Phil is foraging

For those of you have read some of Phil's essays on aftershock, he is now in South Dakota and is trying to forage for seventy percent of his food.
"This will give you a good start if you want to try a few wild plants in your meals. I use thirty to fourty different plants here in SD through the spring and summer when camping, and I'm familiar with a couple hundred more. One thing you should remember is that wild plants have more fiber than the commercial varieties. At the amounts I'm using, I'm getting about . . ." read the article!

Post Carbon in Eugene

I've been thinking about change stress, as I'm in it right now as the traveling mcnalan becomes the sort of stationary alan who works and commutes. There has been internet connectivity problems, but they are minor. Yet I'm disrupted. So TJ so I ran out some ideas of stress during change while drinking coffee this morning.
Everything that I do is some variety of reoccurring process. From checking email first thing, making sure web work obligations are met for my clients, checking my blood, shooting insulin, dumping grey water, checking batteries, keeping the cell phone charged - all are a wheel that turns every day, minimum efforts that must be paid in to keep this level of my technology alive.

So yesterday the wireless connection broke and that caused a cascade of events that culminated with me in town without my insulin, thus unable to eat carbo, however I did, (bad dog), and thus my blood sugar numbers went high, which besides destructive to my body, cause emotional irritation too. So the smallest break of my technology and I was rendered "crisis useless." I was not in any place to think creatively and it was all I could do to get the things done on my list.

So in real change, like closed gas stations and fuel too expensive or unavailable for me to get to work, all will require big adjustments. I can hardly stand a small adjustment. Maybe we all have a tendency to judge our ability to handle the normal stresses of daily life based on how we feel when we have most things caught up and are poised for more problems and opportunities. However I don't think in any societal change that I will likely be in that mental place. More than likely I will be a mental basket case. So one of the skills I need to work on, to allow, to develop, is flexibility when everything is not working, where I can't communicate, where I can't hear and learn in my preferred way (internet), where I might not know where my friends and loved ones are, or if they are alright. And in that emotional cloud I have to make gentle, loving, sound decisions for myself. I've got a lot to work on.

Gary has been posting some tough to talk about personal observations. Check out the Pill linked on the right, perhaps there is something there that will have meaning for you too.

Here are the minutes from the last Post Carbon workshop in Eugene. I post this to give you and idea of the disparate views and concerns of people about Peak oil and our uncertain future from their minds and hearts. I'm looking forward to meeting all of them.

------------------
AFTERNOON SESSION--PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS; everyone in the room
contributed


PROBLEMS--LONG RANGE AND IMMEDIATE


--25% of US oil directed to producing food and fiber (f&f)
--imported natural gas used for synthetic fertilizer production
--inevitable fossil fuel depletion
-- more likely- spasmodic interruptions of fuel occurring soon
--food commonly viewed as a commodity, profane not sacred
--local farmers markets not year-round, 7 days/week
--population growth/urbanization destroys farmland while increasing
need for f&f.
--climate change leading to water loss and emerging diseases
--antibiotic resistance in humans caused by overuse in livestock
production
--arable soil destruction thlrough urbanization & desertification
--public health problems from widespread pesticide and fertilizer use
--crab bucket society; less fortunate out of luck, ignored
--stigma of farm work
--junk food cheaper than good food
--apathy of population oblivious to problems and consequences
--food needs labor to produce, process
--people live in cities, removed from production & processing f&f
--popular mindsets- assumptions, framing and metaphors
--transportation energy (food miles)
--children eat poorly, especially if poor
--emergency preparedness and response lacking
--lack of f&f = biggest Homeland Security problem
--nutritional content of food poor, declining
--food & fiber production involves violent/hostile interaction with
nature
--farm housing inadequate-people kept off land by laws
--economy based on exploitation of nature
--spiritual disconnect - people and nature
--GNP concept fundamentally opposed to sustainability
--industrial model of thinking overwhelms smart advances with
bureaucracy
--no commons, no popular understanding of commons concepts
--water quality deteriorating due to f&f production, urban uses
--land use laws favor urbanization, keep ag people off ag land


