March 15, 2009-
I just finished reading "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robbin, and I feel like it's worth summarizing and documenting to reference and for all of my varied readership- it was a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it!

It's a nine-step process, with some simple, common-sense practices; a whole systems approach that can't be only partially followed.

Step 1: Making Peace with the Past:
A. How much have you earned in your lifetime? Find out your total lifetime earnings- the sum total of your gross income, from the first penny you ever earned to your most recent paycheck.

How: Social security administration- request for statement of earnings
Copies of federal or state income tax returns,
Paycheck stubs, employer's records
Ask parents for potential records

Why: gives a clear picture to how powerful you are in bringing money into your life.
Eliminates vagueness of self-delusion in this area
Instills confidence and facilitates goal-setting
This is a very basic fundamental practice for any business, and you are a business

B. What have you got to show for it? Find out your net worth by creating a personal balance sheet of assets and liabilities- everything that you own and everything that you owe.

How- list and give a current market value to everything you own
List everything you owe.
Deduct your liabilities from your assets to get your net worth

Why: You can never know what is enough if you don't know what you have. You might find that you have a lot of material possessions that are not bringing you fulfillment, and you might want to convert them to cash.

Step 2: Being in the Present-tacking your Life Energy
A: How much are you trading your life energy for? Establish the actual costs in time and money required to maintain your job, and compute your real hourly wage.

How: deduct from your gross weekly income the costs of commuting and job costuming, and all expenses associated with maintaining you on the job
Add to your workweek the hours spent on preparing yourself for work, commuting, and all other hours that are linked to maintaining your job.
Divide the new reduced weekly dollar figure by the new increased weekly hour figure; this is your real hourly wage.

Why: We are selling the most precious resource- your life energy- you had better know how much you're are selling it for.

B: Keep track of every cent that comes into or goes out of your life.

How: devise a record-keeping system that works for you (such as a pocket-sized memo book) record daily expenditures accurately, and record all income.

Why: this record-book shows exactly what you are trading your life energy for.

Step 3: Where is it all going? Monthly Tabulation
Every month, create a table of all income and all expenses within categories generated by your own unique spending pattern.
Balance your monthly income and outgo totals
Convert dollars spent in each category to hours of life energy using your real hourly wage as computed in step 2.

How: simple arithmetic

Why: The monthly tabulation will be an accurate portrait of how you are living.

Step 4: Three Questions that will transform your life
On your Monthly tabulation, ask these three questions of each category totals, expressed as hours of life energy and record your responses:
1. Did I receive fulfillment, satisfaction, and value in proportion to life energy spent?
2. Is this expenditure of life energy in alignment with my values and life purpose?
3. How might this expenditure change if I didn't have to work for a living?

Mark a down arrow if you did not receive fulfillment, or if it was not in alignment with your values. Mark an up arrow if you would spend more money in this category if you could, and a 0 if it were fine on all counts

How: with total honesty

Why: these three questions will clarify and integrate your earning, your spending, your values, your purpose, your sense of fulfillment and your integrity.
This will help you discover what is enough for you.

Step 5: Making your life energy visible.
Create a large wall chart plotting the total monthly income and total monthly expenses from your monthly tabulation. Put it where you see it everyday.

How: on graph paper, use different colored lines for monthly expenses and monthly income.

Why: It will show you the trend in your financial situation, and will give you a sense of progress over time, and the transformation of your relationship with money will be obvious.
This wall chart will become the picture of your progress toward full financial independence, and you will use it for the rest of the program

Step 6: Valuing your life energy- minimizing spending
Learn and practice intelligent use of your life energy (money), which will result in lowering your expenses and increasing your savings. This will create greater fulfillment, integrity, and alignment in your life.

How: ask the three questions in Step 4 every month
Learn to define your true needs
Be conscious in your spending
Master the techniques of wise purchasing- research value, quality, and durability

Step 7: Valuing your life energy- maximizing Income
Respect the life energy you are putting into your job. Money is simply something you trade your life energy for. Trade it with purpose and integrity for increased savings.

How: ask yourself “am I making a living or a dying?”
Examine your purposes for paid employment

Why: you have only X number of hours left in your life. Determine how you want to spend those remaining hours.
Breaking the robotic link between who you are and what you do for a ‘living’ will free you to make more fulfilling choices

Step 8: Capital and the Crossover Point
Each month apply the following equation to your total accumulated capital, and post the monthly independence income as a separate line on your wall chart”

(Capital * current long-term interest rate)/12 months= monthly investment income

After a number of months on the program, your monthly investment income line will have begun to move up from the lower edge of the chart. At some point in the future, it will cross over the total monthly expenses line. That is the crossover point.
You will gain inspiration and momentum when you can see that you need work for pay for only a finite period of time.

Why: at the crossover point you will be financially independent. The monthly income from your invested capital will be equal to your actual monthly expenses. You will have enough. Your options are now wide open! Celebrate!

Step 9: managing your finances
The final step to financial independence: become knowledgeable and sophisticated about long-term income producing investments. Invest your capital in such a way as to provide an absolutely safe income, sufficient to meet your basic needs for the rest of your life.

How: set up your financial plan using the three pillars:
Capital: the income-producing core of your financial independence
Cushion: enough ready cash, earning bank interest, to cover six months expenses.
Cache: The surplus of funds resulting from your continued practice of the nine steps. May be used to finance your service work, reinvested to produce an endowment fund, used to replace high-cost items, used to compensate for occasional inroads of inflation, given away, etc.
Why: there is more to life than nine-to-five.

