Fanciful bike stands — this one is a thought bubble — line Queen St. West in Toronto. Photo: Blogto.com.

Human life is messy, and human beings even more so. Working out our “stuff” together is no easy feat. And it’s made no easier by the flood of all kinds of information into our minds, too much of which pollutes our internal lives rather than edifying our personal existence.

The powerful tsunami of junk info we face daily comes in the forms of advertisements, which are pervasive, continual, and overwhelmingly manipulative. And ads are so commonplace that we forget that a constant tide of messaging is a relatively new aspect of the human experience.

Though ads have accelerated since the post war consumerist boom — and were present in a weaker form at least as far back as the mid-19th century — prior to that commercial messages were nearly nonexistent for the vast number of peoples and cultures. The average person of the Middle Ages, Renaissance or Enlightenment might go a whole lifetime without seeing any messaging directed toward manufactured desire — you know, toward “you must buy this special thing because you’re ugly/stupid/inadequate in some way and getting this magic whatever will make it all better.”

But today’s people are a different breed.

It’s all “good”

We’re not only subsumed by an endless barrage of advertising. We’re also subject to fad thought, lens thought (ie., only “X” is the proper lens through which to view a particular thing), and plenty of theories, “expert” prescriptions, and commonly held views. Perhaps the worst of these is a broad and unquestioned acceptance of capitalism’s worst offenses as virtues, namely consumerism as the pinnacle of human development and realization.

No, it’s not

Breaking out a critical stance against such junk thought are Micah White (of AdBusters fame) and the Smart Bubble Society based in Toronto, which is, according to its website, “a not-for-profit motion graphic studio that promotes social justice, self-education and critical awareness.”

They teamed up on the animated video short “Junk Thought,” which offers a brief history into the notion of pollution — its earlier etymology and its place in our consciousness (or lack of conscience) today.

In about three minutes, the video manages to capture a key element in much of today’s underlying malaise — that our materialist view of the world causes us to externalize the concept of pollution, forgetting that our hearts, minds, and souls are also subject to a degradation which itself affects our external views.

I think you’ll like it.

With any luck, we’ll all begin to embrace a shift in thinking away from the materialism inimical to our times toward a stance that is at once more immediate, palpable, human scale, grounding and integrated and yet broader, transpersonal, and uniting.

Anyway, a girl can dream. You can see the video here.

–Lindsay Curren, Lindsay’s List

Ecological consciousness and fashion forward go hand in hand. Photo: ecologynow.wordpress.com

I’ve written before about the merits of swapping clothes and accessories you no longer want for “new-to-you” items instead. The three top benefits are:

• Saving money — one of the the keys to prosperity is spending less/saving more.
• Eco-friendly — reusing stuff helps avoid adding to the landfill.
• Fun! — getting together with others for a good time beats solo shopping zombiedom.

But while I had researched and described how to host one of these events, I had not yet thrown one or participated in one in my own community.

Eco swap comes home

It wasn’t until the launch of our local time bank — the hOUR Economy — when I joined in with others seeking alternatives to the money economy, that I found people with a like-minded bartering bent.

One of these others — Tracey Sullivan Coltrain — had already been hosting eco swaps for friends in her home. Now she was ready to go large, to hold a community-wide event open to all local women to see how much interest was out there in trading fashion goodies with others.

She and I got together over about six weeks to plan the event. We found a space that was willing to gift the event hosting, set a time that we thought would be amenable to a cross section of women, and began advertising and alerting the media to our “Naked Ladies Party.”

And it was a huge hit!

Shiny happy people

Not only did we get great local media coverage, we also had over forty participants come. Each brought two armfuls of clothes to trade along with potluck food and drink to share (with personal mess kits in tow to avoid disposable waste).

After a few minutes of mingling, we called everyone together to welcome them and  thank them for coming. Then, we set down some ground rules — this is no catty bridezilla run, it’s a polite, ladies event. We also invited attendees to get on our email list for future events. We gave a plug to the hOUR Economy, too, suggesting participants check out the time bank and sign up during the Eco Swap.

Throughout the event we got wonderful feedback about how glad everyone was that we hosted it. And there were plenty of squeals of delight as ladies made great scores, oohed and ahhed over each other’s finds, and generally chatted each other up.

Another happy result was how many women found they made new connections and were excited to stay in touch with the women they met.

Less is more

As a conservationist I couldn’t be happier knowing that we helped put hundreds of garments to reuse. But more than that, I’m happy to see so many fine efforts by my fellow community members in finding creative ways to connect, build relationships, and help our town grow even more resilient.

The prep work was easy. And as you know, if you’ve ever gotten a bunch of women together, you’ve never seen a more cooperative and hard working bunch. Everyone helped with clean up. Volunteers have already come forward looking to help with future events.

Speaking of which, the guys want to know when it’s their turn, and others are hankering for swap meets themed around kids, teens, home decor, books, tools — you name it.

It’s clear to me that bartering is totally in vogue. And given America’s general richness, and almost everyone’s feeling that there’s so much stuff everywhere, we can probably keep going on barter for many years to come. Talk about a way to cut America’s trade deficit with China!

–Lindsay Curren, Lindsay’s List

Something’s been troubling me ever since I listened to President Obama’s first post-reëlection press conference.

Perhaps as a result of Hurricane Sandy, the now two-term president was finally asked a question about global warming, a topic conveniently avoided by both sides throughout the seemingly interminable campaign. The question came from New York Times White House correspondent Mark Lander: “What specifically do you plan to do in a second term to tackle the issue of climate change?”

Obama, who I voted for, began with the familiar but tired (and now essentially irrelevant) statement that,

…as you know, Mark, we can’t attribute any particular weather event to climate change.

And as perky CNN neophyte Erin Burnett would say, “Seriously?” For real, people, it’s time to retire the tired disclaimer that,  “we can’t connect global warming to weather events.”

