TerrieMiller.com

Bring back the <g>!

Back in prehistoric email times…say, oh, 1995 or thereabouts…many of us (well, Steve and I and at least a few others) peppered our emails with an emoticon for “grin”: <g>.

It was extraordinarily useful for avoiding miscommunication and indicating when we were were being facetious or sarcastic. And it didn’t have the cloying cuteness of the colon-parenthesis smiley face that I can’t even bring myself to type here.

Recently, I’ve started introducing <g> to people who’ve never seen it. My friend Jo made a fantastic suggestion to add <f> as a complementary “frown” (or perhaps another f-word), but let’s start simple. I’d like to issue a call for bringing back the <g>. And it even has it’s own facebook page.

Of course, the angle brackets may give web developers fits. But who cares about them anyway <g>.

Posted in Life | 3 Comments »

Survivalist Literature for Children

Yesterday I was thinking about some books from my childhood that I might like to re-read now, and realized that they all had quite similar themes.

• The Swiss Family Robinson — we owned a copy of this and I must have read it ten times; I really wanted to be shipwrecked with an entire ship full of interesting stuff and have a complete natural history library and museum in my cave.

• My Side of the Mountain — kid runs away from home and survives in the wilds of the Catskills, even teaching himself falconry with the help of the local librarian. I really want to read it again now, but am a little worried that I’ll spoil it by reading it as an adult. The memory might be better.

• Island of the Blue Dolphins — I didn’t realize that this was based on a true story about a woman surviving by herself on an island off the coast of California, so I guess I need to read this one again, too. Devil fish!

• Robinson Crusoe — we owned a copy of this also; I’m not sure I ever got through the entire thing, but I started it several times, hoping for some of the same entertainment that Swiss Family Robinson offered. In that sense, it seemed to grow tedious as I recall.

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Geoff and Nadia Lawton Appearing in Nicasio

Geoff and Nadia Lawton have done extraordinary permaculture work, and Bay Area permies have the chance to hear them speak this Thursday evening. An Evening with Permaculture Designers Geoff Lawton and Nadia Lawton is sponsored by Solstice Grove Institute, Urban Permaculture Guild and Commonvision.

Geoff Lawton might be most famous for the “Greening the Dessert” video on YouTube:

It’s a remarkable story of how a flat, salt-ridden dessert was transformed into a food-producing area using permaculture principles and some fantastic (and unexpected?) mycoremediation.

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Blackberry lovin’ dog

Laika loves to pick and eat the blackberries that are so abundant this time of year…

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Like one of those seasonal Singa-along Messiah’s, only groovier

Once again, everybody’s copying Steve and Terrie. I’ll bet someone got this idea after standing outside our house some evening years ago listening to us performing the B-side of Abbey Road.

Bring your voices and be ready for a one-of-a-kind fun-filled evening. All Together Now: A Fabulous Beatles Sing-Along features local tribute band Beatlesque leading the way through some of the greatest pop songs ever written. Lyrics will be provided, so everyone can sing along, right from their seats. It’s like one of those seasonal Singa-along Messiah’s, only groovier.

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Draft Horses at Stone Horse Farm

I’ve always wanted to get to know draft horses better, and maybe learn how to work with them. After a lot of searching, I found a farm just down the road from us in Sebastopol where one can actually take lessons in driving draft horses. I got up the nerve to contact them and see if I could come for a visit — and they said yes!

Stone Horse Far, is a beautiful place, and I’m grateful to Stuart Schroeder and Rosalie for showing me around. Not only did I enjoy seeing the horses and hearing about how they were trained and used, but I really enjoyed meeting some like-hearted folks who share many of our interests and enthusiasm for a life in harmony with nature. And the idea of working with this enormous, friendly, sweet-smelling critters is really appealing. Here’s some photos from my visit (or jump to the set on Flickr):

Here’s an article from 2002 about the farm: Plowing Forward: At Stone Horse Farm, the tractor gathers dust.

Justin might ask, “Where is it all leading?”, and I still don’t know. But I’m certainly enjoying the trip there! I have a couple more permaculture-type field trips planned for this week, and the big Convergence this weekend — fun stuff! Oh, and this week we’re going to celebrate Fridaday, too!