“We are called to emerging consciousness of the ways in which we have internalized white superiority, called to turn inward with critical reflection and an unbending intent to consider when, how, where, and why we have learned or mastered whiteness and taken its attending privileges thoughtlessly as earned… we must tell ourselves and acknowledge the truths of our stories of how we came to be, to think, to act as we do.” –Frankie Condon

ARRRRGGGGG, RACISM! I’d like to use this entry as a means to let it all out, if I may. I did not even know racism was that prevalent still until about 1.5 years ago when I went to a peace-keeper training. “Racism still exists?” I thought, “Yeah, in the south I know it does”. Racism has moved into this subtle and blind place. At least in India everyone recognizes racism and classism, because it has a name- the caste system. Here in the US, my own background did not inform me of the existence of the institutionalized marginalization of people. When everyone became so fired up about blind racism at Victor Villanueva’s keynote address and then STILL couldn’t talk about racism, I understand how they felt. We get caught up in examining our own experiences with race and never move into addressing a racism institution or system. It seems like it could be so easy- just identify racist parts of a system and blow the whistle about it, right? Educate people, get the dialogue going; afterall, nobody wants to be racist… I’ve read and reflected a lot about the topic since I was introduced from my sheltered existence to racism in our world, and I’ve ‘unpacked the invisible knapsack of white priviledge’. I have incorporated the topic into my own thesis and facilitated the discussion with 15 white students to inform their sheltered worldviews as well. We have the power to change racism- we’ve got the power, and that might still be feeding back into the problem. I feel that the focus should shift away from power struggles here and move into meeting everyone’s basic needs. This initial second-guessing leads to a new wave of doubt: am I really qualified for this? After all, what real experiences do I have with racism? Are my good intentions causing more harm than help? I want to empower people to speak out against injustice, but what if I don’t fully understand the injustice and myself perpetuate it? I don’t feel connected to ‘whiteness’ or even ‘American-ness’. In some ways I feel like a drifter without a culture to associate with. Recently when looking into genealogy with my grandmother, I found out about my ancestors- all western Europeans, mostly Germans. Sure, they did not have much money and had rough lives, but they are still numbered among the oppressors merely by coming to the United States and killing the culture of the Indians. There is no ‘White Pride’, and I feel that any solidarity or empathy I feel for people of color is not based on true experience and will be seen as good intentions without any real conviction. I find myself getting frustrated- I did not ask for the world to be like this! I don’t want all this priviledge! I don’t want another generation to be born into this ‘othering’, and I don’t know how to really offer solutions for positive lasting change, because the problems go deeper than I yet comprehend. Instead of feeling empowered to make safe places of anti-racism, I at times experience my power of change draining from me.
I’m trying to allow myself to be with the complexity of this issue. I want to end my reflection on a positive note, like I give myself a pep talk and realize the power of one, that my actions and reflections create positive changes, but I think for now it is important not to try to pervert the pain of racism and pretend that it is something easily fixed. It can be solved, and I think it will be someday, through honest and sincere dialogue, making visible the damages, and moving beyond our accepted practices to understand causes and consequences.

"We may as well admit that war is the best possible thing for our economy. Wars bring us out of depressions, and the outbreak of peace often begins them. Speaking of things monetary- the lingua franca of our 'money talks' theocracy- war is the best possible thing not only for our economy but for those who run it. It allows them to speak of the creation of jobs while increasing their fortunes. It allows them to speak of patriotism while sacrificing lives less valuable then their own. It brings about an urgency- a frenzy, even- that allows the rationalization of massive public expenditures, inevitably translating to private subsidy without even the illusion of public benefit. It allows them to further centralize political and economic power under the guise of efficiency and national security. It allows them to imprison or execute those who oppose this centralization, with no fear of repercussion. It allows them to praise themselves and others like them for giving voice to an urge to destroy. It allows them to invent, deploy, and use no end of nightmarish devices. It allows them to kill, or rather, give orders, so others must kill, with no fear of public censure. It allows them to pull off the mask of public appeasement and more fully concentrate and exercise their power, or more precisely, their power to destroy.
All of this comes at the expense of those whose lives are less valuable, and, most directly, at the expense of those who die, or kill, in the trenches. As Ferdinand Lunberg stated about World War I, and this holds true for any war 'The question which strikes at the heart of the war situation like a dagger is not Who caused the war?... The revealing question is, Who profited by the war, pocketed the profit, and defends the profit?'"

Lines in the Mind, Not in the World

The earth was formed whole and continuous in the universe, without lines.

The human mind arose in the universe needing lines, boundaries, distinctions. Here and not there. This and not that. Mine and not yours.

That is sea and this is land, the mind thinks, and here is the line between them. See? It's very clear on the map.

But, as the linguists say, the map is not the territory. The line on the map is not to be found at the edge of the sea.

Humans build houses on the land beside the sea, and the sea comes and takes them away.

That is not land, says the sea. It is also not sea. Look at the territory, which God created, not the map, which you created. There is no exact place where land ends and sea begins.

The large places that are not-land, not-sea, are beautiful, functional, fecund. Humans do not treasure them, in fact they barely see them, because those spaces do not fit the lines in the mind. Humans keep busy dredging, filling, building, diking, draining the places between land and sea, trying to make them either one or the other.

