I’ve been thinking about what a tremendous year 2008 was for me personally. And it’s been most useful to reflect on it it in terms of delusions I was able to see behind (I don’t feel that I’ve conquered anything!). I thought I’d share some of those….thankfully, I haven’t come up with 108 of them!

If I don’t have a job, I’ll have plenty of time to pursue my interests and an entirely new way to make a living will appear

Well, I honestly didn’t think it was that simple. But I was surprised that there still didn’t seem to enough time to do everything I wanted to do. Nor did I have the energy to do it. I’ve beaten myself up pretty good about being productive and making good use of time. What I didn’t realize is that I need total downtime to recharge, no matter what I’m doing. I still don’t plan for that downtime well, but I’m starting to notice the need a little sooner. I’m also accepting that I can love the idea of some things, but not necessarily pursue them. For example, for now I’m an armchair adventurer and falconer, and rather than feeling disappointment, I’m feeling relief that I don’t have to upend my life in some relentless pursuit of a fantasy.

Downtime means down

If I’m tired and cranky, that means I’m needing to take a nap or relax, right? I’ve been surprised to find that it can actually mean that I need to get my body moving. Easier said than done, but being aware of it helps.

If I need to get a job, I can get a job

This has been a hard lesson. Getting regular paid work has been a struggle. Of course the economy doesn’t help, but I pretty much expected that. When I do get an interview, I’ve been surprised how much employers are putting candidates through. It’s not just your interviewing skills and resume you’ll need to polish…I’ve been given tests, asked to make presentations, and have been asked to submit sample work in a sort of a contest with other applicants. Even then, some of these can’t be bothered, evidently, to send a polite rejection email, which shocks me.

The corollary to this delusion was that I could always get an entry-level job working at a local store or something like that, just to get by…but the truth is, competition for those jobs are fierce, and most folks aren’t looking to fill those positions with tech refugees. There are bright spots on the horizon…but this is much harder than I expected. And I’ve found myself incredibly grateful to those people who have been able to take my resume in their hands, look me in the eye, and make a little friendly conversation. Many of them don’t want to touch it and have a look of panic about them as they explain there’s no way they’re going to be hiring. These experiences will forever change my perspective the next time I’m the one on the employer’s side.

To do permaculture, I need to get some land or join a community

This has been a really tough one to get over. The urge to find land and try to live off it is very strong; finding an intentional community to join (or founding one) is a related version of this. But I remind myself that this is a self-imposed limitation. The foundational ethics of permaculture are care of earth, care of people, and sharing the abundance….none of which require a deed or mortgage to do. If I can break through this delusion, I’ll really be onto something. In zen practice, we understand that we need to sit down in our life as it is, not reaching for an idea of what it could be or was. Likewise, in the practice of permaculture, I take care of the earth and its beings right where I am now. And I realize that the notion of owning land is itself a delusion…just ask the Pomos and the Miwoks and countless other cultures of the past.

If I do everything right, I’ll always be in a good mood; everything will fall into place

Seeing the fallacy of this has really rocked my world. I honestly thought that if I did everything just right, I’d feel cheerful. If I eat right, exercise, stay on top of my to-do list, have my plan of what I’m going to do with my life and stick to it…it goes on and on. I believed that somehow I was in control of an infinite number of factors and that by doing them all correctly, I’d be rewarded by feeling happy. If I’m not feeling happy, I must root out the cause of that and address it.

Now I accept that moods are something that happen to me…and I’m leaning towards the idea that life itself is something that happens to me. I’m not abdicating cause and effect, but I’m seeing the freedom in not putting myself in the position of omnipotent controller.

If I have all the right information, I’ll make all the right decisions (and then I can do everything right and be in a good mood!)

I’ve been thinking about this one a lot lately. I really enjoy reading blogs or searching for information about projects I want to do…but there is so much information to sort through now, I start feeling decision paralysis. And often I find that I spend way too much time researching something that I could have just done my own way anyhow. It’s not just the internet…I tend to collect books, tools, and maybe even classes. If I just have this reference on my shelf, if I just go to that class, I’ll have all this precious information that will make my life better (or, worse, garner me attention by giving me the appearance of being smart without actually doing anything).

