden, or from shopping at the farmer's market for in-season fruits and produce. Know what's in your freezer, too, especially if you have a chest freezer for keeping the results of bulk buys. Be aware of expiry dates so that you don't end up with stuff you shouldn't be eating but can't bring yourself to toss. (I've had a couple of pounds of fresh--then--tuna steaks since a friend's fishing trip about 6 years ago. I keep forgetting to put it in the trash bin, because that only goes out to the street about once a month.)

3. Most of my readers already know about our adherence to the Only One Thing rule regarding children's activities. If your kids aren't overburdened with lessons and sports outside of school, they can spend more time with you on the design and preparation of meals. At the weekend, prep veggies for weekday meals, bake bread and healthful cookies, make soup, bottle jams, jellies, and seasonal veg. Use the time to plant gardens if you have the space, and involve the whole family. There is nothing about gardening that's intrinsically difficult, and there's something everyone can do--even if they're in a wheelchair. Make sure you have an active compost heap or bin, and that all your vegetable waste, garden weeds, grass trimmings (if you dont' just mulch them), etc. go into it. Put someone in charge of compost care, and then switch off periodically.

4. Stop drinking soda pop. Of any kind, especially diet. There is no earthly reason--beyond addiction--to drink this stuff. It's expensive, it's saturated with high-fructose corn syrup, it's wasteful of raw and manufactured materials, and it doesn't do you any good. Instead of sweet fizzy drinks, buy mineral water by the case (Costco sells San Pellegrino Water for under a buck a bottle when you buy it this way). Then add a bit of lemon, fruit juice, ginger syrup, or other flavoring if you don't like it plain. It won't take you long to wean yourself from your Diet Coke habit. Depending on how badly you're addicted, stopping this one habit could save you piles of money and/or hundreds of calories every day. Or, make "sun tea" from fruit- and herb-infused tisanes--like those made by Celestial Seasonings, or Tazo, or any of a huge number of other brands. If you need these to be sweet, add a little sugar or honey--but try to do without, or wean yourself from "needing" sweeteners. These and both black and green teas taste quite nice with a bit of lemon over ice. The result: no calories (if you don't add sugar), plus some herbal and/or antioxidant benefit.

5. Stop thinking of dessert as a regular part of every meal. There is no eleventh commandment that says "thou shalt have dessert every night or be forsaken by thy god." Desserts should be two things: occasional and nutritious. Perhaps for Shabbat or Sunday dinners, a special occasion, a holiday, a birthday, etc. But not every day. A cookie or two with milk after school, a whole-grain fruit muffin for breakfast, a sweet rather than savory vegetable dish (glazed carrots and mushrooms)--all of these can add sweetness and flavor without huge numbers of calories. One alternative for dessert is a fruit course following the main meal, but there's no reason that fruit can't be part of the meal itself. If it encourages lingering for conversation, a bit of fruit and cheese with the last of the wine might be encouraged. But not the obigatory pie a la mode.

6. Watch the alcohol intake. The general rule with frugal eating and drinking is that the less you consume in quantity, the more you can afford in quality. So instead of buying two $6 bottles of marginal wine, check the sales for a bargain $12 wine (sometimes knocked down from $20 or more), and drink it slowly, savoring it rather than just getting snockered. A little alcohol seems to be good for us, but drinking a bottle a night just adds useless calories. Do you really have to have a glass of wine with your veggie chili? Good beers are generally cheaper than good wines, but again, moderation in all things. It might not be necessary to have alcohol with every dinner, but opt for a nice fizzied fruit juice or glass of mineral water instead.

7. Care about your food. You don't have to have an overly-sentimental attitude about cows to be concerned about how they're treated before they land on your plate. If an animal suffers unnecessarily, why would you even want to eat it? Complete, abstract detachment from food leads to factory farming, disgusting abattoir practices, and an instrumental disregard for the welfare of the animals with whom we share this planet.

8. Minimize meat consumption. If you can't afford free-range chickens or pastured beef, try saving up for it, and make the meat meal a special one, requiring deliberation and careful preparation. We take way too much for granted as it is, but if we make food derived from the deaths of other animals, it should certainly be something particular in our lives. Even if you're not a religious person, realize that a living creature died to make this meal, and show it some respect. If you find the idea completely distasteful, maybe it's time to give up meat altogether. But if you can cut the number of meat meals down to two or so a week, you can afford that happy chicken or happy pig, and you'll support the people who go to the trouble to raise their animals properly.