* * * * *

Here is the line, the human mind says, between Poland and Russia, between France and Germany, between Jordan and Israel. Here is the Iron Curtain between East and West. Here is the line around the United States, separating Us from Not-Us. It's very clear here, on the map.

The cosmonauts and astronauts in space (cosmonauts are Theirs, astronauts are Ours) look down and see no truth to the lines. They are created only by minds, and they shift in history as minds change.

On the earth's time-scale, human-invented lines shift very quickly. The maps of 50 years ago, of 100 years ago, of 1000 years ago are very different from the maps of today. The planet is 4 billion years old. Human lines are ephemeral, though people kill each other over them.

Even during the fleeting moments of planetary time when the lines between nations are held still, immigrants cross them legally and illegally. Money and goods cross them legally and illegally. Migrating birds cross them, acid rain crosses them, radioactive debris from Chernobyl crosses them. Ideas cross them with the speed of sound and light. Even where Idea Police stand guard, ideas are not stopped by the lines. How could they be? The lines are themselves only ideas.

* * * * *

Between me and not-me there is surely a line, a clear distinction, or so it seems. But, now that I look, where is that line?

This fresh apple, still cold and crisp from the morning dew, is not-me only until I eat it. When I eat, I eat the soil that nourished the apple. When I drink, the waters of the earth become me. With every breath I take in I draw in not-me and make it me. With every breath out I exhale me into not-me.

If the air and the waters and the soils are poisoned, I am poisoned. Only if I believe the fiction of the lines more than the truth of the lineless planet, will I poison the earth, which is myself.

* * * * *

Between you and me, now there is a line. No other line feels more certain than that one. Sometimes it seems not a line but a canyon, a yawning empty space, across which I cannot reach.

Yet you keep reappearing in my awareness. Even when you are far away, something of you surfaces constantly in my wandering thoughts. When you are nearby, I feel your presence, I sense your mood. Even when I try not to. Especially when I try not to.

If you are on the other side of the planet, if I don't know your name, if you speak a language I don't understand, even then, when I see a picture of your face, full of joy, I feel your joy. When your face shows suffering, I feel that too. Even when I try not to. Especially then.

I have to work hard not to pay attention to you. When I succeed, when I have closed my mind to you with walls of indifference, then the presence of those walls, which constrain my own aliveness, are reminders of you.

And when I do pay attention, very close attention, when I open myself fully to your humanity, your complexity, your reality, then I find, always, under every other feeling and judgement and emotion, that I love you.

Even between you and me, even there, the lines are only of our own making.

http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/index.php?display_article=vn199linesed

Copyright Sustainability Institute
This article from The Donella Meadows Archive is available for use in research, teaching, and private study. For other uses, please contact Diana Wright, Sustainability Institute, 3 Linden Road, Hartland, VT 05048, (802) 436-1277.

4 Layer Carrot Cake!!
4 Cups flour
4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
4 cups organic raw sugar
2.5 cups sunflower oil
8 eggs
6 cups shredded carrot
2.5 cups chopped walnuts
4 T shredded fresh ginger

Icing:
70 oz. cream cheese
10 T butter
5 Cups organic sugar with 1.25 cups cornstarch (powdered sugar replacer)
1/2 cup maple syrup

9" pans with parchment paper, butter and flour

mix sugar and oil, add eggs 1 @ a time
add flour and baking soda sifted together, mix
stir in ginger, carrot, and nuts
bake in 4 pans for 36-42 minutes at 350 degrees in preheated oven

for frosting, mix cream cheese and butter in a bowl, then mix in sugar, cornstarch, and maple syrup until smooth.  spread evenly on cake and between layers.

Caesar dressing:
4 cloves roasted garlic (roast your own in a hot pan)
1 yolk and 1 egg (drop the whole egg in boiling water for 10 seconds before use)
1/2 Cup Grana
2 T worcester sauce
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/4 lb smoked trout
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup sunflower oil

blend in blender, adding oils slowly and last

Pizza Dough
12 Cups Flour
2 packs yeast, mix with 4 cups warm H2O with 3T brown sugar or honey
3 T Cup olive oil
1 T salt
2.5 cups water
=7 rolls, 3/4 lb each
divide into 3/4 lb balls, and set extras in freezer in bags
allow any for sooner use to rise once, then knead again, then rise a second time. Stretch dough for a delicious flatbread!

Vegan Banana Oat cookies
1.5 cup flour
2.5 cup oatmeal
1 t baking Soda
3/4 cup sunflower oil
2 t soy milk
up to 1/2 Cup maple syrup
2 T milled flaxseed
1-2 ripe mashed bananas
2 T vanilla extract
mix-ins: 3/4 cup of anything- chocolate chips, cranberries, nuts, etc.

preheat oven to 350 degrees
mix dry ingredients
mix together oil, then maple
add the flax and banana to maple/oil mixture soymilk, and vanilla. Stir this mixture until it is a uniform color, stir in the dry mixture, add mixins

bake 9-13 minutes and enjoy!

