Author Archives: cr0

Sol dialed: remembering mortality with grave stones and grave stories of near death

A friend shared a beautiful tombstone with a sundial and it served as a prompt to remember death. The sundial “says to those of us above ground: this is the “last hour to many – possibly to you”. What would you do if this was your last hour, day, week, month or year? Hour/day seems easier to conceive of. Nice to have a little advance notice and time to think about it eh. Just shooting the breeze a little… Maybe phone up loved ones, tell em what they need to hear good and bad, and make them brave. Whatever one is generally too chicken to do/say. Chickens are almost certainly less cowardly than most humans. Go out in the street/digital town square and loudly try and share whatever seem like the best ideas you learned in this life for this struggling humanity to find joy in one another and the earth; good luck guys. If it’s a whole year obviously stop as much as possible doing anything that isn’t EXACTLY what you want to be doing; differentiating one’s existence as a part of creation from any limited or misjudged human notions of what one should do...”

And to that I replied:

Thanks for this important message. Wise words. The idea that the goal before dying is to find the best ways to give everything away – that hits home.

A year? Probably adding to the list, write a book of aphorisms/wisdoms/educational autobiography and share it most goodly.

A day? For sure say hey to my loved ones and homies. Deuces

An hour? Oh there’d be hard feelings. Hugs and squeezes. A note of the nearly dead. Some sort of meditating to tune the star ship.

I had a few near death experiences, one intense one when on a trip with the professor I think we met via. Homeboy [WW] swam and saved my life, but for some time I didn’t think I’d be saved, as I was facing death in a slow but fast way. Slow enough to notice, fast enough not to tell a soul, as I got dragged further and further away by rip current at a remote coast on the Pacific. I tried all the things to remedy the situation. And then I tired. Wave after wave, it’s daunting, nature is so vast and exhausting, its flows so relentless and big. What would I do if I had moments left to live? I’d sorrow for the suddenness and shock with which I’d hit the hearts of those who’d miss me. I’d long to tell some folks my heart, mainly just that I love them dearly. I’d take deep comfort in knowing who already knows that love and it needs not saying. I felt no concern about stuff or unfinished projects, beyond the impact it’d have on those I loved.

It comes down to relationships. And the preciousness of breath.

Breathe easy frend

Halloween pollenticks – sticky seeds of futures

(A short essay – tl;dr vote harris walz, minimize harm, which ‘worst’ you want to be making the best of with our precious time?)

Happy Halloween. I’ve come out of months long social media posting break to offer something scary for you. Trigger warning: political opinions, environmental catastrophes, collapse of safety critical systems.

Dear many friends who see that things cannot go on as they are,
The supply chains too brittle,
The relationships too strained,
Many of you plan a 3rd party vote in this most polarized presidential election of “the most powerful nation in the world”, or you might even be following RFK’s lead, or you might skip it altogether for any number of defensible reasons.
Many of you, dear friends, I see sympathize with a kind of accelerationist approach
Accepting how bad things are and responding with willingness for it to get worse, just to break out of terrible trajectories – is that minimizing harm? WIth all the harm caused by the hour in the over-developed world…
The sooner this self destruction grinds to a halt, the safer, some say
That’s the gist of conclusions I’ve heard from more than one thoughtful, experienced and educated person – active environmental stewards, tactful business people, balanced martial artists, all kinds of folks
I write this mainly to you, accelerationists and “never status quo”ers, especially those in swing states

This perspective is understandable. The status quo is very bad, and it is adapting very poorly overall to immediate catastrophes hammering away at itself and then some
Habitat loss, resource depletion, biodiversity catastrophe…the heavy grief of wars, of power abuses, I cannot even speak it, and yet overshadowing it all is -an extinction crisis-
The disregard for life
My heart is heavy. The world is heavy. And the systems that sustain us are, … It is hard to fathom or accept
Most of you reading this live better than most animals *ever* in terms of basic needs and safety and freedom and potential and
Yet we are struggling, in astonishing debt despite ¿ever?-growing profits, in chronic illness, in an alarming fertility crisis!, inoculated ¡¿forever?! with microplastics and >forever< chemicals
Depressed, anxious, angry, outraged at the systems that
…
What sustains us?

What sustains us?

This question has burned before me for a long time
What sustains us,
And how can we reciprocate?

