sastyk | January 3, 2011We live in a very strange society in many ways. Think about how weird it is that almost any kind of personal preparation for the future that doesn't involve putting money in the stock market is viewed as survivalism, and as the territory of crazy people with guns. How strange is it that the language of personal responsibility has been claimed for political purposes by the right to imply that one is personally responsible to be financially secure (and a moral and personal failure if you aren't) but not personally responsible to be able to meet basic needs in difficult times? It is regarded…
sastyk | January 3, 2011There are a lot of gardening books out there, and whenever anyone asks me for my favorite ones, I find myself struggling to make a list. There are three rules about garden books to remember.
1. All garden books are local to one degree or another, unless they are very general. That is, all garden books are fundamentally about the experience of gardeners in particular places and in particular circumstances. Beyond basic books, the best garden books are by authors who remember this and try and connect what they have done with others, while also acknowledging the limits of their experience…
sastyk | January 3, 2011I get a lot of books to review, and I don't write enough book pieces, I fear. Because of this, books I really like, and books you might want to read get missed, so I've decided in the spirit of New Years Resolutions to do 31 short book reviews in the month of January, of books I think are important. Some are important because they offer practical skill sets my readers might want to have, others are important because they offer insights, or philosophical explorations, or even an escape into an imaginary flight worth taking.
I'm not promising a review a day - I like a day off now and again…
sastyk | December 31, 2010Hi Folks - Happy New Year, everyone! Just a few admin things. First, I still have several spaces in my January apprentice weekend, coming up MLK weekend. This is an adults-only weekend in which we'll talk about everything, practice the winter skill set - late season preserving, goat care and milking, winter livestock care, cheesemaking and dairying, herbs, garden planning and seed starting, or whatever the group wants to learn! In addition, we'll have a mini-adapting in place class as well.
The event is at my house, by donation (whatever you consider fair for the experience), and I also…
sastyk | December 30, 2010This year I have a jump on my predictions - as part of my comparatively new role as Editor of the Peak Oil Review Commentary section, I had the fun of asking a whole lot of smart people what they think is going to happen, and thinking about their predictions first.
If you haven't seen them already, you should definitely check them out! Everyone from Ilargi to Jeff Rubin, The Peak Oil Hausfrau to Richard Heinberg to Tad Patzek kicked in, and realistically, you'll probably get a lot clearer view of the future through a lot of eyes than just one.
Which leads me to my annual official caveat,…
sastyk | December 27, 2010We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species. The list of its undeniable abominations is long and hardly bearable. And these abominations are not balanced or compensated or atoned for by the list, endlessly reiterated, of our scientific achievements. Some people are moved, now and again, to deplore one abomination or another. Others - and Hayden Carruth is one - deplore the whole list and its causes. Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come.…
sastyk | December 24, 2010I've had a lot of requests to say more than I did in my Anyway Project Update about our decision to adopt more children, and a lot of requests to write about the project as we go along. So I will say something here, although with the caveat that the process is very new for us, we are just beginning, and we have not yet been approved as foster/adoptive parents. Many of my assumptions are just that - assumptions. At the same time, I will write about the process when and if children join our family, but I hope my readers will be understanding about the fact that because any children we take…
sastyk | December 20, 2010I broke my little toe this weekend, which I mention because while it is completely unimportant (the only things you can do about broken toes is tape and whine, I'm good at both ;-)), I'm using it as an excuse to take some time off this week and post lightly over the next couple. Don't ask me to explain how a broken toe affects my ability to type, or why I'm using it as an excuse to spend more time on my feet baking cookies and cleaning house instead of sitting quietly at the computer. It makes no sense, but after a busy, hectic first half of the month, i figure the majority of my readership…
sastyk | December 17, 2010If you haven't seen this video by Richard Heinberg and the Post Carbon Institute, you should. In a lot of ways it is an excellent summary of the history of fossil fuels, entertainingly and creatively done. In some ways, it is extremely valuable as a basic educational piece.
I'm very impressed with the clarity of this video, but it does have an odd gap in it - all of the human history of 300 years of fossil fuels doesn't have a single female person in it - not one. Women are addressed by implication when population is mentioned - but all the little hand-drawn people are men. There is a…
sastyk | December 13, 2010Just a note: Eric stepped on the overpriced device that allows us to have a slow and primitive but still wireless connection out here in middle-of-nowhere-land this morning. It is still working, miraculously (it doesn't look like it should be working), but I expect to lose internet access basically at any moment. So if this blog disappears, it isn't that I don't care, it is that my husband is a klutz. Since I'm a much bigger klutz, and have broken even more important things over the years, I can't really whine about it. But just FYI, I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have until…
sastyk | December 9, 2010It is claiming I don't have permission to embed it (I do, actually), so you can see the video here.
