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In my book, I point out that low-footprint living, in addition to helping the planet, can also allow households to boost their disaster-resilience. As if to underscore my idea, numerous hurricanes and other natural disasters have hit the world since I published my book in 2017. All of them have had devastating effects on the livelihoods and living circumstances of people in different parts of the world. And our latest natural disaster, the Coronavirus, is affecting literally just about everyone, everywhere in the world. The less dependent we are on sources outside our local communities to meet our basic needs, the better off we are. Does this mean we have to forego imported goods, electricity, long-distance travel, and other convenient aspects of modern society? Not necessarily (though there’s certainly a lot of room for us in the privileged parts of the world to scale back while still living comfortably), but the less dependent we are on these things, the less vulnerable we are to disaster; the more socially and economically resilient we’ll be.

In that spirit I propose a fun household activity for the Coronavirus “Stay At Home” time: Conservation Games! Depending on the culture of your family (and the ages of your kids and others living with you), you might opt to do these as a friendly competition between household members, or approach it as a team working together to get your numbers lower and lower.

My preferred framework for household-scale conservation efforts is the Riot for Austerity. It’s a worldwide grassroots movement of citizens aiming to reduce their footprint to 10% of the average U.S. resident’s. The people who started the Riot movement (Sharon Astyk and Miranda Edel) set forth numeric targets which I’ll outline below.

Now, at this point you might be thinking, “Are you nuts? We’re in the middle of a crisis! Why would I want to voluntarily heap more challenges on myself and my family?” To which I would say 1) You might be surprised at how self-challenges can take one’s mind off an ongoing crisis, and help maintain a sense of perspective; 2) As I mentioned, low-footprint living is great for boosting one’s disaster-resilience; and 3) The current crisis makes it easier in various ways to reduce one’s footprint. So now is actually a great time to start!

My friend Cedar Stevens was talking about plastics consumption when she made the following comment (and the hige volume of plastic trash is a major problem in itself), but she could just as easily have been speaking about any other aspect of reducing one’s eco footprint: “Perhaps you don’t want to think about reducing your plastic consumption. Life is so interrupted though, maybe this is the time to make new choices that are better for the Earth, create new habits. Be humbled in the face of the Wild.” (By the way, Cedar is a virtuosa gardener, herbalist, community organizer, and all-around wise woman. She is the proprietress of Natural Magick Shop, which offers “Magick potions, ritually crafted for the modern practitioner.” Visit her shop, and enjoy!

Note, any amount by which you can reduce your footprint is great! Whether you are able to reduce your footprint by 90% or 20% or even just 10%, you’re chipping away at the beast of excess consumption, resource mining, deforestation, violent landscaping, overdevelopment, etc., that is straining the planet’s resources. You might find it helpful to set moderate targets at first so you’ll be eager to build on your successes and keep going. Most people find some areas easier than others. For example, a person who lives in the city and doesn’t own a car might find it easy to have a low transportation footprint. A person who’s good at gardening, or has a farmer’s market nearby, might find it easier to lower their food footprint than one who has a black thumb, or has no farmer’s market to shop at. Following is a capsule summary of the Riot for Austerity targets. (For the full set of Riot for Austerity guidelines, see my post Riot for Austerity Rules.) Notice that some targets (such as trash) are per-person, while others (such as electricity use) are per-household.

GASOLINE: U.S. average 500 gallons per person per year; RIOT target 50 gallons per person per year. (The Coronavirus shutdown, with its moratorium on most commuting and on non-essential shopping, could make it easier than ever for many households to cut their gasoline consumption to a low percentage of the U.S. average. Under the RIOT target, you get slightly over 4 gallons a month, so if your car gets 30-40 miles a gallon and you are no longer commuting, 10% of the U.S. average is actually within reach! With outdoor exercise one of the only options for getting out of the house, you might find yourself enjoying family walks or bicycle rides. I know I’m seeing a lot more of that in my neighborhood!)

ELECTRICITY: U.S. average 900 kWh/month per household; RIOT target 90 kWh/month per household. (With household members being at home all the time, some families might be seeing a jump in electricity use. This could be a great opportunity to start an in-house conservation challenge! If your power company has a way for you to check your daily consumption online (many do nowadays), you can have a lot of fun with this. Basic notes: The biggest culprits of household electricity use are heating or A/C, clothes-dryer, and water heater – if your house uses electricity for these.)

HOME OIL/GAS: U.S. average 1,000 therms/household/year; RIOT target 100 therms/household/year.

GARBAGE: U.S. average 4.5 pounds per person per day; RIOT target 0.45 pounds per person per day. A fun thing to do could be give each person in the household their own trash can, and have daily or weekly weigh-ins. The best way by far to immediately reduce your trash weight by a wide margin is to compost your kitchen scraps. If you’re not doing this already, now’s a great time to start! Do a search on “compost” in this blog to find my favorite resources. Or just plunge into the vast university of YouTube wisdom.