Scientists have amply explained how a hotter climate is more unstable and more likely to give us a larger quantity and/or more severe storms, mega storms, droughts, crop failures and disease outbreaks, all of course leading inevitably to human suffering and manifold economic distress.

And hey, never mind that the Butterfly Effect is a well-understood and readily accepted scientific concept. Butterfly wings we can acknowledge as having an effect on the surrounding world, near and far. But humans pumping tons of CO2 into the air? Sending pools of toxic coal sludge into rivers? Exploding nuclear facilities? Apparently, not so much.

To quote the only really memorable line from the last two years of politicking, “Malarky!”

The fact is that we don’t need to draw a straight line from global warming to the rise of desertification, a sinking Manhattan, or an ass-walloping coast-eroding storm in order to acknowledge the problem of global warming and begin in earnest to address it.

So, the question is, given the president’s other statement and the prevailing mindset of today, Will we be able to address it?

Getting really real

The president went on to say that he believes global warming is real and that it is related to human activity. He even cited rising global temperatures, increasingly rapid Arctic ice melt, and lots of bad weather. So, score one for the plucky kid with the big ears and the big grin.

He even said, “we’ve got an obligation to future generations to do something about it,” before offering a litany of things his administration has done to begin that process, items that my colleague Vicki Lipski wrote about for Transition Voice.

But then, why did he have to say this:

I think the American people right now have been so focused and will continue to be focused on our economy and jobs and growth that, you know, if the message is somehow we’re going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change, I don’t think anybody’s going to go for that.

On one hand, Obama shows obvious concern and compassion for the American people. He also demonstrates that he’s politically astute and realistic. But at the same time he’s at risk of setting up a false choice between responses to de-carbonizing the economy, between growth and stagnation, and between today and a seemingly distant tomorrow.

I don’t think we have to choose between the economy and the planet — after all, on a dead planet your GDP is pretty much zero — or between today and tomorrow, since climate chaos has already started happening.

But how to work such a contentious issue politically?

That’s the president’s job, to wheel and deal with different factions to get something done that many Americans aren’t ready for yet. And in that, Obama can find a power precedent in presidential history.

Honest Abe wouldn’t shy from global warming

Recently I saw Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, a film I really enjoyed. After that I got obsessed with the Civil War and have been rewatching Ken Burns’ glorious series on the subject and talking at length about every issue under the sun from that time period.

Like most Americans, I love President Lincoln and think we’d all be better off learning from his wisdom and following his example. Seeing him and the challenges of his time brought to life on screen is not only crucial for our historical memory, but for understanding ourselves as Americans, how we relate and struggle with each other, do politics and muck through sometimes intensely troublesome issues that strike to the core of who we are as a people and will define our era for generations to come.

Some might balk at a comparison between Lincoln valiantly trying to hold together a young and restless Union and Obama trying to fight an amorphous specter like global warming.

Some might even disdain comparing a sinful scourge like slavery with the predicaments of global warming (and its links to peak oil and manifold economic cliffs), however much those predicaments stand to make life much worse for all of us — most of all for the poor, ethnic minorities, and women — if we continue to avoid dealing with it.

I agree that on the surface, the issues couldn’t be more different. But in essentials, such as the weight of this dilemma on our lives now and into the future, its stakes for our nation’s enduring success, along with today’s crippling political immobility and maddening inability to take meaningful action, there’s more in common than first meets the eye.

In this, I think Obama is facing some of the same tensions President Lincoln did, notably the profound polarization that comes about when ideology so drives the opposition. When hope of compromise is lost the only remaining path is brinksmanship. In 1861 that brinksmanship led to civil war, rivers of blood shed to atone for our sins and push forward against the seemingly immovable.

Do we really want to go there again?

A new chapter

President Obama is correct that “we haven’t done as much as we need to” on climate. Understatement of the decade, much?

Perhaps in his first-term naivete, Obama compromised too much with the Right. But whatever the faults of that approach, it should be history now. With Obama’s resounding win in both the popular vote and even more dramatically, in electors, he’s got a stronger mandate than a president has won in decades.

George W. Bush, who won re-election by a much smaller margin in 2004, famously quipped, “I earned political capital and I’m going to use it.” Without adopting Dubya’s arrogance, Obama would do well to take this attitude and start playing hardball with GOP climate deniers and obstructionists.

The game is his now.

At the same time, Obama’s devoted backers — however lowly we mere voters may be — expect action. This will matter if the Democrats want to keep relying on a progressive public to come out in numbers for their cause in the future.

Now, we know that Obama is wiser and more realistic than the GOP in that he’s open to clean energy, convinced on global warming, and unwilling to throw ordinary Americans under the bus in the name of plutocratic privilege (eg, cut middle class programs to provide tax cuts for “job creators”).

And Obama shared a promising idea in his post-election press conference:

What I’m going to be doing over the next several weeks, next several months, is having a conversation, a wide-ranging conversation with scientists, engineers and elected officials to find out what can — what more can we do to make short-term progress in reducing carbons, and then working through an education process that I think is necessary, a discussion, the conversation across the country about, you know, what realistically can we do long term to make sure that this is not something we’re passing on to future generations that’s going to be very expensive and very painful to deal with.

A good start.

But where he goes wrong is confining his conversation to the typical echo chamber of the largely biased and unimaginative.

Engineers? Many act as if they know enough about any area of science to have an expert opinion. But all too often engineers seem to let their love of high tech technology (or their interested industry employers) guide their approach to the environment as they push for car infrastructure over transit or drilling over energy conservation or even crazy schemes for geo-engineering (eg, mirrors in space to reflect heat away from the Earth) over good old-fashioned, everyone-can-do-it, consumption and pollution reduction at home and work.

New thinking is required.