I gave this talk back at the beginning of October, in my conference as a member of the ASPO-USA Board. This was only the second time that ASPO has had a significant talk about the connection between food and agriculture, so instead of trying to make claims about how this may play out, I focused on what we already know to be true. As you all probably know, I think that we've barely begun to plumb the depths of the connections between food and energy. I will say, if I ever give a talk there…
sastyk | December 8, 2010As Urbanization Week continues, Liz Borkowski put up a great post about feeding cities that includes a nice, rational (look at the comments for more good stuff) discussion of the idea of Vertical Farming. I'm glad to see the issue come up, because it has so much power. I'm grateful to Liz for providing such a balanced and rational discussion, since most of them aren't.
I don't think I'm even overstating when I say that every time I go somewhere and talk about food, someone asks me what I think of the idea of Vertical Farming. It is the cool, trendy idea about feeding cities that gets tons…
sastyk | December 7, 2010First of all, let me start with what I like about Jim Kunstler's writing in _The Witch of Hebron_. The thing I enjoy most is that he navigates the shoals of post-apocalyptic fantasy extraordinarily well. He neither falls into the masturbatory apocalypticism of something like _The Road_ nor the "good vs. evil fantasy" so common in PA novels, in which our heroes stand for good, light and humanity against cartoon bad guys who respond to the crisis in cartoon ways (lots of these, think _Lucifer's Hammer_ or _Dies the Fire_.)
Kunstler's post-apocalypticism comes in shades of grey - his…
sastyk | December 6, 2010Ok, as part of Urbanization Week, I'm really excited to hear more about what people who have committed to their own cities are doing to make them work. So here's your chance to tell me about your place, small city or large, and how you are improving your place, and making it ready for the coming changes! Please feel free to post links to cool stuff you are doing as well - I'd love to see it!
Cheers,
Sharon
sastyk | December 6, 2010Liz Borkowski of The Pump Handle and I are doing a series this week on the future of urbanization. Given that just about half the world's population now lives in cities, and that almost all projected demographic growth (we will come back to whether the UN's projections on this subject are realistic in a post later this week) will occur in cities, the realities - and future - of urban life are important discussions.
Like Liz, I love cities. That may seem strange to people who know that I live out in a rural area, since many rural-dwellers don't enjoy the bustle and noise of urban life, but…
sastyk | December 6, 2010I kind of wandered off on y'all - we just spent four days visiting and celebrating Thanksanukah ;-) with biological and chosen family. We didn't go to my parents' place for Thanksgiving this year, so we headed out and ate turkey and latkes together, spent four glorious days goofing off, and are home refreshed.
Of course, in the meantime I realized I was *supposed* to have written my Anyway Project Update before I left (it was kind of like packing my toothbrush - somehow some things just get left behind - and there's not "Anyway Project Update Store" in Beverly MA, the way there are…
sastyk | December 1, 2010The great thing about most Jewish holidays is that they go on forever (well, 8 days, mostly), so lazy writers have a chance to get their act together late in the holiday and make it look like they planned it. Meanwhile, I have write about 73 things before tonight and then we're leaving tomorrow for four days with family, this will have to do.
The real problem isn't my failure to write anything appropriate to Chanukah, it is Orrin Hatch's failure. You see, last year you may remember, Hatch gave the worst Chanukah song ever as a gift to the Jewish people, and it gave quick and easy content to…
sastyk | November 30, 2010In a perfect world, perhaps we'd all have already made our own homemade gifts for everyone, but most of us aren't that perfect. Many of us need to acquire some gifts, and the challenge is how to spend our money well, in things that are valuable, lasting and worth having. Over the course of the month, I have some suggestions for what sources you might go to for good gifts. I try, generally speaking, to put my own money where my mouth is, so all of these are places that my family has donated to, or will be donating to this year. There are a lot of good causes, and I'll have more than one…
sastyk | November 30, 2010This morning four guys in camo and rifles were walking up my road at 6am, which means one of two things. Either it is Deer Season, or Canada has invaded. And that's the real reason I'm not leaving the US - I've pinned my hopes on the conquest of upstate New York by Canada, who will ruthlessly impose national health care and better beer upon us.
Of course, back in the 1990s, Saturday Night Live already speculated on what a nation called "Amerida" might look like. (H/T to Edson for the video!)
I'm there already in my mind!
Sharon
sastyk | November 30, 2010An anonymous guest poster at ClubOrlov makes the case that America isn't a place you want to live - and that Americans should get out of Dodge:
Americans, I have some bad news for you:
You have the worst quality of life in the developed world--by a wide margin.
If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you'd be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.
I know this…