WATER: U.S. average 100 gallons per person per day; RIOT target 10 gallons per person per day. (Outdoor water use accounts for 40% to 60% of this total. Now is an opportune time to look into waterwise native landscaping. Note: a food garden uses relatively little water for the amount of space it takes. The big water-hogs are exotic vegetation and manicured lawns.) A fun way to do a water challenge: Catch running water into a basin that’s a certain number of gallons, and count the number of basins you fill during a day. Got energetic young kids? Teach them to carry the water outside and water the trees and shrubs with it. Also get the kids to help with the math of calculating the total number of gallons used each day by toilet flushes, showers, etc.

CONSUMER GOODS: U.S. average $10,000 per household per year; RIOT target $1,000 per household per year. (This is another category where it could be easier to make cuts right now because of the shutdown. Golden opportunity to form new habits that are easier not only on the planet, but also on your wallet!)

FOOD: RIOT targets call for local & organic food to make up 70% of your diet; bulk/dry food 25% of your diet; and processed/industrial food 5% of your diet. Right now, this last category makes up 50% of the average U.S. resident’s diet. (The pandemic makes it a bit of a challenge to make major changes in one’s food purchasing. But one thing you can do is start shopping at your local farmer’s market, or get more of your groceries from there if you are already shopping there. You can also aim to eat fewer processed snacks. The food category is one of my big personal challenges. Although I truly love local organic veggies, I also heartily enjoy processed snacks! Lately I’m learning to make spiced crispy vegetable chips, which believe it or not it turns out I enjoy as much as store-bought potato chips!)

Reducing your eco footprint is not only the easiest and most immediate way for you as an individual to address environmental issues; it also has immediate benefits for your wallet and your well-being. Not only that, it makes you and your family and your community better able to weather whatever may come–be it a natural disaster or an economic recession or any other kind of crisis–and come out stronger. I hope you enjoy your low-footprint competitions and experiments as much as I’ve been enjoying mine! Always feel free to drop me a line if you have questions. And if you like, get yourself a copy of my book DEEP GREEN! It’s a concise manual to crafting your own version of an ultra-low-footprint life, and I’ve packed it chock-full with links to the absolute best resources I know of in each category.

During this time of pandemic sequestration, I’ve heard many parents say they’re loving the opportunity to stay home and spend time with their kids. Even some parents who are now unable to earn any income are savoring the slowdown, aside from the financial worry. The other day, a couple with several kids passed by our porch, amid a gaggle of big dogs on leashes. “We’re having so much fun!” they shouted when I asked how they were faring with school at home. “There are so many cool free educational resources online!”

But I’m also hearing from plenty of parents who are going stir-crazy with the additional responsibility of having to keep their kids schooled and entertained all day, every day, on top of all their usual parental responsibilities (and in some cases on top of their professional jobs, if they are working from home). Their kids miss their playmates; the parents miss the company of other adults. And adding insult to injury, a lot of parents right now are getting chastised for having these perfectly natural human feelings. I’ve seen Moms getting shamed online for saying they could use a glass of wine. Please!

My take on the “kids at home” struggle is the same as my take on other challenges that the pandemic has brought. My take is that the pandemic, besides being a crisis in itself, has exposed cracks in society that have been there for many years or decades.

Now, before I go any further, let me say I’m well aware that some parents feel that if a person is not a parent, that person has no business commenting on child-rearing issues. And I am not unsympathetic to that viewpoint, especially when the commenters are trying to shame people or tell them how to raise their kids. But my take is 1) Parents are emotionally enmeshed in the high-stakes, stressful task of raising kids, and it could be helpful to get support from someone who’s not as emotionally involved. And 2) It is impossible to solve, or even fully grasp, any major problem in society without looking into how that society is bringing up its children.

So, in that spirit, here are some of my observations based on a combination of things I’ve observed myself, or heard from older relatives, or read in books and magazines. I realize I’m speaking in generalities here, but generalities have their place, as they can help us see more clearly and get to the heart of things.

There’s a wealth of articles out there offering tips on how to keep kids happy and engaged at home. If I find some particularly outstanding ones, I’ll post them in the Further Reading section. But there are lots online that you can find easily. For now, I’m giving you two main takeaways:

1. Community, Community, Community. By now, pretty much everyone is familiar with the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Isolation is one of the two biggest culprits of parental overwhelm. The nuclear family, detached from the old hometown and extended family, is a modern experiment that just hasn’t worked out well. The other day in a “Coronavirus overwhelm” discussion thread online, I was happy to see a couple of Moms, whose kids are playmates, talking about the possibility of living under the same roof. What a great idea! I hope it catches on. The truth is that living alone or in nuclear families is expensive, and raising kids is way too much work for one set of parents alone. Part of the original motivation for the emergence of the nuclear family–a trend that accelerated after World War II–was surely the lure of independence from “the old hometown” and its bossy elders. But nowadays, with so many people learning how to set healthy emotional boundaries and tolerate differences, it seems feasible to have the best of both worlds: the ability to be true to oneself, without having to disengage from extended family. In general, over the past few years, it’s been good to see more people living in multigenerational households again, even if a lot of the motivation is economic constraints (young adults not able to afford their own places because of school debt, etc.) This is one case where all the arrows (economic, social, division-of-labor, and ecological) seem to be pointing in the same direction: Live with other people if at all possible! (If you are living alone and it’s working out great for you, disregard this bit of advice.) This is true whether or not you have kids, but if you have kids, it could save your sanity and make life a lot more enjoyable for you and the kids.