Elected officials? They’re constantly jonesing about the next election and seldom show either backbone or leadership on anything that’s high stakes if it might get them voted out of office. Talk to them, sure. But make clear that their kids’ futures look like stone age hell if they don’t get on board — yesterday!

Scientists? We should definitely listen to climatologists but what can they share that we don’t already know? They’ve won the case. All else is details. How about the science of lower tech living and more clean energy science?

Instead — or at least also — President Obama should be talking to ordinary Americans and people worldwide who are leaders in creative responses to the inevitable transition away from the current Wall Street driven “growth at all costs” paradigm to the only kind of economy for a finite planet, a steady-state economy. Many of these folks have scores of business ideas to keep economy moving, albeit in a new paradigm.

I humbly submit the partial list below for the President’s consideration:

• Climate activists like Bill McKibben
• Energy depletion experts like Richard Heinberg
• Transition movement co-founder Rob Hopkins in the U.K.
• Women and children’s homesteading advocates like Sharon Astyk
• Observers of the built environment and its relationship to resources such as the unflinching James Howard Kunstler
• Visionaries like Charles Eisenstein who are rearticulating money and economy in much more human terms
• Ecological farmers like Joel Salatin with his undeniable success in using non-industrial farming methods to make better food for consumers and help farmers make a better living too
• A raft of DIY artisans and crafters from new beer brewers to letterpress operators to upcycling entrepreneurs who are already opting out of the industrial economy and embracing the new low-tech economy. Check the visionaries behind Etsy to start with.

Obama should convene a response team that is focused on creativity and the wide ranging jobs of the future who are unafraid to recognize that business going forward will not be like business was over the past half century.

Given climate change and fossil fuel depletion, business will have to be different, so Obama might as well be honest about that and then revel in just how creative so many people are already becoming in response to this. He’s halfway there as a home brewer of craft beer alone.

Sticking points

In his words, “there’s no doubt that for us to take on climate change in a serious way would involve making some tough political choices.”  But then he mucks it up by insisting upon business-as-usual while going back to the false dichotomy between prosperity and climate action:

If, on the other hand, we can shape an agenda that says we can create jobs, advance growth and make a serious dent in climate change and be an international leader, I think that’s something that the American people would support.

On the surface this looks like he’s open to truly new thinking. But in the hidden text, “growth” as it’s been understood to date remains the obstacle.

The risk is that President Obama and every other elected leader is saying that they’ll do something about global warming (and the unacknowledged elephant in the room, peak oil) as long as they don’t actually have to do anything about it in the area that continues to make matters worse — the “growth” paradigm.

He knows that people may get hurt by global warming but that insists that we can’t do anything that will “hurt” people in addressing global warming.

What does “hurt” even mean? Carpooling? Outlawing plastic bags? A carbon tax for all?

To me, Obama’s rigorously planned campaign of education on global warming and his acknowledgement that decisions will be “painful” are the precursors to admitting we can’t have our growth and eat it too. But we also can’t get bottlenecked by a double-bind: that we can only address a life-threateningly acute problem as long as we don’t actually have to change anything.

We’re going to have to change things. There’s no getting around that.

The bottom line is that the clock has run out. We now need a top-to-bottom societal assessment of how we live and what we can and must give up and what we must newly adopt to stop and ultimately reverse runaway climate heating.

My advice? Start with getting rid of plastic covered plastic forks, the ultimate metaphor for a society gone wrong. And from there it will all start to fall into place.

–Lindsay Curren, Lindsay’s List

An upcycled Bike Wheel Clock by pixelthis via Etsy.

This morning I’m participating in my first hOUR Economy time bank exchange.

I’m giddy with excitement about it, feeling like I’ve taken another giant leap away from the industrial economy. Not only that, I feel I’m taking a giant leap into the new economy that’s developing all around us.

These are exciting times.

Time is on our side, yes it is

If you’ve never heard of a time bank, let me tell you a bit about it. Basically it’s a community organization (there’s hundreds across the US and thousands across the world) that operates like a bank — you can make deposits, withdrawals, and transactions — but it’s entirely with hours of human endeavor, no money involved.

The basic premise from a transactional perspective is that every hour is equal. So, a one-hour visit to a participating veterinarian is equal to an hour of babysitting. An hour of Swedish massage is equal to an hour of digging weeds. An hour is equal to an hour, whatever happens within that hour.

On a deeper level the premise is about basic human worth beyond the alienating aspects of the money economy. The time exchange economy doesn’t seek to subvert or displace the money economy — obviously the money economy is still necessary and in many ways desirable.

But the new hours-based economy does seek to return to our world a sense of basic human worth, the affirmation of humanity and gifts and skills within each contributing member of the human family.

Time banks have been around since the 1980s, though they’re relatively new in most places. Still, they’ve had time to make an impact on their communities.

For example, time banks have been a savior to many folks who have lost jobs or had work scaled back, making it possible for them to still enjoy both necessities and luxuries even if cash is scarce. Moreover, time exchange has allowed them to remain engaged with their community, dignity intact, able to contribute and participate with worthy skills and offerings and to indulge in others’ skills and offerings.

Time is more valuable than money

But don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s a venue strictly for the unemployed. A time bank is a venue for anyone who wants to break free from the suffocating strictures of the money economy’s clear limits, limits that only allow you access to certain things if you have the disposable cash to acquire them.

In most instances today time banks are run online, off of a central database where members have profiles and they make offers of skills they have on the one hand and requests for things they’re seeking on the other.

For example, my Etsy shop takes a lot of time for me to run, between scouting goods, cleaning things, photographing and listing items, and mailing out my sales. So I put in a request to our time bank for photography, saying I was willing to “spend” two hours having someone else shoot my goods.

Today, the photographer is coming and voilá, I’m going to be freed from that task (I’m no photographer, trust me), allowing more time to write up product listings and manage the online magazine I edit, Transition Voice.