A decent amount of some mighty fine granola:

12 cups oats, preferably not quick oats
1 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup milled flax
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1 T cinnamon
1 T cardamom

Toss together in a large bowl, mix seperately wet ingredients
1/3 cup sunflower oil
1 T molasses
1/2 cup maple syrup
3 T Honey
2 tsp salt
3/4 cup water

Add wet ingrdients to dry, mix well, make clumps as you spread the mixture on a lightly oiled oven sheet, pressing down to make clumps
Bake in preheated oven @375 for 20-30 minutes, rotating occasionally. Store in fridge!


Black Bean Hummus
Soak 4 cups black beans, boil to al dente (appx. 1/2 hour)
blend in cuisinart with 1/2 cup to 1 cup bean water
3 tsp tahini
a few pinches of salt
1 T rice vinegar
3 tsp lemon juice
sauteed onion chuncks if desired
1 tsp minced garlic
1 pinch cumin
olive oil to taste, added while cuisinart is running to emulsify!
store in fridge in sealed container, keeps up to 3 weeks

...And so I must declare my dissatisfaction with movements to promote soil conservation or clean water or clean air or wilderness preservation or sustainable agriculture or community health or the welfare of children. Worthy as these and other goals may be, they cannot be achieved alone. I am dissatisfied with such efforts because they are too specialized, they are not comprehensive enough, they are not radical enough, they virtually predict their own failure by implying that we can remedy or control effects while leaving causes in place. Ultimately, I think, they are insincere; they propose that the trouble is caused by other people; they would like to change policy but not behaviour.

The worst danger may be that a movement will lose its language either to its own confusion about meaning and practice, or to pre-emption by its enemies. I remember, for example, my naïve confusion at learning that it was possible for advocates of organic agriculture to look upon the “organic method” as an end in itself. To me, organic farming was attractive both as a way of conserving nature and as a strategy of survival for small farmers.

Imagine my surprise in discovering that there could be huge “organic” monocultures. And so I was not too surprised by the recent attempt of the United States Department of Agriculture to appropriate the “organic” label for food irradiation, genetic engineering, and other desecrations of the corporate food economy. Once we allow our language to mean anything that anybody wants it to mean, it becomes impossible to mean what we say. When “homemade” ceases to mean neither more nor less than “made at home”, then it means anything, which is to say that it means nothing.

AS YOU SEE, I have good reasons for declining to name the movement I think I am a part of. I am reconciled to the likelihood that from time to time it will name itself and have slogans, but I am not going to use its slogans or call it by any of its names.

Let us suppose that we have a Nameless Movement for Better Land Use and that we know we must try to keep it active, responsive and intelligent for a long time. What must we do?

What we must do above all, I think, is try to see the problem in its full size and difficulty. If we are concerned about land abuse, then we must see that this is an economic problem. Every economy is, by definition, a land-using economy. If we are using our land wrongly, then something is wrong with our economy. This is difficult. It becomes more difficult when we recognize that, in modern times, every one of us is a member of the economy of everybody else.

But if we are concerned about land abuse, we have begun a profound work of economic criticism. Study of the history of land use (and any local history will do) informs us that we have had for a long time an economy that thrives by undermining its own foundations. Industrialism, which is the name of our economy, and which is now virtually the only economy of the world, has been from its beginnings in a state of riot. It is based squarely upon the principle of violence toward everything on which it depends, and it has not mattered whether the form of industrialism was communist or capitalist or whatever; the violence toward nature, human communities, traditional agricultures and local economies has been constant. The bad news is coming in, literally, from all over the world. Can such an economy be fixed without being radically changed? I don’t think it can.

The Captains of Industry have always counselled the rest of us to be “realistic”. Let us, therefore, be realistic. Is it realistic to assume that the present economy would be just fine if only it would stop poisoning the air and water, or if only it would stop soil erosion, or if only it would stop degrading watersheds and forest ecosystems, or if only it would stop seducing children, or if only it would quit buying politicians, or if only it would give women and favoured minorities an equitable share of the loot? Realism, I think, is a very limited programme, but it informs us at least that we should not look for bird eggs in a cuckoo clock.

OR WE CAN SHOW the hopelessness of single-issue causes and single-issue movements by following a line of thought such as this: We need a continuous supply of uncontaminated water. Therefore, we need (among other things) soil-and-water-conserving ways of agriculture and forestry that are not dependent on monoculture, toxic chemicals, or the indifference and violence that always accompany big-scale industrial enterprises on the land.

Therefore, we need diversified, small-scale land economies that are dependent on people. Therefore, we need people with the knowledge, skills, motives and attitudes required by diversified, small-scale land economies. And all this is clear and comfortable enough, until we recognize the question we have come to: Where are the people?

Well, all of us who live in the suffering rural landscapes of the United States know that most people are available to those landscapes only recreationally. We see them bicycling or boating or hiking or camping or hunting or fishing or driving along and looking around. They do not, in Mary Austin’s phrase, “summer and winter with the land”. They are unacquainted with the land’s human and natural economies. Though people have not progressed beyond the need to eat food and drink water and wear clothes and live in houses, most people have progressed beyond the domestic arts — the husbandry and wifery of the world — by which those needful things are produced and conserved. In fact, the comparative few who still practise that necessary husbandry and wifery often are inclined to apologize for doing so, having been carefully taught in our education system that those arts are degrading and unworthy of people’s talents. Educated minds, in the modern era, are unlikely to know anything about food and drink, clothing and shelter. In merely taking these things for granted, the modern educated mind reveals itself also to be as superstitious a mind as ever has existed in the world. What could be more superstitious than the idea that money brings forth food?