To paraphrase Jon Young, feeding yourself a diet predominately composed of information will make you mentally ill. It’s the connections, not information, that create culture, and those connections involve all of our senses…even ones we’ll never realize we have. There is a nugget here that’s very valuable in thinking about my online life. I’m looking to reduce my online reading time; more information is not better. (The next great advance in the web will probably be the one that alleviates my anxiety that I’m missing some crucial piece of information without making me feel like I’m drowning in a flood.)

I’m not giving up the internet or books or tools or classes anytime soon, but I’m watching for situations where they’re only acting as placeholders. Are they just standing in as symbols of things I want to do? If I’m not actually doing them, what’s that about? It might mean I need to change something in my life, and that’s an awareness I want to continue to build.

I am alone

A pervasive and dangerous delusion that affects all of humanity, this manifests in a zillion ways. I’m not even sure what to say about it; it eludes my understanding. But if I can stay aware that it is a delusion, I think it will be one less thing blocking my path. It speaks to the need for connection. What’s really on my mind is how to build community. Instead of bemoaning the fact that we’ve lost our connections to each other, what do I have to offer to help fix it?

Happy New Year!

Strike the bell yourself. What delusions are you ringing out this year? I’d love to hear in the comments.

My friend Stephanie took me to Larry’s for the first time, probably in 1985. She thought I’d like the Beatles album they had on the jukebox, Rubber Soul. She was right. For fifty cents, you could play any album side (yes, the juke box played vinyl LPs).

There was a rumor around campus that Larry’s was a gay bar; ostensibly to keep the greeks out. Larry’s was both a neighborhood bar and a place for OSU profs and grad students. Undergrads were welcome but tended to be intellectuals, artists, and musicians. Every Monday would be “Poetry Night”, featuring a reading from a local poet and then open mic…a precursor to the later poetry slams, you never knew what to expect. It could be funny, tedious, moving, or downright violent. Maybe all in the same night.

Larry’s usually had a low-key, friendly vibe. There were three t-shirts you could buy:

• Larry’s Bar, Grill and Seminar
• Larry’s Epistemological and Metaphysical Society of Lower Woodruff Avenue
• E=mc³

I don’t think I ever heard exactly what E=mc³ was all about. One time a patron asked me, “What do you think it would be like if that were the real equation?” I told him, “It would probably be really hot in here.”

I started working at Larry’s as a waitroid, their non-sexist term for the job. I’m not sure why they needed it, as I was the first woman to work there in some time. (Lots of people told me I was the first woman to work there period, but that was completely false…there just hadn’t been any for a while. Alcohol and memory loss…) People had a good sense of humor; for the first time in my life, I felt like I fit in somewhere. That may have been the alcohol, too.

I was thrilled to work my way up to being bartender.

I have so many memories of this place, both good and bad. I made friends I’ll never forget, too many of them already dead, and many lost track of (John Fredericks? Andy Neubauer? Tim Costigan? Paula Higgins? Rick Borg?). We had laughs like you wouldn’t believe. I met my first real boyfriend there. I saw two friends get beat up by men they couldn’t stay away from. We had an annual “prom”, and one year we had a wake of sorts; but any event like that was imbued with a delicious sense of entropy. Alcohol was a muse and a curse. People got on the wagon and fell off the wagon so much, one would think that Larry’s was the wagon.

It’s a little sad that Larry’s is closing, but I know that Larry’s really was more a state of mind than anything else. People from different eras will remember it differently…heck, people of the same era will remember it differently. But I think we’ll all remember it as a special place.

One Larry’s regular from my era was John “Jud” McGrody. He was a DJ at the local classical radio station, with a wry sense of humor. Unfortunately, we lost him too soon, too…but I don’t think that he’d mind if I shared this poem of his I’ve kept over the years. He read it at one Poetry Night and brought the house down, deservedly so.

Larry’s

“A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou…”
–Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat
“Sack of Rome, six pack of Rocks, and a case of Do-or-Die.”
–Larry’s patron

Five thousand years ago today
under the endless green primeval midwest canopy
two squat red men stopped here to drink
and got to talking and eating nuts
and stayed till one a.m.
Five thousand years ago today, on a Monday. I got proof.

You won’t find this place in the Michelin guide
but it is in the Garcia Marquez Index
of musty, magical, dimly lit places
where people don’t age quite as quickly as they could.

It’s the bar with the all-talk sarcasm format.
The all-night quipathon for muscular atrophy.
Where it doesn’t really matter what you say
becasue someone at your table just wrote a thesis
on somebody Great who said it Better
but you don’t care that all the Great Thoughts
have been thought already by all the Great People
because all the Great People are Dead.
And they can’t get us here.