OK
Let me get to the point, to why I do this emotional labor to try to establish some same pageness, for you to at least entertain if not accept

I will vote for Harris Walz, not because I want them as president, or want to validate and further a severely broken 2-party system, the DNC, etc etc
But because I do not have a workable alternative to this democracy-esque experiment
And not because I can accept the horrors of investment in the military-industrial complex,
Or petrochemicals,
Or over-development,
Or disrespectfully degrading rather than lovingly regenerating that which sustains us
I cannot accept that
But if I must face that
If we face these realities, and if we have a finite amount of time before safety critical systems fail under their many strains
Then what is in my power to really refuse is doing anything that could hasten or exacerbate harm
Using what little time we have, struggling under a politic that is actively agitating, suppressing environmental regulation and investment, violating women’s rights, taking an isolationist nationalist and what else *ist path to destroying the world that sustains us
A world that begets many worlds, vs. a world that devours and homogenizes
I cannot vote in any way that risks obstructing deep adaptation
And the only choice this election season that puts my puny power against 4?+ years of Trump, is the democratic ticket
I’ll do what I can to keep a chaos agent from making it harder to deeply adapt and build alternative safety-critical systems, /while we still can/
The more time we buy, the more harm we can minimize, before the next storm, the next fire, the next pandemic and supply chain collapse and
What is it that sustains us, and how do we relate to it?
We have so much important work to do
I cannot waste time and attention on a power hungry pedo friend of Jeffrey E and corporate cosmophagia
I cannot accept wasting the time we have with this historic level of capacity, of ways and means as a whole, historic
When we need more than ever to build capacity
Forestablishingaliveablefuturity

Continue reading →
Northern lights of Jupiter shown from Juno spacecraft, 2021

Jovial present potential

“There is no limit to what one can do who does not care who gains the credit for it.“

via https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/21/doing-good-selfless/

“All the Power that ever was or will be is here now.“

via https://bota.org/resources/index.html

There is immense possibility in the present. Ultimately we are guided by a mixture of drives and inner voices, and what we are capable of is greatly expanded by the consciousness of limitlessness and wholeness. May oneself be guided by love of oneself and one another, and by the light and life that calls up. “Peace, peace, peace, One Love”

Oak seedlings growing in arboreal adaptation research by Michigan Technology University (https://www.superiorideas.org/projects/adopt-a-tree)

The Adapters Movement, in summary

Adapt in place, live in the here and now, and truly make the world a better place whether times are good or . . .

This post summarizes the defining features of ‘The Adapters Movement’. I hope this post fills a gap, offering a healthy framework to respond to the critical time we are living in. As it becomes clearer that many systems we rely on will not suffice or survive in the future, I hope this and similar movements will serve as popular and robust alternatives to inaction or to isolationist (and sometimes extremist) forms of preparedness and survivalism. Let us lessen, not worsen, inevitable harm.

This movement was first introduced to me in the form of a long, winding post by a widely appreciated blogger Ross Raven aka Category5 on Permies.com: C5 Defines The Adapters Movement – Acceptance and Triage. Permies is the world’s largest permaculture forum (or so I’ve heard from them), and this Permies post was being discussed in an online community of the Deep Adaptation movement (which I introduce below).

I read the long thread introducing The Adapters Movement over a few days, and I found a lot of gems in it, representing the best of the ‘prepper’ and ‘survivalist’ movements, while explicitly revising many of those movements’ most off-putting and self-destructive problems. To help make the Adapters movement more accessible, I am sharing this relatively-short write-up introducing it and outlining its key themes. A heads up about what’s ahead: This post prints as four pages, which is much shorter than the many essay-length posts in the original Permies.com thread that this intends to summarize.

A little more context. This ‘Adapters Movement’ fits the wisdom of Deep Adaptation well. Here is Deep Adaptation in a nut shell: Many systems we rely on (e.g. food, housing, medicine, water, wood, ‘waste’, wildlife, social systems) are in the process of collapsing and some will fail. Human extinction is possible but not probable, and so we need to adapt to minimize harm. The way to adapt, according to the Deep Adaptation movement, can be summarized with the “Four R’s framework for inquiry“:

  • Relinquish what we need to stop to avoid more harm
  • Resilience is a priority for what we have that we need to preserve
  • Restore what we need from the past to live in ways that remedy and reduce harm
  • Reconcile relationships to remedy and reduce harm

With that introduction, here is a summary of key points I took from that long Adapters movement post linked to above. I hope this helps inspire and clarify paths forward that are well adapted to grow bright, solarpunk futures out of collapse and change.