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Water-Savvy Stars of Sebastopol

On Saturday we took a tour organized by the great folks at Daily Acts. The tour was called “Water-Savvy Stars” and featured sites with interesting and smart water usage, as well as a stop at our beloved Laguna. Update: Steve also has a good post related to the day.

The day started at the lovely Catchtail Gardens, where Djubaya and Deborah Grace showed us the amazing transformation of their property, which was just a grassy field and buildings six years ago. Today, with the smart application of swales and catch­ments, they put and estimated 12,000 gallons of water back into the aquifier AND harvest about fifty cubic feet of topsoil that’s run off from properties up-slope, keeping it out of critical salmon habitat. It was fascinating to see all that they’ve done here.

From there, we had a lunch break and then a walk in the Laguna preserve with a great discussion of the watershed lead by one of our favorite bipedal sacks of saline and member of the Junior Darwin Over-achiever’s club, Brock Dolman.

We finished the day at the Energy Farm of the Post Carbon Institute, also the home of Julian Darley and Celine Rich Darley. There we saw examples of a lovely urban graywater system that is almost finished (pending permits to turn it on). They’re growing both food and energy crops in this garden, and it was great to see examples of both, as well as honest discussion over what works and doesn’t work. This is an amazing resource to have here in Sebastopol!

Speaking of Sebastopol, the day made me feel really fortunate, again, to be living here. The permaculture work happening in our town amazing. And, as residents of the city, Steve and I got to take this tour for free, courtesy of the city government. If this keeps up, I may have to trade in my Point-Reyes-wannabe hat for one that’s embroidered with “Sebastopol” instead!

Here’s some photos from the day; browse them here or view the set on Flickr:

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Book Recommendation: Querencia

There’s the delicious experience of reading a book about a subject you know you’re going to love. That’s the experience I had reading Stephen Bodio’s Eagle Dreams: Searching for Legends in Wild Mongolia (reviewed on Critter Geek).

But then there’s the experience of reading a book about something you might not normally choose, but one broadens your perspective while still being deliciously satisfying. That’s what I found in Bodio’s Querencia, which I snagged from the library to take along for reading while camping at permie class.

Querencia is Bodio’s memoir of meeting Betsy Huntington, and later moving from Boston to the rugged country of New Mexico with her. As a reader, it’s easy to fall in love with Huntington in the early pages of the book…smart, funny, and avid adventurer and hunter, she was known for her way with animals and kept a menagerie that at times included exotics like margays and bobcats.

With that adventurous spirit, she and Bodio moved their lives to an adobe house near the small town of Magdalena, and embraced both local culture and their passion as unconventional naturalists and hunters. I was intrigued by stories of hunting with dogs and attending local cock fights, though I readily admit that instant judgments tend to leap to mind when I read about hunting in general, and instant revulsion when I hear of hunting coyotes in any context. (Lest you get the wrong idea, Bodio is not an avid coyote hunter — but you’ll have to read the book to get the full story about that.) To many of us, the love of wildlife seems directly opposed to the practice of hunting. But I’m starting to believe that hunting is not the problem…that our current mainstream culture is the problem, and that it’s perverted the ancient rite of hunting into another form of consumerism that is repugnant. That’s the topic of another post here someday…but Querencia and Eagle Dreams have played a part in my broadening view of these topics.

“Querencia” is a term from bullfighting describing the place in the ring where the bull feels emboldened by false sense of safety. Like the bull, we’re often lulled into a false sense of security by believing that our opinions are facts.

If you like books about the outdoors, big vistas, and adventures with animals, I’d heartily recommend this book. But Querencia is ultimately a love story, as beautiful and unsparing as the land it unfolds upon, and it’s one of the most poignant I’ve ever read. I’m not sure it’s the best choice of reading when you’re alone in your tent for a couple of weeks, missing your soul mate who’s somewhere else. But terrible truth is that much of our security in life is the illusion of the querencia.

Posted in Books | 1 Comment »

Mongol

Wow, did I love this movie. It’s got everything: a great story, beautiful visuals, yurts, wolves, horses, wonderful costumes (omg, the jewelry), and achingly beautiful landscapes. What a feast.