Here, where the outlook’s only fashionably jaundiced.
Where pain is only nature’s way of telling you you hurt.
Where death is only nature’s way of killing you.
Where love is a four letter word
and sex is a five letter word
and nobody spells too well around here
though everyone writes or at least edits something.

Here, where you are only a stranger
if you are stranger than almost everyone here.

Here, where ancient booth carvings tell us
five hundred years ago today
Columbus discovered Ponce de Leon
and they got to talking and eating nuts
and they both drank freely till one a.m.
from the fountain of graceful middle age.
And forgot to leave a tip.

–John Judson McGrody, 1/27/1986

Goodbye, Larry’s. Thanks for the memories.

What little of them there are left.

Finally, I’m skinny and have dance moves. Thank you, Santa!

Keep the faith, ppls!

The basics are easy: you create an account and enter the ISBN of the books you want to offer; enter ten books, and you’ll get two free credits to receive books. Each credit lets you request a book from another user of the service. Any print book is one credit; audio books are two credits.

When another member wants a book you’ve offered, you get a notice by email with a link to the site that helps you print a shipping label (including postage, if you want to pay for it right there) and mark the book as sent. If you’ve got a smallish paperback, the label you print can even be used to wrap the book and then just drop it in the mailbox. Shipping costs tend to run about $2.23 for the books I’ve sent; the service has tools for determining the cheapest way to send any particular book. It really makes clever use of all the data that’s available out there about books!

When the recipient gets the book, they mark it as received in the system, and you’re given another credit to get books yourself.

I haven’t had any bad experiences with the service so far. Most users send books the cheapest (slowest) way possible, so if you’re in a hurry, this isn’t for you. It’s great if you’re looking for classics or don’t mind older editions of books. And I love using this to get books that I want to read someday, but might not have time to read right away if I checked it out at the library.

There are several nice features that let you customize and extend the service. A wishlist feature means you’ll get notified when a book you want becomes available (and you can set an item to “autorequest”). Books need to be “in good condition, and not excessively worn”. If you have any doubts about the condition of a book you want to post, you can send a message to the requestor explaining the situation before you send it, to verify that it’s ok with them. And it’s kind of fun to see the stats about your trades; the distance of my transactions to date ranges from 51 to 2,687 miles. Here’s a map view of the books I’ve sent out:

There’s really a plethora of community features on the site, and I haven’t explored many of them. I’ve got too much reading to do…

Visit Paperback Swap.

I’ve talked to a few people who seem to get it. I asked one doomer with the four horsemen threading through his conversation, “What it is like to believe all of that, when you have all those grandchildren?” He said simply,

“I don’t know. There’s not enough for all of them.”

So I can understand why people would rather talk about buying recycled Christmas cards, or the merits of the latest local charcuterie, or the finer points of Twitter, or even sip their homemade wine out of a coffee cup while trying not to think about their dwindling $46.73 checking account balance (ok, guilty as charged).

Everyone seems on board with the idea that dark times are coming, that we might be heading into the long emergency. But most believe that technology will save us, or that we’ll emerge from this recession as we have the others. And I’m not saying I’m right, but I’m saying I don’t believe it.

And yet somehow I have to live within the culture that does believe it, that thinks that the USfuckingA will prevail, and that it’s just a matter of holding on to your job through the layoffs and keeping the iPhone bill paid. So how do I live within that culture, while not believing in it? Because it seems that live within it I must…the permaculture fairy isn’t going to appear and bail me out of this anytime soon.

I’m so cutting edge, I’ve already dug myself into the hole so many others will find themselves in soon. I don’t know if it’s worse to be there by choice or not, but it’s a lesson for me on what it’s like to be on the receiving end of “she got what she deserved.” People don’t like it when you mess with their belief that a paycheck is to be cherished like a lover. Not potential employers, not the EDD, not even your family and friends. But, you know…fuggit.

Nothing escapes my cynicism now. I“m happy that I started making holiday gifts for my family and friends months ago, figuring on being in exactly the situation I’m in now. But instead of looking on them with a satisfied sense of accomplishment, I look at them with cynicism. My real elders are back in Ohio, and I have to search for substitutes here. The problems in this culture are deeper than I can grasp.