I AM NOT SUGGESTING, of course, that everybody ought to be a farmer or a forester. Heaven forbid! I am suggesting that most people now are living on the far side of a broken connection, and that this is potentially catastrophic. Most people are now fed, clothed and sheltered from sources toward which they feel no gratitude and exercise no responsibility. There is no significant urban constituency, no formidable consumer lobby, no noticeable political leadership, for good land-use practices, for good farming and good forestry, for restoration of abused land, or for halting the destruction of land by so-called “development”.

We are involved now in a profound failure of imagination. Most of us cannot imagine the wheat beyond the bread, or the farmer beyond the wheat, or the farm beyond the farmer, or the history beyond the farm. Most people cannot imagine the forest and the forest economy that produced their houses and furniture and paper; or the landscapes, the streams and the weather that fill their pitchers and bathtubs and swimming pools with water. Most people appear to assume that when they have paid their money for these things they have entirely met their obligations.

Money does not bring forth food. Neither does the technology of the food system. Food comes from nature and from the work of people. If the supply of food is to be continuous for a long time, then people must work in harmony with nature. That means that people must find the right answers to a lot of hard practical questions. The same applies to forestry and the possibility of a continuous supply of timber.

One way we could describe the task ahead of us is by saying that we need to enlarge the consciousness and the conscience of the economy. Our economy needs to know — and care — what it is doing. This is revolutionary, of course, if you have a taste for revolution, but it is also a matter of common sense.

Undoubtedly some people will want to start a movement to bring this about. They probably will call it the Movement to Teach the Economy What It Is Doing — the mtewiid. Despite my very considerable uneasiness, I will agree to this, but on three conditions.

My first condition is that this movement should begin by giving up all hope and belief in piecemeal, one-shot solutions. The present scientific quest for odourless hog manure should give us sufficient proof that the specialist is no longer with us. Even now, after centuries of reductionist propaganda, the world is still intricate and vast, as dark as it is light, a place of mystery, where we cannot do one thing without doing many things, or put two things together without putting many things together. Water quality, for example, cannot be improved without improving farming and forestry, but farming and forestry cannot be improved without improving the education of consumers — and so on.

The proper business of a human economy is to make one whole thing of ourselves and this world. To make ourselves into a practical wholeness with the land under our feet is maybe not altogether possible — how would we know? — but, as a goal, it at least carries us beyond hubris, beyond the utterly groundless assumption that we can subdivide our present great failure into a thousand separate problems that can be fixed by a thousand task forces of academic and bureaucratic specialists. That programme has been given more than a fair chance to prove itself, and we ought to know by now that it won’t work.

My second condition is that the people in this movement (the mtewiid) should take full responsibility for themselves as members of the economy. If we are going to teach the economy what it is doing, then we need to learn what we are doing. This is going to have to be a private movement as well as a public one. If it is unrealistic to expect wasteful industries to be conservers, then obviously we must lead in part the public life of complainers, petitioners, protesters, advocates and supporters of stricter regulations and saner policies. But that is not enough.

If it is unreasonable to expect a bad economy to try to become a good one, then we must go to work to build a good economy. It is appropriate that this duty should fall to us, for good economic behaviour is more possible for us than it is for the great corporations with their miseducated managers and their greedy and oblivious stockholders. Because it is possible for us, we must try in every way we can to make good economic sense in our own lives, in our households, and in our communities. We must do more for ourselves and our neighbours. We must learn to spend our money with our friends and not with our enemies. But to do this it is necessary to renew local economies and revive the domestic arts.

In seeking to change our economic use of the world, we are seeking inescapably to change our lives. The outward harmony that we desire between our economy and the world depends finally upon an inward harmony between our own hearts and the originating spirit that is the life of all creatures, a spirit as near us as our flesh and yet forever beyond the measures of this obsessively measuring age. We can grow good wheat and make good bread only if we understand that we do not live by bread alone.

My third condition is that this movement should content itself to be poor. We need to find cheap solutions, solutions within the reach of everybody, and the availability of a lot of money prevents the discovery of cheap solutions. The solutions of modern medicine and modern agriculture are all staggeringly expensive, and this is caused in part, and maybe altogether, because of the availability of huge sums of money for medical and agricultural research.

Too much money, moreover, attracts administrators and experts as sugar attracts ants — look at what is happening in our universities. We should not envy rich movements that are organized and led by an alternative bureaucracy living on the problems it is supposed to solve. We want a movement that is a movement because it is advanced by all its members in their daily lives.

NOW, HAVING COMPLETED this very formidable list of the problems and difficulties, fears and fearful hopes that lie ahead of us, I am relieved to see that I have been preparing myself all along to end by saying something cheerful. What I have been talking about is the possibility of renewing human respect for this Earth and all the good, useful and beautiful things that come from it. I have made it clear, I hope, that I don’t think this respect can be adequately enacted or conveyed by tipping our hats to nature or by representing natural loveliness in art or by prayers of thanksgiving or by preserving tracts of wilderness — although I recommend all those things. The respect I mean can be given only by using well the world’s goods that are given to us. This good use, which renews respect — which is the only currency, so to speak, of respect — also renews our pleasure. The callings and disciplines that I have spoken of as the domestic arts are stationed all along the way from the farm to the prepared dinner, from the forest to the dinner table, from stewardship of the land to hospitality to friends and strangers. These arts are as demanding and gratifying, as instructive and as pleasing, as the so-called “fine arts”. To learn them is, I believe, the work that is our profoundest calling. Our reward is that they will enrich our lives and make us glad.
This article is reprinted from Orion magazine.
Wendell Berry is a farmer, a poet and a novelist.

Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry



Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.



Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" from The Country of Marriage, copyright © 1973 by Wendell Berry, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

Hey Everyone, I'm living in Fayeston VT as a chef this summer, and I have an apartment for sublet for 316$/month. It's 27.5 Washington Street, in the North End, close to Battery park. It's four-bedrooms, and my friends Allison Curran, Matt Cropp, and Laura Ivins will also be living there. If anyone is interested, let me know and we can work it out! Thanks!
Debbie Krug

I have to give students in my STS class grades soon- what does this mean?

grades: lead people to seek rewards and avoid punishments, rather than necessarily act out of wanting to know or help

are not necessarily an accurate representation of knowledge

have statistically been racist/oppressive- can drive people to think that taking their own life is a better option

It might work better to do a thorough inventory of knowledge as a reflection, providing feedback to the student and instructor, and taking away the focus on rewards.

A LOT more work, but quite different results... however, I have to provide the institution of the university with number/letter.

I believe that violent interactions in my daily actions maintain inequality and promote environmental degradation and that my world is best supported by addressing conflict using a diversity of nonviolent methods.

I believe that food is a very important factor in personal health, and that locally produced fresh organic foods have the greatest health benefits with the least environmental impact, and work to support local businesses and agriculture.

I believe that transportation that uses petroleum to transport only one or two people somewhere (personal cars) has become the national standard, but it is highly inefficient and degrades the environment, whereas pedestrian and public transportation use petroleum more efficiently, offer opportunities for exercise, and build community connections.

I believe that I and other people have the right to know what ingredients are in products, and whether these ingredients are toxic to human and environmental health.

I believe that plastics contribute to a ‘throw-away’ global culture and are easily replaced with more sustainable alternatives in many consumer-level situations (plastic bottles and bags are easily replaced by glass bottles and canvas bags).

I believe that climate change caused by human consumption and waste has the potential to drastically change our means of supporting ourselves on this planet and that actions should be taken personally, locally, and globally to understand and address climate change.

I believe that I can openly talk about issues of consumerism with my personal networks of family and friends, help them explore and understand the causes and implications of their consumer choices, and build a supportive community for sustainable products and levels of consumption.

I believe that my consumer dollar is an important impetus for political change, and I send business and politicians a message as powerful as my vote by what I choose to purchase, and it is therefore important to become an educated consumer and reduce my consumption, reuse what is already available, and purchase socially responsible and environmentally sustainable products when I feel a purchase is necessary.

I believe that I am a living part of a living system, and that my choices as a consumer should support and heal the planet rather than deplete the resources and vitality that support me and all other life.

I believe that I am supported by and contribute to economical, social, and biological diversity on this planet, and excess consumption undermines diversity by destroying natural habitats, economic systems, and local cultures.

I believe that the image I have of myself has been shaped by media sources interested in selling me products rather than my well-being, and that I have the power to recognize when I am being targeted in this way and make consumer choices based on my own needs rather than desires.

I believe that effective activism can happen when people become passionate about a cause and dedicated to creating change that positively affects others, and utilize practical techniques, clear communication, activist integrity, honest feedback, and attainable goals to create this positive change.

and he writes a lot of great articles!

http://www.designshare.com/Research/Orr/Loving_Children.htm

Remembering a few important lessons from time abroad in India:

"Step out onto the planet. Draw a circle a hundred feet around. Inside the circle are 300 things nobody understands, and maybe
nobody has ever really seen.
How many can you find?"
-Lew Welch

"The price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted"
-Neil Gaiman

Economic Unknowns;
I've been hearing mixed things about the economy in the news, and talking with friends- and I a re-visited a comparison of economy with divine states of being, and stresses a balance of systems:

Economy of self- self study and meditation guide personal investments

Gift Economy- the free good and services provided in a community- parenting, counselling between friends

Mutual credit-a type of alternative currency in which the currency used in a transaction can be created at the time of the transaction. Typically this involves keeping track of each individual's credit or debit balance. Although the effect is like a loan, no interest is charged, and since mutual credit allows for trading and cancelling balances with others, debts can be paid off indirectly.

Monastic collective system: One works to benefit the community and is supported by the community

Kind Account: The redistribution of income in kind account shows how the disposable incomes of households, non- profit institutions serving households (NPISHs) and government units are transformed into their adjusted disposable income by the receipt and payment of social transfers in kind.

Deposit Account: a credits exchange- based on global economic currency. One deposits global currency into an account with a business, and then draws from the account to pay the business- provides business with capital and security, and builds relationship

Global Economy: The bank gives loans, thereby creating money, and requires repayment with interest- money that it did not create and so more is owed in the world than exsists- this creates a competitive system with many losses.

If a company can handle long term stewardship and make profits, it is likely that they can handle day-to-day operations with excellence- this means maximizing values for all stakeholders (environment, customers, suppliers, community, employees), not just investors


AND

Eating in Mindfulness:
* This food is a gift of the whole universe,the earth, the sky and much mindful work.
* May we eat in such a way so as to be worthy of it.
* May we transform our unskillful states of mind and learn to eat in moderation.
* May we take only foods that nourish us and prevent illness.
* May we accept this food to realize the path of understanding and love.