Parts of the sound track reminded me of the Gyuto Monks “Tibetan Tantric Choir” from the late eighties. This is the second time that memory’s come up recently, so I just bought it on iTunes (also available on Amazon).

Posted in Art | 2 Comments »

Notes from Permaculture Class, Part 2

Here’s another group of notes from the permaculture course I took. These notes concentrate on the concepts, rationale and philosophy I picked up; we got lots of practical and how-to information, too.

This set of notes has lots about water and soil, recurrent themes throughout the course. (See Part 1 of my online notes here.)

• Fun fact: the composting toilets at RDI don’t stink. The reason for this is that the urine is separated from solid waste…there are two seats in each outhouse; you pee in one and defecate in the other. Mixing the two causes the anaerobic reaction that causes the foul odor. (Personal note: I really liked the outhouse system in practice; I would personally rather dump a shit or pee bucket every so often rather than constantly trying to keep a porcelain throne clean in my house. A composting toilet never clogs. A well-placed outhouse is quite private and pleasant to use. And the more I know about living systems, the more absurd it seems to flush our waste into our water supply.)
• The Arcata Marsh and wastewater treatment facility rocks. I need to get up there to visit this; this constructed wetland is a well-known birding destination.
• Flow form fountains - allow the water to meander in a natural way; can help with water cleaning. These are beautiful; I’ve since seen one in action at OAEC and it’s mesmerizing.
• There is a pattern of civilization collapse related to topsoil depletion. Deforestation leading to desertification is also very typical in civilization collapse. The 1955 book Topsoil and Civilization by Vernon Gill Carter and Tom Dale laid this out in detail.
• Soil: Starhawk gave us an amazing introduction to this rich topic. Highly recommended for further reading: Elaine Ingham. The Klebsiella planticola controversy is scary and hard for me to understand completely; This page seems to give both sides a voice.
• Starhawk: We inoculate children with reading, writing, arithmetic, but they grow up not understanding ecology. Bill Mollison: “Evil is stupidity rigorously applied.”
• Water: 70% of the surface area of the earth is water. By volume, only 3% is fresh water. Less than 1% of the earths water is available to us and not locked up in ice in the poles and glaciers, or in extremely deep groundwatner. Half of that 1% is currently polluted. There is a finite quantity of water, but you might say infinitely available because it’s cyclical.
• Basins Of Relations: A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting and Restoring Our Watersheds written by Brock - great booklet.
• What is a desert? If evaporation is greater than precipitation, it’s a desert. (If these two are equal, it’s a Mediterranean climate.) If we use water in a way that evaporates it (or manage soil with the same result), we create deserts.
• California is the most hydrologically engineered place in the world.
• Ogallala Aquifer - underlies the Great Plains; filled by the Pleistocene glaciers (last ice age; studies of water samples have indicated that some of the water has been here for 20,000 years). Being depleted at an alarming rate.
• The Green Revolution could only happen with a corresponding and silent “Blue Revolution” — we’re mining our fossil water. At current rates, we’ll be asking for twice as much water as we do now.
• Desalination methods are typically petroleum-fueled. We must think in terms of Appropriate Technology.
• Andy Lipkin, Tree People, and Los Angeles: there’s enough rainfall to provide 50% of their water needs.
• Water testing: there is no overall test for everything. When you pay for a water test, you have to specify what you’re testing for.
• Usually get about 600 gallons of water on 1000 square feet with 1″ of rainfall.
• When you cache water off your roof, the materials of the roof will contribute to what’s present in your water supply. Vinyl or plastics? Wood shingles with fire retardants. Heavy metals like cadmium? Baked enamel on steel very good; expensive but long-lasting; glass also very good (cache off greenhouse?)
• Water tanks might be used as thermal mass to hold heat. Ferro-cement tank has very high embodied energy (every pound of portland cement requires three pounds of carbon emission to produce), but might be a very high use of this material.
• Adapting demand. How much do you need? 50 gallons per person per day?
• 20% of the electricity we use in this state is used to pump water. 30% of all natural gas is used to heat it. “Watergy”
• Strategy for caching water on the land: Slow it, Spread it, Sink it. If you want to save a watershed, start at the ridge line. Swales can help put water into the well. Ponds for short-term water storage, swales for long-term.

I’m about half-way through my notebook now…

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