I’m also seeking help around the house — assembling shelves, repotting plants, prepping for and then serving at a party I’m having in December. These are tasks that have a high priority for me as far as wanting them done, but a low priority in terms of me making time for or devoting cash to them. But with the hOUR Economy, I can get those needs met.

Like most people these days, my checking account balance isn’t as high as I’d like and cash is tight every week. But I’ve already got hours in the time bank that I can spend. As one of the organizers of the effort in my city, I gained a number of hours building a website for the hOUR Economy, doing some graphic design, and participating in our local launch events.

You do have time

So if you’re feeling a longing to connect with others by offering them help and getting some help from them in return, why not seek out or start a time bank in your area?

Prosperity is about much more than cash. It’s a way of thinking. We are wealthy in friendships, neighbors, community, and our humanity, personal gifts, and individual initiative. Why not indulge in the riches?

–Lindsay Curren, Lindsay’s List

Hooked Bike Rug by Maymesheep via Etsy.com.

Since I’ve gotten back to regular blogging, I’ve mentioned a few times that I’ve opened a store on Etsy, the online marketplace for handicrafts and vintage. I’ve also pointed you to products on Etsy that are in line with the conservation values I espouse.

But now I’m going to wring out a full-throated paean to exactly why I think Etsy is so great across so many fronts.

And then, even though I’m not typically one of those product-focused and “check-out-my-living-room-redesign” kind of bloggers, I’m going to add a second blog to my weekly rotation going forward in which I profile an artist or shop on Etsy. I can’t help it — there’s just such amazing work going on on there I’ve got to give it some props.

Don’t worry, you can still count on a Monday morning post about how to NOT spend your money, but rather to do it all yourself (if you can devote the time). And you’ll still get my characteristically scathing swipes at generic, corporate culture in general.

But loving Etsy and being critical of an impersonal industrial system that’s gotten too big for its britches are not incompatible missions.

So here goes, why I love Etsy.

Oh, Etsy!

Etsy has almost single-handedly made it possible for roughly three quarters of a million sellers — many of them women — to bring their wares to market, locally, nationally, and internationally. And it boasts about 15 million members worldwide and is doing some $500 million in sales annually!

Yeah, sure eBay has done that too.

But Etsy is target-focused on artisan makers, fine artists, and crafters (along with vintage and supplies) and their mission shows in everything from the stylish way the site looks and operates, to the abundant free marketing and development tools for its sellers.

What this means is that a whole host of people are either able to make Etsy their primary source of income, or a secondary supplemental source, allowing both types of folks more freedom and resilience in a shaky worldwide economy.

What about Buy Local?

There’s a lot to be said for how far the relocalization movement has gone in such a short time. Buying locally and supporting local artisans and entrepreneurs increasingly ranks as a high value for citizens, community members, and consumers.

Fortunately Etsy isn’t in conflict with that. They offer a Shop Local function for sellers and buyers, letting you know who in your community is selling vintage and handmade goods or supplies online. So if you’re a hardcore Buy Local purist, you can just enter your zip and find your local Etsy connection.

In the meantime, the concept of buying local can sometimes muddy the waters of what it means to support your neighbors’ endeavors.

In my own neck of the woods I’ve committed to two buying missions. One is to get a minimum of $50 in local food per week from my local farmers markets, farm stores, wineries and breweries. (Local restaurants are in a separate category for me.)

My family is also registered in the 3/$50 program, committed to spending a minimum of $50 at 3 local businesses per month (or as I say, some combination therein).

And that’s great.

But for me it remains troublesome that so much of what my locally-owned “independent” stores offer is not locally made. Instead, it’s the same cheap, often plastic, mass-produced goods from China and other nearly slave labor manufacturing countries that you can buy at Walmart, but at a higher price.

What’s becoming increasingly important for me is not simply to buy industrial products from mom & pop shops down the street, but to buy hand-manufactured goods from truly independent producers and entrepreneurs.

To that end, local has to be competitive for me. I’ll always chose local first, but only when it’s also a good value. Otherwise, I don’t feel guilty about looking at regional and national sellers.

Like other local buyers, I’m troubled by shipping and its impact on fuel use, pollution, and global warming. But I try to draw the line at domestic goods. I’d rather ship a few hundred or couple thousand miles than 12,000 miles from China. If that’s protectionist, then color me guilty.

Using their head, hands, hearts

What I love about the slew of original artists and practicing artisans on Etsy, too, is that they are creating things with their hands, mostly, or at least in close relationship to their hands. Even those shops that churn out a fair amount of inventory, or even employ several workers, are not in an impersonal assembly line where a machine does 95% off the work.

For an energy buff like me, this is huge, because it remains my belief that these are the jobs of the future as the fossil fuel economy nears its inevitable end, broadly speaking.

Because their work also comes directly from passions within themselves, what artisans create in their studios and then sell on Etsy is work that’s intimately connected to their hearts — to who they want to be in the world, what they want to say and do as individuals, and in alignment with their values, whether that’s being sustainable, working from home/home studio, expressing themselves and their ideas, disentangling from the industrial economy, upcycling or whatever else.

And they have to use their heads. Being smart businesspeople is a good portion of entrepreneurship.

Sure, any one of them could have their own e-commerce websites, and some do. But Etsy makes it a hub that can amplify the ability to sell.

One friend recently voiced a concern to me that being on Etsy just makes you one of hundreds of thousands — how can buyers really find you?

But don’t be fooled. Having a stand alone e-commerce website also makes you one of hundreds of thousands — or hundreds of millions, really. You still have to position your site (or Etsy shop) with good keyword searches, renewed content, social media connections, and e-marketing.

I used to have an organic baby shop that was an e-commerce stand alone. For my money, I infinitely prefer Etsy.

