When will staying cool become uncool?

John Michael Greer (The Archdruid Report) thinks using less is about to become faddish.  I tend to agree.  There’s a toilet paper commercial on right now where the cartoon bears ask “How are you going to use less?” I think it’s relevant because advertisers are pretty tuned into what people want, and “use less”, as a phrase by itself (as opposed to “use less” of something specific), is something I hadn’t heard in advertising before.  My other reason for agreeing is simply that I’ve joined the use-less movement myself, not purely out of economic necessity, and, as long as electronic devices aren’t involved,  I tend to be an early adopter of cultural shifts. 

I wish it would hurry up though.  In particular I’m getting sick of people whining about the heat and their broken air conditioners.  I’m ready for it to be socially acceptable to give someone a hard time about using air conditioning, and for people to feel some shame at least about doing so.  We have been a bit warm in the house, but I’m resisting turning on the air conditioning now that we have screens on enough windows to get some breeze.  I’ll probably turn it on today because I have a pregnant friend coming over to help me build a solar cooker and it’s supposed to be in the 90’s.  I’m certainly no enviro-saint myself;  I am making an effort now but I didn’t always take responsibility for my resource use.  I just think of the kids who are growing up today in air-conditioned houses, who as adults will be so ill-adapted to an even warmer climate combined with energy shortages.  Kids (or at least mine, who always wants to be outside), seem to be so much more adaptable to temperature variances than adults are.  I think we do them a big disservice by getting them used to such a narrow temperature range.

I’ve washed my hair 3 times now ( every other day) with a locally-made shampoo bar and rinsed with homemade vinegar.  I expected a break-in period, based on what I’d read, I expected my hair to feel straw-like for a few weeks.  So far, I am pleasantly surprised to say the only difference I’ve observed is a small improvement in manageability.  So…tell me again why I’ve been putting all those chemicals on my head for 37 years?

Lists

It turns out strawberry jam is about the easiest canning project you can ask for. Another success: my first batch of compost appears quite satisfactory. I’m currently reading The Complete Compost Gardening Guide and wishing I had read it years ago.

I mentioned to my mother on the phone that I’ve decided to move permanently to Central America this year, after which we talked for several more minutes and everything seemed fine. Hours later I got an email from her saying how distressed she was by what I told her. She’s worried because I told her my passport may not be renewed because I owe the government money that I cannot pay, so I might not be able to attend funerals, like my father’s (she’s morbidly preoccupied with funerals). She’s worried that my son will be isolated and illiterate because I plan to homeschool him. She’s worried about how we’ll get along living together.

This has become such a pattern in my life that I can’t but think the problem is me, that somehow I’ve forgotten a critical step in communication. It goes kind of like this:

Me: I’m thinking about moving to Central America permanently.

Other person: Oh, really? That’s interesting.

(a few weeks later)

Me: I’ve decided to move to Central America in December.

Same other person: WHAT? Where did this come from? Have you thought this through?

My answer to my mom is that I’d rather be trapped outside of the USA than inside of it, which is the likely outcome if I wait too long to leave. And that I think I can do an excellent job educating my son, I’m not worried about his socialization, and that I think the value of formal education will continue to decline during his lifetime. And that I too have concerns about how we’ll get along living together, but sooner or later we might have to suck it up and make it work because we’re going to be a lot poorer than we (especially she) have been in recent years. Somehow my response made her feel better, maybe just because I told her I’m not going to expect her to commit to the move this year.