It’s a dark time. What saves me is that, despite the primal fears of the cold and the dark, I rather like the dark (and perhaps save my ration of fear for the cold). What light there is this time of year is so lovely. The Valley Oaks are filigreed in the moonlight, and icy yellows and blues follow the sun down. In the morning, the sun rises with the colors of pomegranates and persimmons.

But I’m frozen into inaction. I tasted the fruit, and unlike most, I can already see the consequences.

Do I pretend not to see, and play along, despite what’s inevitable?

Or do I sit down here with the bones and skulls and try to cry a warning to those above?

They wouldn’t hear me anyway.

There is a struggle within myself between wanting to be independent and the satisfaction of working on life within a community the way Bruckner describes:

Diligently scraping the soil between baby lettuces and kales, I looked up from my little plot and saw 35 bodies bent over the earth like I was, quietly laboring. I felt a rush of emotion—pride? love? the joy of a shared purpose? I understood Thich Nhat Hanh’s instruction to ‘go as a sangha.’ Work shared is not only work halved. Work shared lets us feel our separate bodies moving as one organism; it shows us we are interdependent, each a small but needed part of the whole.

Privacy and quiet time alone has always been a deep need for me, and I know they always will. But I’m learning to dig deeper about such notions, and often they expose an undercurrent of belief that’s holding me back. Is part of my reluctance to work in a group setting based on the idea of competition, and the belief that I have to outperform and outwork everyone else or I’m worthless? Why wouldn’t I be reluctant about that? It’s an impossible task! I recognize the same silent critic and dishwasher in myself that Bruckner describes. And it is such an utter relief to begin releasing those mind trips, and let them travel on without me.

Read Five Lessons Harvested at Green Gulch Farm by Natascha Bruckner.

I’ve been looking for a good source of red wigglers (or Eisenia fetida, a species of worm prized for the rich compost (or “worm castings”) they produce. I’ve got my worm bin set up and ready to go, and am eagerly awaiting the arrival of these new critters.

We have a large compost area already, I really want a worm bin so I can make compost tea using worm castings. Compost tea is a liquid solution that I’ll spray on my garden plants to help improve their health. And I want to help others start their own worm bins through my business, Grinning Jaguar, so hopefully this first batch of 1200 or so worms will be fruitful and multiply!

Steve always says he’s expecting to come home one day and find a goat or two in the back yard. Wait ’till he finds out I’m getting new livestock by mail order….

I like to support the efforts of farmers who are raising heritage breeds of animals. Heritage breeds of livestock are often in danger of becoming extinct, because industrial livestock breeds create a monoculture of animals. Industrial breeds were developed for size consistency or volume of production, but unfortunately many of these breeds are not as hardy and require antibiotics or other measures to sustain them long enough to reach the age of slaughter. Heritage breeds are often sturdier, healthier, and are well-suited for particular niches of climate or other factors which make them great for non-industrial farms. The increased biodiversity that results in having more heritage breeds leads to a great resiliency in the food system.

It’s shocking how different a heritage turkey can be from a commercial breed. Commercially bred turkeys can’t even mate themselves because their chests are so oversized to produce more breast meat…they all have to be artificially inseminated! (Yup, remember that episode of Dirty Jobs?!) Check out this Definition of a Heritage Turkey for more details.

Getting a heritage turkey for our thanksgiving table is beyond our budget this year, but I wanted to be a part of the process anyway. When I was growing up, we kept chickens for both eggs and meat, and one year raised turkeys for meat, too. You might already know my story about George the Turkey; I wanted to see if I’d feel any differently as an animal-loving adult. And I wanted to re-learn how to process poultry in case I decide to do it myself next year.

The turkeys were raised by kids and teenagers as part of their 4-H projects. They were justifiably proud of their beautiful birds:

The turkeys are placed in cones, head down…the cones hold them while their throat is slit, then they’re allowed to bleed-out into the trough below.

The mood was amiable, and everything was very matter-of-fact. There was a spirit of generosity with lots of skills sharing.

Once the turkeys have bled-out, they’re taken to a scalder…now this kind of equipment was new to me:

After the scalder, they’re plucked. I dreaded this part; I remember plucking taking forever. But look — they have a crazy machine to do that now!

After being plucked, the few feathers left are removed by hand, and they move on to the eviscerating table. This is where I helped out:

I was surprised that I remembered as much as I did, but still had to have a whole refresher course on how to gut and clean a bird. I think I did ok, thanks to my teachers; the more experience you have, the better your final poultry looks, of course.