2. Instead of being overwhelmed by kids’ energy … harness it! In permaculture design, we have a saying, “Turn problems into solutions.” Most of us have had the experience of being overwhelmed by a kid’s energy. For a long time now (for my whole life, really, which is almost 60 years) I’ve observed parents feeling overwhelmed by dealing with kids, especially young kids. And recently, my observation has led me to ask, “Is there anything we can learn from people in other times and places? How did people in the old days cope with an exhausting toddler? How do people in indigenous cultures manage to look after their kids on top of foraging for food, gathering firewood and all that?” In a nutshell, very young kids want to help with household tasks, and want to be near their parents. When we try to get kids to stay out of the way, “go play,” etc., we create stress because not only do we create a situation where kids get bored and come back looking to the adults for ideas on what to do, but also, we push away a whole bunch of really robust energy that wants to help! The ideal is to start engaging kids while they are still toddler age. But I think there’s hope at any age if the parents make it clear that they really need their kids’ help; that the kids are indispensable to the household economy. As kids get older, their creativity starts to shine, and if you ask kids for ideas on how to solve household problems, they think of amazing solutions that you or I might never have thought of.

From everything I’ve read and observed, kids are happiest and least overwhelming when they know that their labor and creativity are needed for real stuff that the household depends on. Cooking, shopping, running the cash register, designing a logo for the family business, greeting store customers or hotel guests, feeding farm animals, collecting eggs, watering plants, even laundry and dishes and what have you. (By the way, as a kid I hated yardwork. But if we’d been growing food, as opposed to toiling in the service of suburban standards of neatness and conformity, I might have felt differently.) And, when they know their parents really want them around (which is more likely to be the case if the parents aren’t constantly getting interrupted for entertainment while the parents are trying to get work done)!

Of course there is more to life than chores. Creativity is another way for families to spend time together, while also making the world a better place. I’ve heard/read of many families doing creative and compassionate activities during the stay-at-home order. One neighborhood has started a “teddy bear hunt” to entertain little kids who are out walking with their families. People put teddy bears in their windows so as to be visible from the street, and kids see how many bears they can find on their walks. I also read about a 17-year-old girl who did a ballet performance at her grandparents’ nursing home; residents could watch from their balconies. And a friend of mine, a Dad, dressed up in drag (a powder-blue ballerina costume complete with tiara, to be exact!) and went walking through his neighborhood with his young daughter, who was also in some sort of costume (the Facebook photo was too small to see clearly). This kind of playful spirit is all too absent from most people’s everyday lives, and the enforced slowdown seems to be really bringing it out. Here’s hoping it’ll continue even after “normal” life resumes!

Besides those two main points, a few other things.

One, It’s OK to want wine (or whatever you enjoy: eating chocolate; reading a novel; painting). Assuming you’re not harming yourself or neglecting your family, it’s actually healthier for all of you if Mom and Dad get to have their fun too. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, when it was still OK for parents to go out to movies or cocktail parties and leave the kids with a babysitter (or let the oldest child be the babysitter for their younger siblings). Nowadays it’s more popular for parents to hang out together while their kids play. Either way, you’re not a bad parent for wanting a treat.

Also, get to know your neighborhood and neighbors; a neighborhood with a web of social connections is more resilient in any possible circumstances than one where neighbors don’t know each other. Many of us find that our best friends (and/or our kids’ best friends) are widely scattered, requiring a car trip. But it’s not sustainable for parents to constantly have to drive their kids to a playdate. The stay-at-home orders affecting most of the population are highlighting the unworkability of that setup. Walk around your immediate neighborhood with your kids, meet your neighbors. And keep in mind that your kids, even young ones, are their own people; the friends they choose for themselves won’t necessarily have parents that you’d choose as your friends. And that’s fine!

Finally: A major factor in parental overwhelm is economic anxiety. See if there are some household expenses you can cut, so you can slow the treadmill down. Ditto for household tasks; see if there are any you can ease up on a bit. Do you really need to have perfectly square shrubs? Does the laundry need doing right this minute? It might be worth trading some niceties for just plain ol’ free time for each other. There’s no point in having a family (and no point living on planet earth, really) if we can’t all take a deep breath and enjoy each other, listen to the song of a bird, watch the sunset, learn the names of the wildflowers growing right around us.

On a personal note, today when I got home from the farmer’s market with my groceries, it felt like it was taking a long time for me to get things put away and stow the reusable bags. I found myself wishing there were a toddler in the vicinity! I would have enlisted the little one’s assistance stashing the bags in the milk crate where I keep them. I had the same thought later, when I needed to wash some clothes. I always hand-wash my stuff in a tub, then pour the water on whatever area of the yard needs a bit of water. What a perfect job for a little kid to help with!