I got some lists made. I made monthly to-do lists. For what’s left of this month, I hope to make a solar box cooker, parabolic cooker, and dehydrator, and a haybox cooker, and start using these; sew myself some cloth menstrual pads and start using the extra cloth baby wipes as a toilet paper substitute, since we’re washing cloth diapers anyway; get a tetanus booster; experiment with rooting comfrey from a tiny piece of dried root (so that, if that works, I can smuggle a piece to Honduras sewn into my clothes, since it can’t be grown from seed and live plant material can’t legally be carried in); and test the solar battery charger and path lights I’ve bought and set up the Berkey water filter I got for my birthday to make sure it has all its pieces – well, except for the two filter elements that were missing that the seller promised to send. That’s a lot, especially considering we’re going camping all next weekend with a group of friends. Sewing projects are especially hard for me to get to, they require a type of uninterrupted concentration I don’t often achieve anymore with a two-year-old.

My brother called me while I was writing this to tell me he’s writing a letter to ask for a full-time volunteer (with stipend) position with an organization in Honduras. My brother is unemployed and kind of lost right now. He recently planned a bicycle trip across the country but I think he’s chickened out of that. I hope he will join us in Honduras, but I mustn’t push too hard or I’ll scare him off. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I’ve become interested in old-fashioned printing presses and bookbinding. I am signed up for a bookbinding class at the local leather shop, but the printing press is more complicated. They are very expensive. I found plans online for a rough homemade press that I may pursue at some point, but right now I have too many projects. My favorite part of projects seems to be reading about them and buying supplies; when it comes time to actually do the work, I have a hard time following through.

This is a list of skills I want to work on this year:

Sewing – I have basic sewing skills and I want advanced skills

Leatherworking

Soapmaking

Herbal medicine

Bread baking

Fermentation

Solar & haybox cooking

Composting – I need to master the basics before I can start doing humanure

Storytelling

This last might seem out of place and frivolous. It is inspired by three things besides the obvious entertainment value. One is the observation both Sharon Astyk and John Michael Greer have made about our culture needing a new kind of myth or story to tell us where we’re going in the post-progress world. Another is that I think storytelling might help me with my memory problems. And a third is that I want to tell my son a different kind of story than the ones I grew up with. In particular, I reject the myth of romance, which is so prevalent in my culture and possibly even more so in Latin American culture. This myth, which has been one of my personal favorites, has done me so much more harm than good in my own life that I want to do whatever I can to rewrite the script for myself and others. I may write more about this in the future.

One more list, these are a few things I need to acquire this year:

A hand-held corn sheller from Lehman’s (I took one to my in-laws and they found it very useful.)

Seeds for medicinals, uncommon tropical food plants, and other ethnobotanicals (perusing my long-time fave, J. L. Hudson, Seedsman)

More horse tack, especially a helmet

More books, especially for homeschooling (We won’t have library access.)

A straight razor (Yes, I am going to try to shave my legs and armpits with it.)

A second solar battery charger (to be able to charge 8 D batteries at once for my boom box)

Some new bras (because I can wear a sack if I have to but I need a good bra, and my size – 36 J – is only available online. This is one reason I need to get really good at sewing.)

A stockpile of ibuprophen to last a few years (I depend on it for menstrual cramps, gardening aches, etc.)

Busy, busy

Tomorrow I’m doing a farm inspection to help the lady who sells us raw goat milk and cheese, a few vegetables, and the best honey on Earth get an alternative (to the expensive Certified Organic) certification for her farm.  (Her farm, in King William, is http://www.pampatike.com/, for local folks.)  My son has been bugging me all winter to go see the goats.  I don’t know how many more times we’ll make the trek out to her farm; it’s 45 minutes away, and after I give up the car it won’t be possible.  I worry about how her farm will fare in the intermediate future, being so remote.

Then , tomorrow afternoon, we’re going to pick strawberries with a friend, which will necessitate making strawberry jam this weekend.  I am a nervous canner, hovering over the instructions the whole time when I do it alone.  Mastering all aspects of canning is on my very long to-do list, although it’s not the highest priority. My husband thinks it would be a good technology to take to Honduras, but I’m not so certain because I doubt canning jars are available there, so I would have to ship them and then hoard them jealously, which isn’t a very good community-building strategy.