Goal: purchase no more than 1 oz. plastic anything per day

Dream: I dreamt on Saturday night that I was in a huuuge house with unknown rooms upstairs. I was in a downstairs living room with a lot of people, and something dangerous was trying to come in the door. I was holding it shut, but whatever it was was getting through- it could shift into a tiger or a huge lizard or a person, and it wanted to kill people in the room. No one else would come to help me keep it out- they were all busy doing other stuff like watching a TV.

I went out and offered to let it kill me, if it would leave everyone else alone. It changed into the person and slit my throat, and I fell to the ground, and someone covered me with a tarp. It started raining. I decided that I should, even though dead, somehow instruct this fellow as to how to finish teaching my class, because I didn't want the class to just end. I followed him around as a ghost, providing him with my research and ideas so that he could help with the class.

20 years past, and I realized that ghost time and people time don't mesh too well, so I decided to just accept being dead. I woke up soon after.

The Demon Snow Child
By Jen and Debbie

It was a Chinese curse that caused death on a dark and blustery winter evening in 202 Howard St, muttered presumptuously by Jeremy, who had had but one Monster Energy drink. He had been trying to practice saying ‘another red bull with vodka on the rocks, please,’ in Chinese, but ALAS, the tones were treacherously similar to ‘A demon snow child will eat your brains’. This was the very same curse that killed Confucious in his prime older years. What Jeremy did not realize then, was that he was being made the protagonist of a short story involving a demon snow child, AND, more importantly, that in this single naïve blunder of speech he had suddenly and irreversibly condemned all residents of 202 Howard Street, and any that stood in the way, to a violent and terrible end.

Later that night, as the Church street clock chimed midnight, Jeremy’s fateful utterance hung in the frigid dry air above 202 Howard Street like a giant Zeppelin of doom. The still quiet of night slowly gave way to a quiet scratch. The noise was so faint that only the squirrels heard it, and shuddered in fear in their dens. Tonight would be a night that none would raid the compost heap. They waited with turbulent terror as a small, almost cherubic form emerged from the snow pyramid that Debbie, Jenn, Allison, and Brian had made. The terrible form looked long at 202 Howard, and uttered a long, low moan, which to those that heard sounded as if they were about to be hit by a speeding milk train. This was no cherub, it was a demon. A demon snow child had come to exact terrible doom upon the wanton residents of 202 Howard Street.

The demon spent about twenty minutes circling the house leaving a perimeter of ice so thick that even a Hummer snowplow with metal studded tires would be unable to keep traction. It was a late Thirsty Thursday for Jim and Adam, the downstairs tenants of Howard, who were just arriving back around 1:30 AM from a wild night at Brennan’s Pub. They were walking back through the parking lot out back when they noticed that Olive, the friendly neighborhood Jack Russell Terrier, was out running around and wanted to play fetch. Jim bent down and picked up a stick with he then threw towards there front door, over the treacherous line of icy doom. Olive sprang into action towards the flying branch, but when her unsuspecting paws bounded down upon the ice they simply could not keep footing and all of her limbs spread out from her poor small body ripping her tightly bound frame down her center to expose her still-beating heart to the ghostly unmerciful ice. Jim and Adam, upon seeing the Olive suffer such injury, ran to her aid, but slipped in a similar fashion and ran straight into the brick wall, and were killed instantly by brain hemorrhaging.

Upstairs, Carolyn was crunching numbers in her room when “Eureka!” she had found the rational root for pi. The snow child was silently climbing the stairs to find its next victim when it heard Carolyn’s shouts of excitement, and intrigued, crossed into her room where a swirling vortex of math had opened into a new dimension due to Carolyn’s discovery. The malicious icy imp saw this strange math vortex as an easy way to dispose of Carolyn, and so pushed her into swirling depths of this mysterious mathematical miasma. Carolyn disappeared for eternity from the surface of earth. She spent the rest of her days doing long division for three headed freaks on the planet Thallpopian. She might has well have been dead, because it was really unpleasant there.

Allison awoke early the next morning at her usual 4:30AM. While she was in the kitchen, she desperately tried to avoid the cheerfully eerie eyes of the life-size cardboard Ellen while quickly brewing her morning coffee. But this morning, unlike others, the Ellen cut-out seemed more animated than seemed appropriate. “I’m just a little more tired than usual,” Allison thought. But NO! she should have trusted her senses. The demon snow manifestation of Jeremy’s curse was now lurking, hiding behind the very same Ellen who had always worn such an innocent smile and blindingly white clothing. Allison left the kitchen to do a line of crack off of Matt’s freshly shaven head to supplement the coffee so she could really feel awake for the day. While she was out of the kitchen the demon apparition slipped a poisonous snowy elixir into the pot of freshly brewed Joe. On the drive to the school when Allison took her first sip of her hot beverage she melted into a pool of unicorn blood at the bottom of her Civic, which then careened off the road into a pile of nuns at the Catholic Diocese.