9. Think about what you eat. Learn about the chemical properties of what you consume, and how it reacts with other nutrients in your body to become you. It's astonishing how ignorant people are about the origins of herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables. So turn suppertime into an exploration of science and culture by discussing where tonight's meal came from. Prepare meals with an ethnic theme and learn about the culture that developed it. Learn to make simple cheeses, and build a meal around a ball of home-made mozzarella. Learn traditional spice combinations from other parts of the world. Preserve a few lemons and experiment with recipes that use them. Cure some olives. Encourage your children to invite their friends (and their families) over for dinner. If the friends come from somewhere else, encourage a recipe exchange.

10. Enjoy your food. There is nothing more basically human than sitting around a table sharing food. If your family has prepared the meal together, you've sacrificed nothing. Your time has been well-spent, and you're acting more responsibly toward both yourself and the planet than if you'd rushed of the Micky Dee's for a couple of Big Macs and a Happy Meal. Oh. And turn off the TV.

End of sermon for the day, but this will continue. Happy eating!

Image credits: Alanya Market, Turkey, by NobbiP. Wikimedia Commons.

Changing Climates, Deep Doo Doo, and Pickles

This will be a long post, but I've got a lot to get off my chest, and it's my 100th for the Farm, so I'm indulging myself. And because of the impending ice storm, I've got the afternoon off--which may seem ironic, given the subject at hand, but at the moment the weather's behaving appropriately for the season.

The news about the future of our planet, despite the generally upbeat tone of political news at the moment, seems to be getting grimmer and grimmer. Bill McKibben's latest piece for Foreign Policy "Think Again: Climate Change" (reprinted in the Dallas Morning News on Sunday, the 25th, as "Past the Boiling Point") reminds us that it's already too late for some remedies, and is rapidly getting to be too late for many others.

What we generally see in response to what seems to be a growing body of agreement is either band-aid approaches (Ten Ways You Can Help Save The Earth) that include recycling all of the unnecessary packaging on the stuff we buy that we don't really need, or abject denial (as I read in local blogger Denise McNamara's recent post "Dallas Morning News: Burn After Reading"): "there are multitudes of scientists who disagree, and as earth prepares to enter a period of solar maximum, the consensus is that man does not cause climate change; the sun does. Oh, and right now the earth is experiencing global cooling" she claims, despite evidence to the contrary. See, for example, the consensus list posted on LogicalScience, or the article in Science (Dec. 2004), or Joseph Romm's critique of the opposition, "The Cold Truth About Climate Change" in Salon.com from a year ago. Just today, Jim Giles writes in New Scientist that "Human emissions could bring 'irreversible' climate chaos."

As anyone who's studied geology can tell you, climates do in fact fluctuate like crazy (although change usually takes place over millennia). Yes, we do experience periods of heating and cooling and interglaciation. And other factors, like earth's wobbly axis, can cause things to change more quickly, as they did back in the Mesolithic to generate the dessication of the Sahara region. But even somebody who's never taken a geology, biology, or physics class in his or her life should be able to see that something's going on, and we are in fact blowing all manner of particulate matter into the atmosphere at an unprecedented (at least before the Industrial Revolution) rate. There's a simple equation in play here: more people + more stuff = more emissions. The upshot is crappy air that can't be taken care of by bio-absorption because more people and more stuff are in part the result of cutting down our own built-in bio-filters: forests all over the world. And, of course, the few glaciers left are melting apace.

The exact consequences and even the exact mechanisms aren't perfectly understood because there are simply so many factors involved that the computer models can't keep up with them, and we sure as hell don't have the experience to help us figure out processes occurring too quickly to test or predict with any real facility.

So what's a conscientious, non-denier to do? I mean, if you're already doing all ten of the "simple" things you can do to save the earth, what's next? Or if you've been a tree-hugger since your hippie days, what else can you embrace? Especially when you throw in the current economic crisis, lost jobs, and the prospect of worsening economic conditions before they get better (we hope--remember?). Every new thing we don't buy, every workman we don't hire, every meal we eat in, every television show we don't watch impacts the economy. The old one, that is.

If we're going to do anything about climate change, it seems to be intricately connected (as all systems are) with consequences somewhere else along the line. In the end, I think this calls for some radical rethinking of the economy we've been living in for the past fifty years, and perhaps looking backward for some ideas about living well with less.

Of course I'm talking about William Morris. And I'm trying not to be a Luddite. But the man was right; we need to examine philosophically how it is we might live, and take steps to create that world for our children. It means examining the way we live now very critically, especially in terms of quantity versus quality. We get too much information. We drive too fast. We use too much of everything and pay too little for it to sustain the people who make it for us. We know too little about the world, but use too much of it, disregarding the consequences of every liter of gasoline, every kilowatt hour of electricity, every gallon of water we consume.