And into the van they go, ready for delivery and someone’s table on Thanksgiving day.

It was a good experience…I’m really glad I went.

Ahem. Back to the subject at hand. I’ve been contemplating the connection between citizen science and permaculture ever since returning from the permaculture design certification course I took this summer. The similarities seemed so clear; both include grass-roots (sometimes literally!) movements, foster a deeper connection to nature, and encourage exploration and experimentation. The more I contemplated it, the more I realized that permaculture helps get us back to our ancestral roots as everyday scientists. AND it has interesting implications to everything from tracking to rehabilitating our disastrous current food systems.

You’ll find the full essay here: Permaculture, Citizen Science, and the Opportunities for Sustainable Food Production.

We ran the horses across the steppe. Armanbek had another young man bring me Armanbek’s horse whip, then tried to talk me into racing him. I laughed and started, but watched as Armanbek dropped onto one knee, at a gallop, with the eagle in the other hand, and I pulled up. He thundered across the steppe on a beautiful paint horse, with the eagle in his right fist, down on his left knee. It was the finest act of horsemanship I’ve ever witnessed in all my life. He did it two more times throughout the day, but I could never get a picture. The look on his face was pure joy.

• Cat’s Mongolia, Part 1
• Cat’s Mongolia, Part II
• Cat’s Mongolia, Part III
• The last of Cat’s Mongolia

Enjoy!

Work days are great…they’re a great chance to learn hands-on skills from experts. On Friday, we met at Ohlsen’s new property where he’s establishing a permaculture resource center for teaching practical skills. We laid out swales, dug them, planted cover crops, and learned something of how a permaculture site is designed. Check out the photos below or view the set on Flickr:

If you want to participate in future events, try joining the Yahoo group…it’s been on hiatus for a while, but it sounds like they’re trying to get moderator privileges and re-establish it. I first saw the announcement on Permaculture-SF, which is another good one to join.

I don’t remember when exactly it was…I think we might have been watching some video footage of the Beatles, or maybe John and Yoko. And Steve said something about those times, and how it seemed like our culture really had a chance at real love…not a romantic love, but a wider love. A love of fellow people that was nonjudgmental, spacious…almost, I imagined, celebratory.

I probably don’t explain it well, but it stuck with me as one of those moments when I felt a deep love for a person that was also something more, something between souls and spirits. Those moments don’t happen often enough, but I’m probably lucky to experience them at all. I’m grateful that my partner in life is also a person who gives me those kinds of moments.

There are still times when I marvel at how this ever happened…when I wake up in the night and this Steve Miller guy is next to me in bed, and I can’t figure out how I managed to pull that off. Somehow, I managed to get all of it…the heady days of romance and falling in love, AND the kind of love that grows every day, that widens and touches the circle of all creation.

Steve is the most truth-telling person I’ve ever known; the topic of courage came up recently, and I realized that this truth-telling and truth-seeing makes him the most courageous person I know. But he’s not disparaging. It’s a gift to be with a person who’s willing to agree with you that you screwed up but who’s not willing to agree with you that you’re worthless.

I’ve seen this man do the most generous and kind things for others. Animals and children, with their good sense about these kinds of things, love him and gravitate towards him without fail. Yet he’s got a razor-sharp wit that is mercilessly funny. People must think I’m insane for bursting out laughing at seemingly nothing, but in truth it’s because Steve’s just said something under his breath, or on email, or an aside on twitter, or even in my memory.

A couple of years ago, we were sitting in a restaurant finishing up lunch after a morning of errands and shopping. Everywhere we went, we’d seen (but not commented on) cheesey signs and displays for Cinco de Mayo that would lead one to believe that the holiday was a celebration of cervezas, tequila, and garishly ugly graphic design. As we waited for the check, Steve smiled at me sweetly and pushed his post-lunch sculpture of crumpled napkin and frilly toothpicks over to me. “Happy Cinco de Mayo!” he said cheerfully.

I still laugh out loud every time I remember it. Living with Steve, I don’t have to worry about getting wrinkles…they’re all laugh lines.

But it’s not just the laughs. The man has a wide range of magic at his command that can leave one gasping for the beauty and wonder, the expression, and the sheer feeling, that it can reveal. Life is larger with Steve.