If you’re a parent (or grandparent or other relative in close proximity with kids), I’d love to hear your ideas on this topic. What, if any, aspects of working with kids do you find overwhelming? What’s worked for you? What hasn’t? Or if you’re from another country, whether or not you’re a parent — How are things different in your country? What tasks are kids expected/allowed to do at each age? Same question for people of older generations, wherever you’re from. What household tasks were you required/expected to do as a kid?

Further Reading:

• Maybe the single most illuminating resource I’ve found on the “kid energy problem” so far is this short article from npr.org, on how to get kids to do chores. It gives impressive examples of how people in other cultures harness the “power of toddlers.” In a nutshell, toddlers naturally want to help (in one study, 20-month-old children stopped playing and crawled across the floor to help adults pick up dropped objects), and by being willing to spend extra time even though the toddler’s involvement slowed things down or makes a mess, parents invest and end up with kids who continue to love to help even as they get older. Typical parents in modern Western culture rebuff a toddler’s offer to help, and send them off to play. But mothers from indigenous cultures will invite the child to stay and watch, and participate. The article also cites a book that sounds like a must-read: Anthropology Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans, and Laborers, by David Lancy.

• Childlike Innovation: Parents Find Creative and Fun Ways To Keep Kids Busy and Happy. (Daytona Beach News-Journal). Even very young kids can start learning a valuable skill like gardening or cooking, and can collaborate on a wall painting or other house project. “We just involved her in everything we do,” one couple said of their 2-1/2-year-old daughter. She’s interested in practical life skills, so instead of trying to keep her out of the way while they get stuff done, they involve her in cooking, seed-sprouting and other tasks. It sounds like it’s a lot more fun and less exhausting than the other approach!

I’m in love with my stapler. Yes, in love. With a stapler. Because it’s sturdy and metal, and I doubt it will ever break. I will probably get old and die first, or just decide I don’t need to staple anything anymore, before this little beauty would quit on me. I bought it a few years back at a yard sale or thrift shop, one of the two, can’t remember which. It is pure old-school, all steel or other sturdy metal, enamel-painted a pretty blue that one color website I hit upon when I Googled “names of shades of blue” referred to as “Cadet Blue,” and another as “Air Force Blue.” I might call it a dark shade of sky-blue.

It’s got small rust spots here and there. Just enough to add a touch of dignity and gravitas. It’s a compact stapler that fits neatly on the small antique sewing-machine table that doubles as my desk. And with the stapler, at the same garage sale or thrift shop, I bought a little box of staples. Both the stapler and the faded yellow cardboard box of staples look like they came from a time capsule made by a stationery store in 1963. And they both look like they would survive Armageddon.

Except, I aspire to use the staples up in my lifetime, or at least make a big dent in their number. Although the box of staples was decades old when I bought them a decade ago, it did not look like a single row of them had been used. And yesterday as I was stapling little bags of wildflower seeds to put out in the Free Seed box I set up out front of my house, I noticed for the first time the number of staples in the box. I’d been thinking maybe 500? 1,000? Nope! When I read the fine print, I saw that the box had originally contained five THOUSAND staples. Packed in like little rows of square soldier sardines.

It seems like I’ve been using them forever, freely, but still I’ve barely made a visible dent in the rows. The box of staples is small, maybe 2 inches wide by 5 inches long by an inch and a half high. Not much bigger than a stick of butter. Maybe when the original buyer bought staples, he or she bought an extra box, not realizing how very many staples the deceptively small box contained. Or maybe boxes of staples were on sale two for one, and we know how that can go. (File that image in the same folder as a snapshot of the guy who’s hanging a picture or something and goes to the hardware store for screws, and comes back with two boxes of 500 or something because the price is cheaper per screw that way. Little did he know he’s consigning some future person somewhere to hold a garage sale to get rid of the unused portion.)

Was someone starting a clerical business and then gave up on their plan? A widow in a college town who was about to start a typing service to earn a bit of extra income, but then she passed away? Or maybe a secretary sent out to buy supplies for her company (not to be sexist, but I’m not sure there were male clerical workers back then), which later either folded or just got a newer bigger stapler which required newer bigger staples?

Anyway, I appreciate my stapler. And, while I try never to waste staples or other supplies, I do aspire to use them fully, and would rather use them up than reach the end of my life with way too much extra.

I feel the same about the needles, thread, embroidery floss, and yarn that were accumulated by three generations of crafty women in my family, and have now ended up in my custody. Needles in particular might be tough to use up; you can’t imagine how many little packets of needles there are. And I still have a primal fear of ending up in the Zombie Apocalypse with my last needle broken or lost. But I really don’t want to leave needles unused; someone made them, and they were made to be used.

If worst comes to worst, and my noble anti-hoarding sentiments end up leaving me short, I do have some spiny prickly-pear plants growing in the garden, and have heard that the pioneers made needles out of the spines.