Two storm windows we ordered are in at Lowe’s and need to be installed quickly before it gets really hot so that we can open some windows.  The living room, a converted porch which has a wall of custom-built double windows, needs to have custom-made screens installed if it is to be usable at all without air conditioning, a project hubby and I have fought about because he doesn’t want to do it.  My plan is to turn off or drastically reduce the usage of the air conditioner after my mom’s visit, around July 4 when it gets really miserable, so that my son and I can start adapting to the hot and humid climate because we’ll face a whole lot of that in Honduras, and of course to save energy.  My son is at the age when a person's body adapts to their local climate so this is particularly important for him.  My electric usage was unusually low this month and I’d like to keep it that way. I can't turn it off sooner, because my workplace is cold in the summer (being a disgustingly wasteful government building), and it's too hard on the body to go back and forth.

My husband got some work with his cousin’s husband, but I’m not sure he’s going to keep it.  We had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to drive him to their house an hour and a half away.  He is out of town all week, because this is a travelling construction crew.  I called him at 9:30 last night and he was still working.  On a roof.  And lamenting that he didn’t bring the right kind of shoes.  Having been a skilled, well-paid, and valued employee for many years, he is having trouble adjusting to the new reality: the work that is available now is hard, low paid, inconvenient, and inconsistent, and we are lucky to get it.  He doesn’t qualify for unemployment; I’m hoping I will when my job ends, with it being a 2-year temporary position.  I haven’t been able to get an answer from the Employment Commission.

If he continues working, I’ll have to take over the gardening.  This is one of many things I think he’s handicapped me for, intentionally or not.  When someone tells you “this isn’t your job, I’ll do it” for years, you start to doubt that you can do the thing at all.  With the garden, my phobia of certain bugs is admittedly a big disadvantage, especially later in the summer.  But overall, I used to be much more independent than I am now, and I know I can do a lot more than I’ve become accustomed to doing recently.  That’s the benefit of having the life experience I have at 37: I know what I’m capable of.

I’ve got to buckle down and make some lists and prioritize.  My departure date is about 6 months off.  I have many possessions to shed, a house to fix up for rental, all kinds of packing to do (suitcase packing, boxes to ship in the short term, boxes to ship later), a few purchases to make, the normal moving formalities plus setting up proxies for any business I need to transact in the future, and many skills to practice.  Once I put it all on paper, I think I'll (1.) panic, and (2.) stop distracting myself with things that aren't the best use of my time.  Hopefully.

No Trespassing

I want to be one of those people who has a beautiful, bountiful, tidy garden in an otherwise ugly neighborhood, and graciously invites everyone to share and enjoy it.  Children and adults alike would respectfully tour my garden and take home a new appreciation for food and plants and all that. 


But when one of the neighborhood kids walks through my yard as a shortcut to the street behind us, my gut reaction is to chase them off with a machete (although I generally don't do more than glare at them hatefully).  Why?


In part, it's cynicism.  I don't think the people cutting through my yard actually care very much about the food or flowers growing there, or would really appreciate my efforts to build community with them. They just want to save a few steps, and who could blame them?


My backyard and garden feel like an extension of my home, and having strangers come into it without asking for permission makes me feel kind of invaded, and that makes me want to build a very tall wall around the whole property and run around naked waving at airplanes that pass overhead.

But mostly, it's fear.  Not really of the people passing through, to whom I don't attribute any sinister intent, having lived here for 6 years without incident.  The biggest source of my insecurity is actually the government and its corporate masters.  In other words, I don't feel secure that my home is really mine (it's actually my mother's but that's not what I mean).  I worry that someone will call the county to report our illegal ducks.  That the electric company that has an easement where we garden under high-voltage power lines will come mow over my entire garden with a tractor one day.  That the bank will foreclose the property in some moment of financial crisis and evict us.  I am constantly aware of my powerlessness and it scares me.  The people walking through my yard have very little to do with any of that, but my need to protect my home and garden gets misplaced and I take it all out on them.