And I’m sitting here on his birthday with no gifts to give, mostly because I couldn’t hack sitting at a desk staring at code that didn’t work while real life happened on the other side of a piece of glass. People have asked me if I regret quitting my job, given that re-careering at this time seems next to impossible. I don’t. But if there’s anything I regret, it’s in putting a burden on Steve. And I know that times are going to get more difficult.

I’ve seen Michael Meade speak a couple of times recently. He points out that for the first time in known history, science and religion are in agreement about something…that there’s a coming apocalypse. But he also points out that the Greek root of the word “Apocalypse” isn’t “violent end of the world” — it’s “the lifting of the veil.” And this feels right to me. We have to go through hard times as part of accepting the truth, whether it’s about our climate, our economic systems, our role in our environment, or our own emptiness. But it could mean a glorious change, and maybe a realization of that big, spacious, celebratory love of humanity.

In a time of uncertainty, one thing is for certain…I’m incredibly fortunate to be waking up next to the right person.

And so, my dear, happy birthday…and happy Cinco de Mayo! I don’t have a gift, but I love you in all ways, big and small.

And then you start hearing things like, “Oh, they really change at two!” And your dog might start slowing down a little (or not..ahem…) and start to play differently at the dog park, or begin barking more when someone tromps up the steps to porch.

So you might be surprised to start hearing, as I did, “Oh, three is when they’re really grown-up!” But it’s true; at three it seems like Laika was really deciding for herself which other doggies she liked, and she was decidedly suddenly against anything that might seem like prelude to something else by boy dogs. She showed that she understood she was not to chase the chickens, and she defers to the cats as much as she can possibly bear.

She’s always been our girl; a member of the family from day one. But the other night, the Leo dog with the shadow of a cat on her chest proved that she’s here to earn her keep as a member of this family.

I woke up to a whirring sound outside and knew right away what is was…raccoons. Our neighbor has seen them heading for our yard, and I’ve been expecting them to be after our chickens. That’s why the chicken coop is within the dog yard…to help deter the bandits.

I put my glasses on and was looking out the window just as I heard the doggie door snap open. In the moonlight, I saw the raccoon right on the other side of the fence, and then the dark shape of Laika streaking out to the perimeter. She gave three quick barks and the raccoon ran away. I expected her to keep barking, but she made a quick circuit of the yard and run back up to the deck and inside…the doggie door snapped open again, and she was inside and back in her bed in a flash. No biggie.

I couldn’t believe it…I expected her to scare the critters away, but not to do it in such a perfunctory manner. Seeing the raccoon that close, I would have expected her to bark much more. Clearly, she’s been doing this all along (and I’ve made forays out to the yard with the flashlight when she has barked more, but never saw anything).

So thank you, Laika Lou the Lion-Hearted, for protecting your sisters and keeping our egg supply safe from the masked bandits. You’re really a grown-up now!

The piece describes several people who are striving to reduce their ecological footprint, and then goes on to introduce terms like “energy anorexics” or “carborexic” that seem to equate this kind of life with eating disorders. The writer of the article consults a Manhattan psychiatrist, Dr. Jack Hirschowitz, for confirmation:

“The critical factor in determining whether something has reached the level of a disorder is if dysfunction is involved,” he said. “Is it getting in the way of your ability to do a good job at work? Is it taking precedence over everything else in your relationships?”

And we’re left to believe that this is a slam dunk, that these people are obviously dysfunctional. But this is where the discontinuity strikes me. Astyk’s lifestyle isn’t getting in the way of her work (in fact, it may BE her work).

As a reader of Astyk’s weblog, Casaubon’s Book: Sharon Astyk’s Ruminations on an Ambiguous Future, I followed the path to the NYT piece…from her posts describing the mad dash to prepare for the NYT photographer to the disappointment when the article finally appeared. It’s not a bad lesson to learn, I just wish we have to learn it through an example like this. They say that permaculture is on the bleeding edge of a 10,000 year-old idea. So when mainstream media comes knocking on your door, it might be good to consider if they’re knocking because the rest of your culture considers you fringe. Even if that culture is rapidly going down the composting toilet itself.

Astyk responds eloquently in what should be published as letter to the editor in next Sunday’s NYT: You Can Go Home Again: What I’d Like To Have Been Able to Say to New York Times Readers. Come on, NYT…let’s see this in print, too.