SOLUTIONS
--gardens in yards, rooftops, ect.
--land ownership changes to bring people to country living
--reframe metaphors, reality-study George Lakoff
--everything doesn't have to be sold-food too important to be a
commodity
--reduce useless work in society
--growing food and fiber = meaningful work
--depaving
--food not lawns
--pedal express
--SF and Portland Peak Oil Resolutions
--economic incentives for learning f&f sustainable production
--organize ourselves on new models-cooperation rather than top-loaded
incorporation
--adopt traditonal meeting methods of Quakers for democratic answers
--increase popular awareness of historical, alternative cultural models
for f&f production
--disaster preparedness critical (Mayan calendar warns poop hits fan
soon)
--must get ready for unknown future
--avoid entrapment of traditional industrial success models (don't
create monsters)
--increase nutrition of food products
--support school gardens, community teaching
--excercise kindness, patience working with f&f production
--problems present opportunities
--involve churches, faith communities
--approach problems with love, compassion and education
--give up "dominion over earth" models
--convert wasted and misallocated land to f&f
--reestablish lost town commons
--teach people how to grow f&f
--city planning to include neighborhood markets
--make local leaders aware of Portland task force report and
reccommendations
--explore new models of group living and growing food together
--support people already moving in right direction
--embrace sudden change concepts
--understand no technological fix will maintain status quo
--understand no gradual curve of declining fossil fuels probable
--understand fuel decline will be spasmodic
--give up delusions
--moral obligation to weaken global economy model
--live outside system
--work to actualize critical mass, reframe issues and change popular
culture
--take responsibilty for personal change
--music, dance, celebration
--everyone stay positive and go within themselves to find what is
theirs to do
--dachas- European model-families live in high density in winter in
urban areas, in warm months live in country on 1-3 acres, producing own
food.
--adopt Gross National Happiness (Bhutan model) vs GNP industrial model
--understand living soil-bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes,
microarthropods, etc
--put soil protection at top of human priorities
--cultivate Biodynamically
--co-production (Japanese) models of urban groups contracting with
farmers
--adopt horticulture therapy as everyone's lifestyle
--understand amino acid content of vegetables(Kapuler and Gurusiddiah)
and grow garden crops for complementary protein balance (CPB)
--develop menus and recipes utilizing CPB
--

Pirates, all

Hung suspended with a sense of motion all around, but so many things to fall into new, old, changed patterns in the next few days and weeks. I'm in Florence OR after a miserable night at the Mill Casino in Coos Bay. The fog and rain were so cold it was hard to even walk in it. The dish could not find my internet satellite through the soup, and worse, the trailer was clammy, moist.
At my points of turning - my six months on, six off - so many patterns are set and locked in a day or two, where I'll stay, how much it will cost, what sort of internet connection and how much, all add up to decisions about my future for the next six and 1/2 months. That is so odd when I'm not sure what will happen in the world in the next six months. More germane, I have changed on this trip. I am less bound by the law of the land, the laws of conformity, and I have given myself my own letter of permission to do what I must to prepare for what I see headed our way.
Part of that permission is deciding to be active in the Post Carbon group, part of it is realizing that when you are on the Titanic, despite how good the music is in the ballroom, it is OK for me to go and get my own lifeboat setup. So everyone will party on around me, at work, in town, at the coffee shop, and I will dedicate my energy and my time to acting personally on my beliefs, not as a philosophical experiment, but a new and larger degree of action.
Does that sound like perhaps I've received a letter from the Crown presenting me with the authority to seize the shipping of enemy nations? What did Pogo say? "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Begin the time of Pirates matey. My time for thinking wider is at a turning point.
Society is not your friend. Your government serves the rich, and medicates the poor. If you try harder and live a better life you child will never grow up to be president. We are distinctly class society while pretending not to see that we have class structure in every decision, expectation and action. This society, the world captalist society is cracking at the seems, it does not have the capacity to do other than what it is doing right now, growing hard up against the edge of resource depletion and fouling all of us in the process.
You, me, us, our ability to affect our futures is pretty small compared to the size of our Titantic juggernaut sailing into self destruction. But our small world is all we can affect, all we can change. That is the cusp of thought and action that has woken in me this last 5 months. I have lost friends and acquaintances, I have gained confidence commitment.
Find the pirate in you, set sail from conformity, drudgery, powerlessness, and depression. Embrace the life of the pirate, for though the nations of the world unite to enslave you, only by your acquiescence can they perpetuate their parasitic position.
You, me, everyone was born as co owners of this wonderful planet, third from the sun, in a minor arm of what some call the Milky Way. You have every right to land, opportunity, health and space, clean water, sunlight, and love that the most priveleged class member would suggest that you do not. There is no part of the country club golf course that does not belong to you in absolute reality. Perhaps you cannot put your foot there today because of your beliefs and the beliefs of police and our overlord ruling class, but in fact, you were born on this planet, it is yours, or rather, you are hers. There is nothing here that is not yours.
You may choose to accept the imprisonment of your body by society, at work, at your tiny house, by your debt, by the criticism of your family and friends, but even as you are harnessed to their tasks, you must not, I must not, accept that prison in my heart. It is not what I believe. I believe that you are creators of all that you see and experience and love. The only real prison, the only real sadness are the limitations we accept for ourselves. Just because everyone says it, just because everyone says you're only worthy "this much", never never never accept that. You are and remain a miracle in motion, a miracle of potential and this world gave you life and no one, anywhere can do more than kill your body. Rage, rage, and love, against the dying of the light. And I will rage and love with you.
Remember who you are! Laugh at the petty tyrants, The chains we must strike off are not society's chains but those you accepted as true, your limits, your worth, so long ago. Those chains were never true. You are a swashbuckler in your heart, you know it. Live it.