This blog, on the surface, is about low-footprint living. Choosing to live lightly on the planet. But on a deeper level, it’s about living deliberately. For me, having excess stuff (beyond a reasonable backup supply) is an invitation to see if there’s someone else who needs, right now, the stuff that for me is excess. I have never regretted shedding stuff in that spirit. When I got into permaculture design, one of the design principles I learned was “Stocking,” which means having stuff in appropriate quantity. And part of the definition of “appropriate quantity” that I learned was, “being able to remember what you have and where it is stored.” For a lot of us in the wealthy industrialized nations, this is a bigger challenge than one might think. I speak as someone who has not only, herself, on many occasions forgotten what she has and where it is stored, but also done many de-cluttering and downsizing jobs, helping people clear out attics and garages that were packed to the ceiling with still-usable but long-forgotten stuff, much of it still in the original packaging. Important note: None of this is to shame or chastise anyone. We are all in this together, we’ve tried some things as a species that have seemed great at first but turned out to be not such a great idea (herbicides and single-use plastics come to mind), and I feel us each working in our own way to create a saner, kinder world where humans are living in balance with ecosystems, and all creatures have their needs met.

How about you? Do you have everyday tools or other possessions you particularly treasure? And do you have any multigenerational accumulations of good stuff that you’re in the process of figuring out how to use up or distribute?

And, to take it beyond the material, I think this concept applies to talents and energy as well. But I’ll save that for another post!

“Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness–”
— Albus Dumbledore to Voldemort in Harry Potter.

The fact that there are things worse than death doesn’t mean it’s unreasonable for humans to fear their own death. After all, most of us don’t know for sure what happens after death; we have to go on faith. Still, reminding ourselves that there are “much worse things” can help ease our fear of death.

Worse things than death: Not living fully while we’re still alive. Reaching the end of our lives with amends unmade; rifts unmended. Living an imitation of someone else’s life; never discovering one’s own true self. Knowing who we are but always putting up a false front and never sharing our true self with the world. Stumbling around never waking up. Never making mistakes but also never stretching, never growing. To list a few.

Just as there are worse things than death for an individual, there are also worse things than death for society as a whole. At a time like this, with people getting sick and dying; people losing their livelihoods and maybe their homes, this is a hard thing to say and a hard thing to hear, but it needs to be said: There are worse things for society than a pandemic or other crisis that threatens the very future of human life on earth. The main “worse thing” I can think of, is that after the crisis passes, we just slip back into our old default ways, with no changes, nothing learned, no lasting corrections to the craziness that passes for “normal” in everyday life. I like to think that won’t happen in this case, but it is always a possibility.

Today, I “attended” my church (the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ormond Beach) for the second week in a row, together virtually with many other members, courtesy of live-streaming technology. The sermon was titled, “Befriending Our Fears,” and you can catch the recording of Reverend Kathy Tew Rickey’s service on YouTube. The theme of befriending our fears could not have been more relevant to me this morning.

I’d gotten up fairly early, around 6, and gone outside to catch the beauty of the morning and water some plants. Fairly quickly, I found my fresh morning joy spiraling down into anxiety and hopelessness as I contemplated the lengthening drought and my still-insufficient gardening ability. Plants were looking peaked (the lack of rain adding insult to the injury of my innate plant-cluelessness) and I had run out of things to try. Water more? Water less? Nothing seems to help.

But as I sat with my feelings, the deeper fears that underlay them started to rise to the surface. And as I faced those fears, fully acknowledged them one by one, I began to get relief. There were more layers than I was expecting. There was a fear that my ineptitude would kill these innocent living beings I had taken into my care. That’s a tough thing to bear.

There was a more prosaic fear that the native plants I’d bought for privacy hedges (as well as for the benefit of wildlife and the land) would never grow, and I’d be stuck needing a fence forever, and also would never be able to screen out the obnoxiously bright streetlights. For the first time, I fully felt that I could handle any of that; that there were worse things. I realized how I’d been hanging onto this idea “I must have tall high shrubs and I must have them now!” Realizing I could just deal with things as they are helped me relax.

I realized that I could let myself off the hook, quit spending money on lovely plants only to live in constant fear of killing them. I could just be happy with what’s growing right now, as it is, the unflappable native wildflowers, a few stunted but scrappy herbs and veggies, and other buoyant survivors, and let the rest unfold in its time. Surely plants, like people, can’t thrive in an atmosphere of nervousness, and I’ll give them a better chance at life by cultivating a more relaxed loving attitude. And I can just focus on the unchallenging but (to me) richly enjoyable activity of layering my yard with the oak leaves, grass clippings, and other riches (termed “yard waste” by conventional wisdom) that I gather from curbside in my hand-cart, and let this earthy lasagna do its magic of attracting the teeming community of good microbes and bugs that form the foundation of healthy soil. And trust that this evolution will take place to a sufficient degree and in sufficient time for the soil to be more plant-friendly when I really need it to be, if such a time should come to pass.