We also need to re-imagine the concept of work. In addition to considering Morris's distinction between "useful work and useless toil," it would be helpful to examine what "work" has come to mean in the twenty-first century. Howard Gardner's article from 2007, "An Embarrassment of Riches" points out that "The accumulation and cross-generational transmission of wealth in the United States has gone way too far. When a young hedge-fund manager can take home a sum reminiscent of the gross national product of a small country, something is askew. When a self-made entrepreneur can accumulate enough money to, in effect, purchase that country, something is totally out of whack. It’s impossible to deny that market fundamentalism has gone too far." He goes on to suggest limits to personal wealth, which would, of course, cause volcanic eruptions on the right (and probably on the wealthy left as well). But the real impact of his critique lies in the nature of that wealth: the kind of "work" involved in acquiring it.

Why is it that those who do the worst work--the people who pick up after us all, for example (garbage collectors and sorters, maids, busboys, dishwashers, building maintenance people), who do the dirtiest jobs, receive the smallest wages? Why do people who do really important work (like taking care of our children while we're off "working," elementary and secondary educators, caretakers in homes for the elderly) "earn" so much less than guys who sit in plush leather chairs and spend other peoples' money? Why can't a farmer earn a decent living and maintain the family farm without mortgaging him or herself silly in order to stay afloat? I know I've ranted about this before, but it seems all the more relevant now that people who could count on their jobs at places like Home Depot--a company you'd think would be doing fine because people are beginning to opt to do it themselves rather than hire someone to paint their houses and such--are now being laid off.

There does seem to be some hope embedded not only in the new administration, but also in the growing realization of parents in this country that if something doesn't give, those precious little kiddies they've been hovering over are going be stuck in deep shit. And since these kids don't even know much about poop or where it goes or how it's processed (somebody else cleans it up, after all), they're also going to be in a pickle. And they don't know where those come from, either.

When I was writing More News From Nowhere, I wondered about what people would leave out of their new world if they had a chance to start afresh. One of the first things to go, as it turned out, was electricity. The people in the story carefully examined all of the consequences they could think of engendered by the use of a fairly simple technology: everything from sleeping patterns to how much they used their bodies to accomplish tasks.

Now, I doubt seriously that anybody's going to give up their light bulbs any time soon (and what use would there then be for my pretty switchplates?). But thinking and learning about systems and how they interconnect, and how they impact the way we live on the earth is a step toward imagining a different economy.

Why don't we make by hand more of what we truly need? Why do only relatively wealthy people get to afford good, locally-grown produce? Why do we have to use a car to go everywhere? Why do we think we need to be able to stay up all night to work or study or play games? What ever happened to sitting around eating, talking, enjoying the company of friends without going to a noisy bar and watching a big screen TV all at the same time?

Signs of change like the Slow Food movement and Community Supported Agriculture are laudable and offer some reason for optimism. Efforts on the part of the government to retrain workers and keep jobs at home may help, too, but the jobs have to be thoughtfully conceived rather than simply be re-hashed ideas that involve manufacturing more unnecessary commodities.

But I also think that there needs to be a national conversation about what kind of world we should make, as opposed to what kind of world we've become accustomed to. It might begin with thinking about what we would save if we could (or had to) start all over again, and what we can do without. We don't have the option to really throw it all out and begin again, but a thought experiment like this might help us realize something about the value of the world itself, and what our continuing presence here might mean to those who come after us--of all nationalities, ethnicities, and species, not just our own.

One thing that comes to mind, on a practical and individual level, is to look at what we already have in terms of what we think we need. For example, I live in a drafty house that I've done about as much to insulate as I can, and so I keep the thermostat down at 60 degrees and use lap-rugs to stay warm while working or reading or watching the telly. I need another one, because the coziest throw we have isn't really big enough for two of us. I could go out and buy one of those nice fleecy things I saw on a browse through Tuesday Morning not long ago (the second time in recent memory that I'd been in there and not bought a blessed thing). They're cheap (probably cheaper than they should be) at about $20. But they're made out of synthetic fibers (the manufacture of which spewed who knows how many pounds of carbon and other gunk into the air), and it would be, after all, One More Damned Thing.

So today, since I'm pretty much caught up with the week's lectures, I'm going to gather up all the old bits of wool I've had squirreled away in the Museum of Unfinished Projects, and start knitting up a new blankie: hand crafted, possibly pretty (I've got some granny squares already finished and they actually look rather nice; I'll join them up with some strips of knit-one-purl-two and see what happens), and it won't cost me anything I haven't already spent.