Etsy works for you

And Etsy is easy to use. For 20 cents, a listing stays up for 4 months, is easily renewable, and incurs no other fees until it sells. Buyers can check out with a credit card or their PayPal account and the fees to the seller are reasonable. All this helps those sellers who wish to avoid the costs of building and maintaining a website to take advantage of a first class selling venue.

Etsy also provides tons of marketing insight, blogs, podcasts, and “labs” (not to mention in-person events and venues) to learn, connect, grow as a business, and prosper. All of that alone is worth the small fees and percentage paid to sell items.

One final thing about the individual sellers. Many have found themselves in the fortunate position of being job creators. They’re either hiring a small number of other artisans and manufacturing workers to help in production of their own original goods, or hiring support staff to do listings, mail out work, etc.

Whether this is big or small amounts of work isn’t important. What is important is that there’s pick-up work to be found in interesting local, artisanal work settings which is a sign of success in the real small-scale entrepreneurial world.

Round and round it goes again

And then there’s the vintage category.

For a conservationist like me, there’s nothing better than re-use. An item that’s twenty years old or older (Etsy’s requirement to claim that an item is “vintage”) has a lot of embodied energy in it. If it still has use value — whether in a purposeful way or decoratively (or both) — then reusing an older item instead of buying something new means minimizing your carbon impact.

Many vintage sellers on Etsy offer more than one venue — brick and mortar, craft shows, a consignment booth in an antique mall, in-home shows — in addition to Etsy, showing that resourcefulness and added opportunities matter.

Local sales are again, great. But opening your business up to a worldwide venue — even if it’s only as an online place to showcase your brick and mortar — can mean many, many more times the sales, especially to markets that pay substantially more than the local market may be willing to support.

Bookmark it

In the end, I see Etsy as great for buyers, sure. You’ve got a world of amazing shopping encompassing centuries of goods and fresh and up-to-the minute one-of-a-kind products along with the ability to directly support worker-owned initiatives.

So I hope you’ll book mark the site and look there as often as anywhere else for goods this holiday season and beyond.

But the win-win is that for artisans, pickers and suppliers alike there’s a place to sell work that is deeply supported by the Etsy platform team while providing a place to connect with other entrepreneurs all in a marketplace that has a sleek, contemporary look and feel.

I’m loving running my Etsy shop, LindsaysList, and shopping from others as well. I think you will, too.

Happy Holiday Hunting Season!

–Lindsay Curren, Lindsay’s List

Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Etsy

The issue behind all issues

Yes, there’s been plenty of red meat from both sides on social issues such as abortion, contraception, gay marriage. And it’s important for women to stand up for their hard-fought reproductive freedoms and for social equality. But we also need to care about more than just traditional “women’s issues.”

More and more women lately have started to care about energy, because it’s the issue on which every other thing depends. As I’ve written before, nothing in the modern world happens without cheap, abundant fossil fuels. Yet those very same fossil fuels are what have caused the proliferation and acceleration of global warming.

Cheap fossil fuels not only drive our current economy, but they’re also a key reason that mounting debt is so unsustainable. Without cheap energy to grow the economy, we can’t pay back money lent as interest-based debt in the first place. That challenge is exponentially hampered when the energy needed to drive economy at a growth rate that outpaces debt is becoming scarcer and more costly.

These are pretty un-sexy ideas at first glance. Wonky and bogged down in details, energy and its connection to economic growth and servicing debt don’t appeal to the gut as much as, say, tax cuts for everyone and no budget cuts either! Never let it be said that Americans can’t have their cake and eat it, too. At least never say it during an election campaign, the next one of which begins tomorrow in what is now a never-ending campaign.

All that aside, the truth remains that, just as we’ve been told for two generations, fossil fuels are finite. Just take oil. Crude oil under frozen Arctic waters, deep in the Gulf of Mexico or off the U.S. East Coast, or trapped in rocks in the American West, is harder and therefore costlier to extract. And I don’t just mean it costs more money. But it takes harsher methods to extract and refine the oil or natural gas, and longer to transport, adding even more money cost along with a huge new environmental cost.

And forget the spotted owl here, if that’s what you want. This is a save-the-humans issue.

Who cares? And why should you?

Again, while I said that neither major political party did much about this during the campaign, only one of them said he explicitly doesn’t want to “slow the rise of the oceans or heal the planet.” That’s Mitt Romney. (My husband wrote a funny screed about this for Transition Voice.)

Romney was saying this in response to the oft-repeated lie that President Obama promised he would “slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.”

But the truth is Obama never said that. During his inaugural speech Obama said that in the future people would look back and see that now was the time that, “when we began to slow the rise of oceans and to heal the planet.”

“Beginning” that work, and achieving that work are two very different things. It took 100 years of relentlessly burning fossil fuels for the impacts to accumulate, and then to exponentially accumulate. Enacting policies and actions to “begin” to slow that likely means an equal amount of time to beat back those horrible effects.

Trying to do that in the face of an unpatriotic, obstructionist Congress that puts greed and profit above humanity and health is mighty difficult, and my husband’s essay touches on that, too.

Human health depends on a healthy environment since the primary economy of natural resources is the first economy on which the entire resulting paradigm depends. Yet, fighting the oil and coal companies that have a stranglehold on our government and our economy is no easy feat. No president can do it alone.

But at least Obama has tried, and at least he does care about moving to clean energy. While Romney and the rest of the GOP say they care about the so-called “all of the above” strategy for energy sources, in reality, they really only support fossil fuels and nukes. When it comes to solar and wind, Republicans fight against them every step of the way.

Well blow me down

When Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, Americans started talking about global warming again. And when generators run on gasoline killed folks unfamiliar with their use in their homes, or when New Jersey residents stood in long lines for fuel, we began to talk again about access to fossil fuels, and began to remember how dependent we are on a ready supply of those fuels.