Another layer of fear I noticed was a primal fear of starving to death because I haven’t been very successful at growing food. Could I handle it, if it came to that? I realized I could, because there are worse things to me. For example, spending my life ignoring other people because I’m so wrapped up in worry about my own fate — that, to me, would be worse than starving to death. Anyway, I have in fact grown food quite well at times in the past — just never alone. Always in cooperative arrangements. There’s a lesson there. Find nearby likeminded folks; grow stuff in partnership. I’m working on it.

I am of course worried about drought; I have been for a long time here in Florida. Our conventional landscaping practices (which I sometimes refer to as land-scalping or land-scraping) — the relentless clearing and incessant mowing that leaves just a thin film of turfgrass and increasingly bare patches of compacted sand — strip away the green buffer and ground-sponge, creating conditions ripe for ever more intense drought-flood extremes. What I’m calling the “crispy” season seems to be lengthening here, and now maybe we’re going to be having it in March-April as well as in October. (The past two years’ Octobers here have been brutal, with seasonal raininess stopping short while summer heat was still in full force.)

This morning I sat with my fear of drought. Yes, this place could become a desert in my lifetime. Yes, we could all become displaced; there could be horrific wildfires, widespread famine, the utter decimation of all life from the lush paradise Mother Nature had provided. Hard to imagine worse than that. But as I felt my commitment to doing my best to save the lives of other people, present and future, who may not have had the opportunity to live as long or as many lives as me, my own fear began to dissipate. I’ve got a post in the works for you about simple things we can all do to help mitigate drought-flood extremes, wherever we live.

Another primal fear I contacted was the fear of being useless, superfluous, having no skills of any use to anyone, ultimately being alone and unwanted, no community. (This is one I’ve been peeling away layer by layer for decades, but today I found a new layer.) I asked myself could I handle it after all, if it came to that — if really I ended up with no place to live, no way to make myself useful? And I realized that yes, I could; that somehow I would find a way to move forward and love life and somehow be in service, not be a burden on anyone. That there were worse things.

Facing each fear, experiencing it deeply and feeling it dissipate, I ended up feeling simultaneously calm and energized, and had a beautiful morning, capped off by the sermon on “Befriending Our Fears.”

Later in the day, the theme of facing fear and coming out stronger on the other side of it continued, as I spotted an extremely powerful article on a friend’s Facebook feed:

It’s Time to Emotionally Prepare for What’s Coming, by Elad Nehorai on medium.com. Anticipatory grief — preparing ourselves emotionally for the loss of life (our loved ones’, and our own) — is a heavy task but an essential one, and I really want to thank my friend Flip Solomon for sharing this article. Flip is a talented and hardworking visual artist, fashion designer, and all-around creative soul. You can see Flip and her work by visiting her Facebook page The Art of Flip Solomon and her website. Enjoy!

Because, yes, we can have joy too amid all this pain and uncertainty. Life is wondrously fractal and layered. The deepest, giddiest-yet-most-solid joy I’ve ever found in life has always been on the other side of fear and pain.

P.S. Another treat for you! Beautiful talk that a friend just now shared with me. “Remaining True in a Time of Crisis.” About taking the crisis as an opportunity to slow down, “grow inward,” engage in self-discovery, become centered in our true nature. (The speaker, Mooji, points out that fear comes from not being centered in our true nature.)

Though I have not yet heard anything to the effect that the pandemic has fueled an increase in consumption of single-use plastics as a consequence of the rise in takeout meals, I would not be surprised to hear it.

To tell you the truth, my consumption of single-use plastics has gone up slightly in recent weeks as I’ve been trying to make a point of supporting local restaurants at a time when they’ve been compelled to shut down their dine-in operations. I figure it’s OK to ease up a little to offer a bit of support in a time of need. (I also sometimes ease up on plastics/styrofoam at ordinary times; for example, when ordering from a minority-owned restaurant and/or one that’s struggling to survive in a rough part of town.) In the long term, of course, I remain committed to avoiding single-use plastics to the best of my ability.

So I was happy to see in my inbox today an email from the Surfrider Foundation, offering a map of ocean-friendly restaurants across the USA. Ocean-friendly restaurants are ones that avoid use of plastics, since plastics are wreaking such havoc on the oceans and the creatures who live there. Just input your location/zip code to find OFRs near you. As it says on their website, “One restaurant, one customer at a time, [The Surfrider Foundation’s Ocean Friendly Restaurants program] increases awareness, drives behavior change, and ultimately creates scalable impact to reduce our plastic footprint.” Bon appetit!

One unintended consequence of the pandemic is happening for sure: Human beings are demonstrating great flexibility and creativity in adapting to the challenges. Then again, adaptiveness is one of the core defining attributes of human nature. And while the situation that’s motivating our inventiveness is tragic and scary, it is reassuring to see human creativity rise quickly to meet adversity.