Adaptation

Welcome to the new blog for Aftershock, preparation for an uncertain future!

If you have found your way here for the first time, here is the link to all website blog and diary entries up through today Aftershock!

I'm learning to adapt to this new space, and over the next few days I'll get everything set up. There are many reasons for this change, not the least that my friend Gary did it for me, but the important one is that I want to make it easy for you to comment without having to write a separate email.

So I'm adapting. I'm a human, an adapting machine, the most destructive and fearsome creature in the history of life on earth. There is nothing we won't change to suit us, there is never a thought of, that's enough, I'm full, just constant expansion. We are fucking relentless. I adapt so well that I have learned to destroy my entire world in order to get "more." We adapt through changing our thinking and inventing technologies to create the change we need.

This desert tortoise that I came upon yesterday hiking on the north shore of Lake Mead is a type of adaptation that is so extreme it hardly seems worth it. This little tortoise can go a year without a drink, spends most of his time underground, and can almost completely reabsorb his urine. He has adapted through physical evolution to the world around him without changing the world. His limits to growth are his ability to compete with other animals for water and food. His expansion is slow and limited. Our expansion is limited only by oil to grow the food we need to live to breed ever more people. That got me thinking.

We have a dramatic uncertain future ahead of us as a species. We use it up, absorb, eat, consume and discard more material and energy than this little tortoise could every imagine. We are bad dogs, top dogs yes, but very bad dogs indeed, and in your private moments you know it in your bones. We are the problem.

The question to ponder is what sort of adaptation will we make, individually and as a tribe to have some hope of surviving the next fifty years (yes, I know this does not apply to me, as I'll be dead long before that). Will we create the thoughts of compromise, collaboration, limits to resources, and will we except that we do not have any right to breed without limits, to use resources that are SHARED resources with the rest of life on this planet? As a species we seem to have never thought to say, I'm good, I've had enough, leave some for others who share my world. Our survival memes, our social lessons at mother's breast, are so deeply ingrained that we believe we are separate, special, and that the world is for our use. We act as spoiled children gods, uncaring of the consequences of our godhood. Oh we are such fearsome beasts, and we wield the power of fossil fuels as our sword to demand and create homes and life and population where it is inimical to us.
Aftershock is a blog about the morning after. The party's over and the empties lay all about. The world has more than a headache. Her seas are fished out, and becoming sterile, the forests that support us with precious topsoil are disappearing, global warming is changing our weather and food in human visible time instead of geological time. The adaption that the tortoise made through eons of evolution, we must make in an instant by us.
I've been accused of being gloomy. I guess we see anyone who says "hey there is no more beer" as being a sour pus. In fact I'm am having a great time. Chiclets, we're ringside for the big bout, this is the Sunday afternoon match up that has been several million years in the making. Every ancestor of yours that dodged a lion or dug a trap and outsmarted that lion has led us here to this moment. As terrible as we are, and dinosaurs would have shrunk from our hubris and resultant actions, we are also sublimely beautiful, creative, loving, caring, and sweet.
We did not destroy our planet on purpose, it was our nature, oops. We were playing a close in game with our eyes on the small field. That's not good enough for what comes. This blog is about how we channel our power, our nature into partnership with our home planet, instead of having it for lunch.
Can we do it? Fucking ay! Of course we can, we do anything we want, we do everything want . When we expect things as a group, we get results. So take your hand out of your pants, it is time to yet become different again. This match up is with ourselves, we must change our very nature. What the hell, it is the thing that we really are best at.
So welcome to Aftershock, a website dedicated to recovering from the peak oil hangover and planning a new (much smaller!) civilization. Normal blogging of my life, because "it's all about me" will recommence after I'm done playing with the new blog software.