Now, coastal towns are talking about building dykes and sea walls in the vain hope of holding back the oceans. But, with cheap fossil fuels running out, and money and credit scarce, how will these walls be built? And what for? To drive belching cars behind ocean barriers while throwing our disposable plastic cups and bags back into those same oceans?

What will have changed? What has to change?

No, the likelihood is that sea-level rise will get worse, and most cities will have to retreat rather than fight the oceans. This is the world our children will inherit, and it looks scary.

On preparing for peak oil and global warming, unfortunately, the ship has sailed. What we have left is coping. And we can’t cope as a nation with a climate-science denier like Mitt Romney at the helm.

Between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney the choice is clear. Obama wants clean energy in order to make adjustments in our lifestyle that will allow us the greatest flexibility going forward, even if those energy sources are not perfect or the equal in pure power that fossil fuels are.

Mitt Romney not only wants to keep using fossil fuels, but he wants to use more of them too, with an eye to profit for the 1% above all, human health and quality of life be damned.

Making progress

In politics perhaps more than anywhere else, the Perfect is the enemy of the Good. I wish Obama had done more to address global warming and peak oil. But he has done far more than some rabid lefties have given him credit for on energy conservation and renewables as they focus instead on just the kind of diversionary propaganda that vote suppressors want them to.

For example, issues where any president these days would do the same, such as ordering the use of military drones or increasing domestic spying, are just red herrings to distract us from the issues of climate and energy.  The US national security apparatus might as well be the shadow government for all anyone in the White House or Congress can do — or will do — to buck it.

The bottom line remains that life here in the US goes on. And we have to deal with things far more immediate than overseas drone strikes. We have to deal with the air in front of our faces, and the ways we can work today. And that demands a president who at least cares and acts on clean energy, however small a change it makes.

That’s why I’m not only voting for Barack Obama today. I’m voting period. Because my issue is energy, and every woman’s issue should be energy. It touches everything we hold dear. And not paying attention to it means not really paying attention to what we say we hold dear.

VOTE!

–Lindsay Curren, Lindsay’s List

We live in a world dependent on electricity and we forget that being dependent on something — however wonderful that thing is — makes you vulnerable.

Even getting a back-up generator isn’t a painless solution for household resilience. A medium-size generator can cost $50 or more per day in fuel to run. And just hope that your local gas stations don’t lose power or sell out to panic buyers before you get there. In the long run, generators are dependent on fossil fuel inputs and fossil fuels are finite resources that are getting scarcer and more costly.

That’s why it’s a good idea to hedge your bets on the future with some low-tech options to keep your lifestyle gracious and enjoyable in disasters both natural and man-made.

So, in light of Frankenstorm Hurricane Sandy, I thought I’d share a few prep tips for your consideration.

If it’s too late for you for this storm, get them in place for the next one, and for a future that’s sure to be more vulnerable to electrical disruptions and fuel scarcity as these kinds of storms become more frequent and the cost of fossil fuels rises as they deplete.

	10. A hand-cranked or solar radio and flashlight What could be better than getting an upper-body workout in while tuning in to crackly airwaves for life-and-death information. The Ambient Weather WR-111A Emergency Solar Hand Crank AM/FM/NOAA Digital Radio, Flashlight, Cell Phone Charger with NOAA Certified Weather Alert & Cables is just the ticket to get storm warnings while pumping up your biceps. But if the world goes down in a fiery mess and there’s no more Top 40 hits, at least you can crank your way out of the dark.
	9. Books With Twitter and texting it may seem that real old fashioned books are kinda passé. But nothing could be further from the truth. Not only are books still cool, they’re cooler than ever, and when there’s no juice to power your smart phone and no signal to drive your Internet addiction, there’s still Austen and Dickens and poetry and comics and getting lost in the other worlds of words and stories and pictures. So keep up your reading and build up a home-based library.
	8. Hand tools There’s nothing like trying to get a job done only to find out you don’t have the tools because they’re all…dependent on electricity. That’s why a good household is shored up by at least a basic selection of hand tools, including a man-powered drill (ahem), as well as a manual saw, planer, wrench, hammer, pocket knife, etc. Then, keep these puppies cleaned, oiled, and easy to find.
	7. Booze No one should be forced to endure an apocalyptic situation — whether a temporary power outage from a storm or from The Long Emergency — without a steady supply of intoxicating beverages. This is just basic. So learn to brew beer, save every third bottle of wine for a rainy day, and discover the merits of hooch. The key here is rationing. Hurricanes and currency crises alike close the local bar. Be the local bar and live like a king or queen.
	6. A Storm Kettle Eating your FEMA rations or basement stash of bean soups cold sounds to me like a foodie’s worst nightmare. Or worse, being unable to heat water for tea or coffee. That’s why every prepared household should have a Kelly Kettle on hand. Favored by generations of Irish fishermen, these whiz bang storm kettles were designed in the last century — when they knew how to build things right — to boil water in minutes with only twigs and dry leaves. Get one, and never eat cold grub or drink yesterday’s lifeless coffee again.
	5. Dry matches, storm matches, and flint All the twigs in the world aren’t going to light themselves unless, perhaps, they’re struck by lightning, which doesn’t sound like the best strategy for rousing ancient fire. Instead, make sure you’ve got a variety of matches on hand, from kitchen matches to a supply of storm matches (good for windy and wet situations). But above all, have a flint. They make a great boyfriend present and you’ll seem like the coolest chick in the world if you’ve got your own, too. For the ladies market, someone ought to manufacture one in a turquoise case with pink polka dots or something. HOT!
	4. Manual coffee grinder Convenience, convenience, convenience. That’s essentially the moral imperative of the mid twentieth century onward. If it’s easy, do it. If not, fuggedaboutit. We push so many buttons that, if Darwin’s right, humans are apt to devolve into an amoeba with index fingers before long. But nothing makes you more vulnerable than the delusion that the whole world can be controlled with the tip of your finger. To get your mojo back, you need to start doing things again. And if you’re a java lover, grinding your own beans is a great place to begin. Since coffee may not grow in your part of the world, I’ll just assume you have a ton of beans stockpiled. Then, the truly resilient way to grind it is by hand, with a manual coffee grinder. It’s romantic, fragrant, takes mere moments, and doesn’t lose its power in an electricity outage.
	3. Walkie Talkies Provided they can be charged (consider a solar charger), low-tech walkie talkies are far more resilient than cell phones. And some, like these babies, can transmit up to 37 miles. When cell connections are lost, these are going strong. It’s a great way to stay in touch with nearby family members and friends during both short term outages and a lower tech future.
	2. Hurricane lamps and candles Candles and oil lamps are so romantic. But more than that, there’s a world of difference between the cold dark and even the littlest bit of light. Both lamps and candles can be had for a song at thrift stores and yard sales. But if your tastes are more refined, seek them out by local handcrafters, or an online artisan marketplace like Etsy. Always be well stocked with oil (you can recycle some used vegetable oil and bacon grease) and buy candles whenever you have spare change, whenever you’re at a craft or artisan event, or at the farmers market. Trust me, never be without light and flame.
	1. Bike No, you can’t go biking in a hurricane. But it’s a good way to get around afterward provided there’s no serious flooding. It’s easier move past downed limbs, closed streets, or other obstacles on a bike. And a bike is essential in the accelerating energy decline as gas prices rise and then, perhaps become unreliably available. Get a sturdy, non-racing bicycle now along with a repair kit and extra tires, tubes, patches, a pump, etc. It’s a great way to be a conservation steward today, and critical to being able to get around going forward. It’s not dependent on fossil fuels, and that makes it key to your resilience in all situations.