Today in my local paper (the Daytona Beach News-Journal), an AP article reported on how hospitals are accommodating increased demand for beds:

“With capacity stretched thin, U.S. hospitals are rushing to find beds for a coming flood of patients, opening older closed hospitals, turning single rooms into doubles and re-purposing other medical buildings. Louisiana is making deals with hotels to provide additional hospital beds and has converted three state parks into isolation sites for patients who can’t go home. Illinois is reopening a 314-bed suburban Chicago hospital that closed in September. In Seattle, Harborview Medical Center is turning a homeless shelter into a 45-bed coronavirus recovery center.” (Makes me worry about where the homeless people got put, but anyway.)

This ability to be flexible and make more from less, particularly for the hospital sector to be flexible and make more from less, is reassuring. I would like to see such inventiveness applied to cutting the costs of hospitalization and other health care. Having lived for some years in Japan, where the hospitals were nowhere near as plush and spacious but everyone had access to low-cost health care, I have a bit of resistance to the large, shiny, cushy nature of USAmerican hospitals.

Never once in Japan did I doubt the quality of care I was getting, nor did I or anyone else lack access to basic health care. A lot of hospitals I’ve seen in the USA (particularly in recent years with the rise of the for-profit hospitals) feel more like luxury hotels. It’s kind of creepy actually. The problem is, of course, not everyone can afford the price of admission to these luxury hotels.

Well, I’m rambling a bit here. Long story short: It’s good to see citizens of the Land of Extreme Luxury demonstrating that we have not lost our ability to make do with bare-bones solutions. As in, suddenly deciding that older hospitals are good enough to use after all; that people can deal with being in double rooms; that a state park can serve as a quarantine facility. Maybe if we can be that flexible in an emergency, we can carry that flexibility into the future. Then maybe our hospitals over the long run can become accessible to all, and not eat up so many of our financial and other resources.

And while we’re at it, maybe we could apply that mentality to our colleges and other schools too. School facilities have gotten over-the-top fancy over the years. Maybe we’d be willing to trade some of that fanciness for “less fancy but more affordable.” I’m indulging myself a bit here by allowing this tenuous thinking-tangent to make it into a blog post. I will scout around for some more authoritative voices to support my thinking, and will add any good links I find. But for now I’ll leave it at this.

What do you think of my comments about the fanciness of hospitals and other facilities?

And, what are some unintended consequences you’re noticing (either positive or negative) of the pandemic? By the way, when I ask you questions in my posts, they aren’t rhetorical; I really enjoy hearing your opinions. In fact, I’m thinking of taking the plunge and enabling comments on this blog, even though it opens the door to spam. (A blog I had in a long-ago chapter of my life even got taken over by Soviet hackers; I woke up one morning, circa 2000, to find the Trailer Park Girl blog turned all Cyrillic and cartoon-risqué). I may try enabling comments for a week or so to see how it goes. I guess the worst thing that can happen is I find out that the dreaded Dmitri, hacker of obscure blogs, is still alive and well.

Update March 28: I just read about another unintended consequence of the pandemic: Gasoline prices have dropped below $2 a gallon here. That might explain why I’ve seen several motorists lately idling their cars for 15, 25 minutes or more. Then again, people were doing that even when gas was over $3 a gallon. That always amazes me, because the people doing it just look like everyday folks who don’t particularly have money to burn.

Another unintended consequence I just read about: Bait & tackle shops in my area are seeing a surge in business as people seek safe outdoor activity to escape cabin fever and the 24-hour news dripfeed. Now that’s a happy thing on many levels!

Further Reading:

Is This a Hospital or a Hotel? (Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times): “Some hospitals in the United States … have long been associated with deluxe accommodations, and others have always had suites for V.I.P.’s. But today even many smaller hospitals often offer general amenities, like room service and nail salons, more often associated with hotels than health care. In the current boom of hospital construction, private rooms have become the norm. And some health economists worry that the luxury surroundings are adding unneeded costs to the nation’s $2.7 trillion health care bill. … American hospitals are looking less and less like their more utilitarian counterparts in Europe, where the average hospital charges per day are often less than a quarter of those in the United States…” This article ends with a link to a quiz “Can you tell a hotel from a hospital?” It’s actually even harder than I thought in some cases — I got several answers wrong!

In challenging times, wise people start to look for investments that won’t lose their value, and will pay bigger and bigger dividends as time goes on. The return on what I call “solid investments” or “real stuff” isn’t financial (unless, for example, you end up growing enough food to sell). But, to paraphrase an old saying from the 70s, “Real stuff will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no real stuff.”

Today I’m starting a list of the most solid investments I know. No money to spare? Got you covered with cheap or free alternatives.

• Food garden: Seeds; seedlings; soil; pots or containers. Buy from your local nursery if at all possible; we need to support these guys, whose role I predict is only going to get more essential over time. No money? Connect with neighbors who grow food. Most gardeners produce a surplus of seeds, seedlings, and crops, and sometimes are actually scrambling to give this surplus away. As part of growing food, be sure to invest in building your soil via mulching and composting. This can be done cheap or free with leaves, grass clippings, your kitchen scraps. As part of your food garden, plant native wildflowers for the pollinators (and to give your neighbors a gift of beauty whenever they walk by). You may not even have to plant wildflowers; often they will emerge if you simply let the grass grow out. People are calling this a “meadow yard” or “freedom lawn.” (The latter is a phrase coined by native gardening expert Ginny Stibolt (Climate-Wise Landscaping and other books).)