I've already started a "finishing up what's in the freezer/larder" project that involves making peasant soups at least once a month using odd bits of veg, rice, pasta, and tinned foods, and an occasional chunk of meat. So far they've been wonderful, and I'm now making room for stocking up on home-made bread and other staples that I can make in batches and then freeze. Come summer, when I should have recovered enough of my stamina to garden energetically, I'll have room on the shelves for jams and chutneys and pickles galore.

Maybe I'll invite some children to help me, so they'll see how it's done.

Images: The charts are from Global Warming Art. Hundreds of high-quality diagrams and charts are available, created by really smart, creative people. The picture of Morris at 53 is from Wikimedia Commons.

Rolling Up Our Sleeves and Darning the Sheets

The nice picture that appeared on all the news shows and in the paper this morning (not the one I've used above), of Barack Obama sans jacket, calling world leaders from his new office was kind of inspiring. "Get to work," it seems to say. "Now."

So I'm going to go back to preaching about profligacy and superficiality, while I work at trying to find ways in which those of us who live in this still-the-wealthiest-nation-on-earth can live better. Not "better" in the sense of "getting more stuff with less money," but in the sense of "intellectually richer" or "more in tune with the rest of the natural world." That is, when I'm not trying to stockpile enough PowerPoint lectures to get my sub through the Spring quarter.

The Dallas Morning News has started to run a "Dollar Wise" feature in its Guide section, and the January 11 edition ran Nancy Visser's "Confessions of Consumer Dropouts," which (on the surface, anyway) seemed to echo the theme of Judith Levine's book, Not Buying It (about which I wrote back in my December post, "Waste Not"). Visser's pledge is not to not buy anything for a year--it's just to not buy anything new. Well, that's noble enough, I thought. "So, in 2009, we will buy nothing new except food, toiletries, and home-improvement items." This represents the renewal of a vow made in 2007, which resulted in a few changed habits, a raised consumer consciousness, and that "helped define our values." She doesn't explain what that means, but I didn't read the original article (if there was one).

Her advice on how to accomplish these goals comes under a sub-heading, "Consumer Zen." Copywriters really do need to start paying attention to what they say, because what follows has nothing at all to do with Zen.

Visser's rules are simple enough, and laudable for the most part. For example, she points out that when you don't spend time shopping, you have more time for other pursuits--like reading the whole paper instead of just the ads. One really helpful observation is that one can learn to live with what one has; as soon as you stop thinking about buying stuff all the time, you no longer seem to "need" new counter tops, or a new rug. But her pledge to not buy anything new includes some odd subterfuges: like stockpiling toiletries before you begin (she didn't actually do this on purpose; she just took advantage of rebates out of habit and ended up with nearly a years' supply of deodorant and such). If you're like me--someone who refuses to buy shampoo laden with questionable chemicals--you don't get rebate coupons. It occurs to me to suggest that if you're not spending all that time shopping for rebatable cosmetics, you could probably make your own out of really simple, safe, organic ingredients.

And here's a hint for her: a one-time purchase of a washable furnace filter will save you from having to replace them. Forever. And it's possible to find recycled tile for the entry hall (according to Visser, "used tile isn't an option." Why not?). If you want to save money on that sort of thing, shop salvage yards and your nearest Habitat for Humanity Re-store.

My point here is not that there's anything nefarious going on; it's just that there's no Zen. The reasons for not buying new things should be bound to the same reasons as for not buying more stuff at all. Only buy what you need. And when you do so, think of the consequences. Sometimes it's better to buy new: like purchasing a low-emissions car that gets better fuel economy instead of an old gas guzzling fume-spewer. When you have to buy new bedding, as Zisser insists she must ("No used bedding for us!"), save up for high-quality, organically-grown, fair-trade bedsheets that will last a lifetime. Personally, I relish sleeping on the few pillow cases I still have that were lovingly embroidered by my great grandmother, and quite a number of people seem to be happy to purchase "antique" linens (as long, I guess, as they're from France, where the heirlooms of countless French farm wives are being sold off to the great glee of English and American high-end consumers). And whatever happened to darning the sheets (even if you don't have Roman slaves to do it*)?

Real economy isn't just about saving money or uncluttering our lives. It's about rethinking how we live. The new President touched on this in is inaugural address, when he noted the following:

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.

The hard choices will involve the Big Items like what kinds of automobiles we manufacture, what kinds of fuels we use, how we treat our croplands (and what we grow), how we treat our poor and our sick, and what becomes of our immigrants.