Also remember blankets, board games, and nuts (they’re good protein, no cooking, and salty!)

–Lindsay Curren, Lindsay’s List

A bike-themed card by the company Letterpress on Etsy.com.

Ever since we first got together my husband and I have talked about how to respond to one of our key shared interests — peak oil.

For us this means, first of all, a conservation-minded approach to life — using less energy, wasting less, and relying on reusable materials such as hankies and eco-cups, carrying our own grocery bags, and growing much of our own food and cooking it ourselves.

But after we began to practice aggressive conservation approaches we also wondered what kinds of work we might do were there to be a significant energy crisis event? Say, one that could lead to brownouts, blackouts and perhaps even an ongoing loss of electrical service.

For some people, in today’s world of iPhones and smart appliances, this might sound like crazy talk. But for us, it seems prudent to plan for a much lower-tech world once the fossil fuels run low and all sorts of complicated interrelated industrial systems from finance to communications start to stumble and even fall down.

So, planning for a future that could be pretty low tech — beyond the home based economy of growing and preserving food or bartering with our labor — we wondered what we could do that we could either sell, or that would extend our bartering more robustly?

Pressing on

As communicators, writers, and designers the answer was simple — we wanted our own printing press.

We mulled over and talked about owning a small manual press — or perhaps several sized presses — on which we could do business cards, postcards, cards, posters, and even pamphlets, newsletters, or a small local newspaper. It’s a technology that’s been around for centuries, so we knew it could be around for centuries more.

It may seem radical in the unquestioned era of digital everything to want to use such old school equipment, but we know it’s not radical at all. Rather, it’s sensible and even conservative (in the old sense of the word) to have a back up plan suitable to a possible future that novelist James Howard Kunstler has imagined as a “world made by hand.”

The precarious state of energy

Only when people take energy for granted do they operate as if today’s world of comforts and consumer abundance rests on a set of unassailable certainties, utterly invulnerable to the myriad complex factors inherent in modern energy access and energy use — from oil, coal, and gas extraction, refinement, and transport, to the infrastructure, delivery reliability, price, and worldwide demand competition for those resources.

And these are big, big concerns. They undergird everything in our existing economy, so it’s worth not banking our entire life on their uninterrupted flow.

But you don’t have to be a hunkered-down survivalist to fashion a back-up plan worth investing in. You don’t have to live in fear — or spread fear — about what might happen if when that energy becomes scarce and more costly. You just have to thoughtfully consider and then buy into the following three things:

1. History hasn’t always been linear, progressive, and teleological (headed ever onward and upward to a more advanced place).
2. Technology does not operate independent of energy.
3. Pleasurable hobbies and interests can double as lifestyle back-up plans.

Playful planning

With our belief in the above points then, we wanted to get a press to enjoy it as a hobby and also to add handmade works as niche offerings in our existing communications business.

At the same time the press could act as a back up plan for us were we forced to rely on it — rather than the Web — as our only form of outside work.

That said, when my hubby asked me what I wanted for my birthday this past week I couldn’t help but say that the main thing on my mind was finally getting our own letterpress.

We perused online classifieds for what was out there. Unfortunately these were mostly far away and too heavy to affordably ship. But we figured that one might come to us if we kept our eyes out.

Finally flying

And lo and behold! After deciding to go antiquing on my birthday we happened on a sinfully well-priced 6 x 10 Chandler & Price Pilot Press and snagged it in an instant.

At last we have a restored, working press at our disposal. We can hardly believe it!

Now, we have only to learn to use it, acquire type and blocks, and get to work making a bunch of stuff — cards for family members, business cards for ourselves, tags for my design products, and bottle labels for his home brews — as we master the art of manual print.

By getting together with others and learning from their knowledge (the Virginia Arts of the Book Center is in nearby Charlottesville, Va.) we ought to be able to take the hobby into some business applications before too long. That will help us feel we have an old-world skill in our back pocket and at the ready should we ever need it.