Continue reading →

On crafting: use of technology in Amish lifeways

Reflecting on How the Amish Use Technology: Community members’ relationships to smartphones or the internet reflect local values and nuances of group identity by Lindsay Ems, 2022 June 7

“Throughout the industrial age and now in the information age, the Amish have adhered to the long-standing tradition of making as a primary form of work.”

…

“Thus, in contrast to an economy in which purely rational logic drives buying decisions, in this case spiritual, political, and ideological motivations guide buying decisions and determine the economic success of a proprietor.”

Crafts have so many co-benefits. Creation: offer and receive the gifts of inspiration.

How to add trees to iNaturalist digital records for the Eastern Agroforestry Conservancy

This post offers step-by-step instructions on adding trees to the Eastern Agroforestry Conservancy (EAC) project on iNaturalist. This same approach could be useful for other public planting projects.

Note that the latest instructions for this effort have been moved to a different format. While I kicked off these instructions with an interest in mutualism with trees + digital commons, the project and instructions are moving into the hands of a broader group of public servants and practitioners. You can find the latest version of instructions in the project description at https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/eastern-agroforestry-conservancy

For reference, the original instructions are offered below.

Project Description

The EAC is a collection of precious tree crop genetics that have been planted for observation, propagation, and respectful enjoyment by the public. This project is centered in Northampton County, PA where county parks embraced the idea, honoring and extending the work of the Hershey Tree Nursery in Downingtown, PA.

Trees in this multi-generational project are documented in 3 ways: labeled where they are planted with a unique ID, in paper records matching ID, and in a digital iNaturalist project with matching ID. Digital record-keeping of trees in iNaturalist has a few benefits. In short: it is a robust platform with a broad like-minded user base; it allows commenting and updating/adding observations to record seasonal effects; and it can be accessed by anyone, anywhere.

Observations of trees can be added to the EAC project by anyone, anywhere. The project is moderated, so that observations unsuitable for the project will be culled. The project welcomes observations of new plantings and additional observations of existing trees in the project.

Instructions

Continue reading →

Northeastern Indigenous Agroforestry

Thanks first peoples for simply living so that others may simply live. Thanks Jono Neiger for sharing this 1984 paper on indigenous agroforestry to the Northeast Permaculture Listserv.

Some Ecological Aspects of
Northeastern American Indian Agroforestry Practices

This paper was written in 1984 while I was a student of Professor Arthur Lieberman at Cornell University.  Professor Lieberman was then Director of the Cornell Tree Crops Research Project and taught landscape ecology in the Department of Landscape Architecture.  This version was submitted to the international journal Agroforestry Systems in 1988, but never published there due to its length.  A somewhat condensed version was later published in the 1994 Annual Report of the Northern Nut Growers Association (Volume 85). For a broader perspective on Native Americans’ land management practices, see this online article by Doug MacCleery.

http://www.daviesand.com/Papers/Tree_Crops/Indian_Agroforestry/
“Figure 2. Reconstruction of Major Dietary Constituents in the Early Seventeenth Century (Indian) Subsistence Cycle (from Thomas [83]).”

Growing love of hazels

Diverse hazel coppice example in bloom, with flowery understory. From https://midwestpermaculture.com/2012/11/coppicingpollarding/
Diverse hazel coppice example in bloom, with flowery understory

These relatives of birch, ancient and awesomely rugged, adding golden bark and kindling salvation to tree lines around the world
These shrubs with long flexible bows
These fruits from charming hot pink flowers that greet the spring and stay

These nuts that come in energy-dense compostable packaging, shelf-stable for years, made by arboreal solar panels
These nuts that are easy to eat raw and one of the healthiest snacks I have
These nuts that are even tastier roasted; simply apply fire and enjoy a sweet, earthy, ancient gastronomic ally

These branches, that have been warmth in peaceful and desperate times
These branches, that have been homes in peaceful and desperate times
These branches, that have been the crux of countless wooden items

These gifts, that have come from ancient hedges, woven into the fabric of lives over time
These gifts, that host the humans and other kin, who enjoy them and who need them
These gifts, that can make the giver better as they enrich the recipient, when given and received in good relations

Ancient hazels, though we face harshly changing times,
Your past and present company comforts me, knowing you have helped my ancestors through ice ages and then some
And so, knowing we work together even where we are not in touch,
I wish peace upon you, and I love that in that, peace may be upon me too.