But the choices also include how we live. Nancy Visser's effort at getting a handle on how she spends her money is commendable in many respects; but like many such efforts, it doesn't really address the fundamental question of need versus want. She admits to coveting new stuff, and expresses the following hope: "May the recession end before we have to swear off used stuff, too."

Yes, Mr. President; we do have some hard choices to make. And we need some education of desire to help us make them.

*This is an obscure reference that only fans of the old BBC comedy, Up Pompeii!! will get; the protagonist-slave, Lurcio, complains about most of his tasks--including darning the sheets.

Image credit: Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, The Laundress, 1735. Owned by the Hermitage, available at Wikimedia Commons.

Dystopian Economics

This week my History of Art & Design II lecture is about "art between the wars"--the impact of Cubism and politics on art in the early third of the twentieth century. After holding forth on Constructivism, Surrealism, and Art Deco, I showed the "Streamlines and Breadlines" episode of Robert Hughes's paean to this country's art history, American Visions. The parallels between then and now, pointed out frequently these days in the papers (which my students generally do not read), became clearly apparent as Hughes proceeded from the Chrysler Building to the WPA.

I recommended that these kids watch Tim Robbins's wonderful 1999 film, The Cradle Will Rock, to soak up the ambiance of the period, and to further attune themselves (sorry for the pun--there's music) to the similarities.

But what really disturbs me about the current economic situation is not the fear of a return to the Depression. Rather, it's the total picture: Because of the banking crisis, people can't get credit to buy stuff--houses, cars, useless crap, whatever--they can't afford.

Now, I'll admit to having spent beyond my immediate means, and have been willing to pay for it in interest, but I've never spent beyond my total means to repay the loan. And I guess I would be in a bit of a pickle were my husband and I to lose our jobs (which is, of course, a significant part of the immediate problem). But there also seems to be an enormous number of individuals and institutions that have spent willy nilly without regard to consequences, giving out loans to folks with little promise of being able to repay them or taking out loans they can't possibly make good on.

And now I'm going to be spending my tax money--which should go to helping maintain infrastructure and provide a safety net for the truly destitute--to help shore up an economy that makes no bloody sense to me at all.

It's not that I'm without sympathy for people who were duped into borrowing from companies who painted a rosy future and obscured the bitter facts behind adjustable rate mortgages. But as a nation of spenders, we've been seduced by fantasies: The American Dream, American Power, American Wealth, American Can-Do. Buy a bigger house than you need; buy a bigger, fancier car; show off your success with expensive clothes and jewelry; buy the latest, greatest techno-gizmo! Spend your stimulus-incentive tax rebate, don't save it!

Never mind about saving for a rainy day (let alone a stormy one). Funny how the Big Economics boys didn't realize that a number of people had gotten wind (maybe through the vicissitudes of the oil bidness) that things might not be coming up roses, and thus banked their rebate checks rather than cashing them in for a new big-screen TV.

Whatever happened to plain old common thrift?

Of course, being thrifty (like being frugal) requires a long view: a notion of making it through to some future point. It doesn't fit in with our instant-gratification way of existing in the moment. Carpe diem! Forget about manana! Get it now, with easy credit, on a convenient installment plan! Forget about educating one's desire; whether you need it or not, buy it. Now.

A while back we started paying down credit cards and resisting the urge to buy anything we couldn't pay cash for, and it's amazing how quickly one can decrease indebtedness that way. As the principal is reduced, the amount of interest declines, and the loan melts away. As one debt is repaid, that money can go into paying off another more quickly. And so on.

I've also realized that I'm probably driving the last car I'll ever own. By the time my Civic (currently nudging 100,000 miles) runs out of gas, I'll probably have done so as well. So as soon as the Element is paid off in another year or two, we'll have that money to live on. I think of it as my retirement fund, since what little there was in my Fidelity account now probably won't be there by the time I retire--if I can ever retire.

Unless, of course, all of the trillions that are going into bailing out CEOs and short-sighted automakers actually do something to stimulate the economy and return us, hell-bent, to our free-spending, unthinking, blind obedience to the gods of greed-based corporate capitalism.

It's a good thing Adam Smith is already dead. Otherwise, today's headlines alone would surely kill him.

Image Note: When I was looking for an image to illustrate this post, I went to Wikimedia Commons and searched under "shopping," which led me to an arcade and immediately reminded me of everybody's favorite dystopia: the city of Los Angeles as Ridley Scott imagined it in Bladerunner. A further search on Wikipedia for the film provided me with this terrific shot of Hong Kong taken by Diliff--and it was the emerging metropolis of Hong Kong that apparently inspired Scott. A recent bit on NPR about the proliferation of LED billboards in LA made this seem all the more more prophetic.