In the meantime, there’s nothing wrong with a little old fashioned fun!

–Lindsay Curren, Lindsay’s List

A bike adorned with pumpkins in October. Photo: PacificPedaling.com.

The other day I went out on the Saturday morning yard sale crawl in quest of superb finds and other delights. It was an especially early one since the ladies at the local DAR were starting their sale at 6am. But like the rest of the “pickers” there I was, combing for goodies.

I finished by 6:30 and had to wait an hour and a half until the next sales in town, which were slated to start at 8. But there was one sale that started at 7, out in the nearby countryside. So, even though it was further than my typical ventures — a conservationist doesn’t drive far often—  I headed out.

That sale turned out to be mostly a bust, but the ride out there was the real treasure.

Timeless valley

Daylight was just breaking over the lovely Shenandoah Valley. A first frost had hit the hay bales and fading grass, bathing everything in twinkling, luminescent light.

The beauty of this place always surprises because, depending on the time of day, or season of year, it’s equally beautiful but utterly different. The one thing it seems to hold in common is leaving me with the impression that it’s not too far from what it must’ve looked like when first settled.

Sure, we could quibble over power lines and cell phone towers and yes, I wish they didn’t blight the landscape, too. But, since the perfect is the enemy of the good, I see and want to see all the beauty still there, especially at this time of year. Especially at dawn.

One particularly arresting sight happened just about a mile out of town, reminding me again how close we are here in the magical town of Staunton, Virginia, to our local farmers, and a long history of farming.

Having a cow

Most cattle farmers around here have Jerseys if they’re a small scale dairy, or maybe Holsteins if they milk more. The beef cattle are often Angus or Reds. But on this morning, in a meadow speckled with dew, astride a stream flanked by autumnal trees, sat a large group of Charolais, or white cows, each with their legs and hooves tucked under their bodies, making compact figures scattered across the lawn.

They seemed to be in some kind of humble reverie, or perhaps communing with one another. It was such a beautiful sight. And though that vision wasn’t outdone by anything else I saw on the drive out to the quaint village of Middlebrook, plenty of gorgeous vistas, waving hills, and tucked away corners of God’s paradise competed for the prize as most astounding landscape.

Only October, until November

More than a few people grouse that, in today’s society, we rush the seasons. After almost a century as a wholly corporatized America, it’s clear that pushing retail sales takes precedence over actually experiencing the holiday or season itself. That’s why when we’re bombarded with flyers and catalogs for Halloween costumes and decorations beginning the day after July 4th, we’re pretty burnt out on it when Oct. 31st finally comes.

Same goes for now with the Christmas assault. Retailers may need the hard sell to survive, but we people may need the soft experience to survive.

Of course, I know I’m just one more voice screaming, “Stop the onslaught already.”

But really, it’s finally October. The leaves are finally turning here in Virginia, the days begin with frost, crest into a shocking blue sky, searing yellow sun, and clearness as far as the eyes can see, punctuated by that in-between space where the season of abundance gives way to the quiet glories of the season of dying back.

And I don’t need to bundle up yet, at least not before sundown. And though I’m grateful, I don’t want turkey yet. And I can’t go sledding yet so I don’t want Santa yet.

It’s October, finally. And I just want October.

– Lindsay Curren, Lindsay’s List

Bike Bag made with Vintage and Upcycled Fabric by BikeDailyDesign via Etsy.com.

There’s a lot of books out there on crafting and artisan-level work. They’re usually how-to’s that combine techniques, project ideas, and patterns. Some are wonderful but too often the projects either don’t stand the test of time, or are a real stretch in terms of the use-value of the end product.

Betz White’s Sewing Green: 25 Projects with Repurposed & Organic Materials is a real exception. Beautifully designed, easy to read, and full of great project ideas, the book is a worthy addition to any crafter’s library.

Green is as green does

But more than the above, White makes a case for “green” — for truly upcycling existing materials into new products or uses — with conviction. She loads her book with ample examples of what is authentically green, offering real insight into why this is critical to life today, and provides great examples of people (mostly women) who are doing this with style and success.

This book is not about guilt and sacrifice; it’s about creating style with a conscience, and merging our love of craft with our love of the planet. When it comes to sewing, I have found that I am most satisfied with my projects when I use materials that I know won’t have a negative impact on the planet — or better yet, may have a positive impact! Two ways I do this are by using repurposed fabrics or fabrics made from organic or sustainable materials.

While repurposing is hip right now, White says it has deep roots in our country’s history, when frugality and creativity merged to form such essentially American items as patchwork quilts and penny rugs. She goes on to give examples from Hollywood movies that show repurposing as a big part of our cultural mindset.

How to upcycle

Sewing Green: 25 Projects Made with Repurposed & Organic Materials by Betz White, STC Craft/A Melanie Falick Book (2009), 144pp, softcover, $16.96.

Offering tips about how to look at one object as the potential raw materials for something else altogether — and where to find such resources — White also talks about how to create a work space that draws on the same sense of upcycling, mixed with a similarly new earthy style, to create a harmonious vibe in which to get inspired and work.

But my favorite thing of all may be the inspiration found in the women doing this work already. I’ve written before about Alabama Chanin, whom White covers in her book. But she also profiles other artist-businesswomen like Crispina ffrench, and activists like Wendy Tremayne (among others).

Finally Sewing Greenoffers suggestions about how to work with others to create the kind of artisan collectives and happenings that make it easier for everyone to get their work done, stay inspired, be connected, and lower expenses. And, I love the quotes she adds from luminaries like  Mahatma Gandhi, who reminds us that,

There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness.

Coupling a great sense of design with truly worthy and meaningful information this is a craft book that stands above many others in its more holistic look at the merging of content and form.

–Lindsay Curren, Lindsay’s List

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