Later that morning, Debbie leaned over her jug of fungus vinegar, wafting it to tell if it was still as foul as necessary to put in her funky coleslaw. Unfortunately, the snowy ghoul fetus had infested the funky fungus and as Debbie peered over the jug it leapt out covered in the floating Indian fungi. Incredibly, there was no way to distinguish the snow child under its mycosal membrane. Zesty, Jeremy and Brian all heard this happening, because it was quite loud, but when they looked into the kitchen to see what was going on they saw only the fungus violently ripping into Debbie’s face to get at her brain, and shrugged it off. “It was only a matter of time,” Jeremy commented to the others turning his back from the murder occuring in the kitchen, “that fungus tea was just waiting to be unleashed on someone, lucky it wasn’t us. Serves her right for making fermented tea!”

Sensing a disturbance in the Chinese force, Jen awoke uneasily early in the morning. However, she was unable to comprehend the nature of the curse that had been unleashed upon the house, and decided to bake herself a comforting batch of chocolate kool aid bread. She prepared the ingredients and took them to the bread machine. The bread was mixed and began to rise, but through the evil malice of the snow demon and some extra baker’s yeast, expanded to fill the hallway and engulf Jen during her morning Tai Chi. The bread machine then burst into flames and baked the bread quite nicely, but indeed with Jen inside baking to a macabre light and airy texture characteristic of her other breads.

Brian awoke and ate a slice of bread which seemed to be encompassing Jen’s hallway, thinking to himself, ‘hey, this tastes ‘Frick’ing awesome!’ He, as in most days, did not want to go to class, and wanted to go skiing instead. A snowy child was in the kitchen, who suggested that Brian drink his problems away with a few morning carbombs. After a few too many, the Fiendish Arctic youngster lured Brian up the stairs with his precious telemark skis. Brian’s bloody corpse was later found at the bottom of the stairs after what appeared to be the least intelligent ski jump of the season. His brains had been eaten by some malicious and frozen being.

Zesty had gotten rather flippant with his knife and drill usage, and decided that he would try to use the drill and the knife to assist him in grilling several pounds of meat. This proved to be a fatal combination of over-manliness; the last burger that he ever cooked was himself. In a terrible electrical and gas explosion Zesty met his crispy end, and the bass of the techno on his stereo blew his ashes into the wind. The demon snow child looked out the window in surprise, as he had actually had nothing to do with this untimely demise.

Fonte, fucked up on six different substances, mistook the demon snow child for a foxy lady, who lured him into a luxurious bubble bath and demanded that he play her a guitar ballad. “I’ve…BEEEEN…kissed by a rose on th- UUURRRGGGG!” said Jeremy as 120 volts surged through his brain. The demon snow child abandoned his smoldering carcass slumped over his guitar to find the next victim. The tub looked like it was full marinara sauce, and Jeremy looked like a burnt spicy meatball.

Sarah Friend had one of her bi-hourly milk cravings and headed out to the kitchen only to discover a frosty form looming over the refrigerator. Sensing that her milk was in peril, Sarah sprang into action and pounced on the demon snow child, devouring it in a single, well-practiced baby-eating gulp. The demon snow child sensed its end and slowly froze her from the inside out, causing her excruciating pain, partially assuaged only by Sarah’s final glass of milk. With her last dying gasp, Sarah murmered, “….tiene…leche?”

With that the curse of the demon chilled kinder was lifted. The demon now lies dormant in the lawn of 202 Howard, awaiting the next foolish invocation of the curse.

EPILOGUE: The house stood vacant, and covered in blood, for a time. Eventually local squirrels forgot what had happened that fateful night, and found their way from the compost heap into the attic. They then made their way into the buttered popcorn yellow and blood stained blue rooms of the upstairs and downstairs. These squirrels grew fat and prosperous on the bountiful stores of peanut butter and macaroni and cheese that remained, and their numbers grew until Gene Richards found it easier to withdraw rent directly from their squirrelly accounts than to try to remove these pesky rodents. And it has been reported among the squirrel community that the new tenants hear the screams and the eerie musical stylings of Seal’s ‘kissed by a rose’ of the spectral former inhabitants on dark and cold evenings such as this one.

The End…?

An awesome Sestina by Pam White. Awesome at first glance, and even cooler upon a closer unrelated look.

The Concord Art Association Regrets
by Pam White

Your entry was not accepted. We regret
it wasn't (enough for us), a work of love.
We liked many of the colors on the whole
but the mass was just something unrelated
to the rest of our show. We hope your work
will have a bright future in another place.

We remember last year you tried to place
another photograph and it was also with regret
we turned you down. Though for that particular work
we found nothing about it (no one could) to love.
It was obscure and a little upsetting in relation
to the rest of our show which we look on as a whole.

Now you may think us ungenerous. On the whole
you are probably right, but this is our place
and we can do what we want whether you relate
to it or not. However we don't want you to regret
your association with us. We want you to love
us, send us money, but please, no more work.

You see right now we need money to work
on the building we're in. There's a hole
in the roof and one wall needs all the love
and attention it can get. Really the place
needs so much, which all costs. I regret
to remind you we need more space for related

works. We're trying to expand and relate
to lots of different kinds of work
so different people won't regret
their visit with us but will see the whole
beauty and tranquillity of the place
and come with us, a journey of love

where people of all races, colors, and creeds love
to look and bask and of course bring relations,
friends, and lovers. All are welcome to our place
here where all the world's magnificent work
can be shown in its entirety, the whole
place filled - with your exception, we regret.

We know you'll love the whole
work we're doing for this place.
We can't relate enough our regret.