• Rainwater harvesting: A golden investment that not enough people are doing. I can hardly think of any place on earth that isn’t dealing with chronic drought-flood extremes, and I predict that this situation will continue if not get worse. Barrels and other containers can be expensive but keep an eye out; for example, sometimes restaurants give away food-grade barrels. Don’t get discouraged thinking you need to shell out for a 5,000-gallon cistern or something. In fact, that’s probably not a good idea. Too many eggs in one basket, so to speak (cost of a leak or other failure is large), plus which it’s a kind of hoarding. I was impressed when I heard Brad Lancaster (Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond) say in one of his public talks that he and his brother only have a total of 1,500 gallons of cistern/tank at their house. That was some years back, but I doubt they have significantly upped their capacity; Brad always counsels against “tank envy” and encourages us to do small earthworks that help the land do the heavy lifting, collecting and retaining more water itself so we don’t have to be collecting so much in a tank. If Brad can do this minimal-tank approach in Tucson, Arizona USA (which only averages 11 inches of rain annually), you and I can surely do it too.

• Renewable-energy, grid-free cooking equipment: Woodstove (conventional or Rocket Stove) is a big one. My personal favorite is the solar oven. It’s great not only for cooking but also for tasks such as drying food, pasteurizing potentially contaminated water, sterilizing washcloths and dishcloths, heating water for washing dishes. A sun oven is basically a plain box that’s painted black and covered with a glass lid. This combo turns the sun’s rays into heat enough for slow-cooking. A medium-temperature oven that needs no fuel! Sort of like a crock pot that needs no electricity. The Global Sun Oven is my personal favorite; I own two of them. Such a high-value investment. If you just don’t have $300 or more to spend, other companies make lower-end versions, or you can make your own. Ditto for a Rocket Stove; I’ve made and given away a number of them.

• Renewable home energy: Look into getting solar panels to meet your home electricity needs. It’s not physically or economically feasible for everyone, but it’s ideal for many, and you might qualify for rebates. Contact your nearest solar company for an assessment. (A company local to me, Solar-Fit in the Daytona Beach area, offers free assessments and seminars; your locals might also.) Even if you’re not a good fit for rooftop solar, consider investing in a portable panel to charge your smartphone and tablet or laptop.

• Resilient transport: bicycle, panniers, bicycle trailer. And, good walking shoes, or feet tough enough to walk barefoot. To go with this, you’ll need a certain general level of physical fitness, but you don’t need to be mega-fit. The human body is designed for foot travel, at long distances if needed. Even if your distance radius is relatively small, you can expand it fairly quickly and easily just by walking a little each day (this is assuming you are able to walk; if you aren’t, you may have to rely on neighbors for resilient transport; more about that in the next bullet item). And the bicycle is a highly efficient machine (the world’s most efficient machine, according to what I’ve read), designed to take maximum advantage of human power. If you have the physical fitness for human-powered transport, reach out to help your neighbors who are not mobile.

• Social connections: also known as “social capital.” Though the idea that building relationships with your neighbors is an “investment” may sound crass, the truth is that for decades, the trend in our hyper-affluent, widely geographically scattered society has been to DISinvest from neighborly connections, because our relative economic affluence gives us the illusion that such connections are not essential. Of course this is a huge mistake, as witness the toxic effect of social isolation on people and communities. Our social fabric and our economic resilience have suffered greatly. So, we can think of (re)building neighborly ties as a long-overdue “correction” (to use another word associated with financial markets) to a highly dysfunctional norm. To get on the right track, think of all those quaint, old-school things like asking if your neighbor needs anything from the store when you’re going; bringing your neighbors tomatoes from your garden; initiating a block party or potluck; offering help with onerous yard tasks.

• Skills: Educating yourself on basic life-skills is truly a blue-chip investment in your household and community resilience. Besides the above-mentioned skills, you can study and practice food foraging, food preservation, berm-building and other small earthworks, weaving from locally abundant natural fibers, carpentry with hand-tools, and much much more. Pretty much anything you could possibly want to know can be found for free online or at your public library. It just takes an investment of your patient attention. Bill Mollison, known as the father of the permaculture design movement, said that education is the most portable and flexible investment you can make. Truly golden advice!

• Mental health: Whether or not you consider yourself to have mental-health “issues” (I myself do; fairly serious ones though manageable), mental health is an investment that always pays off. Barring a chemical imbalance or other condition that may require medication or other special treatment, it’s not about “fixing” yourself so much as really getting to know yourself. Become a brave explorer of your own mind; learn more about what makes you tick, how the human mind works (your own, and minds in general). Some call it “inner permaculture” or working on the inner landscape. I will post some of my favorite resources for this in a follow-up post. For now, be assured there is much available for free online, and you can trust yourself to find what’s right for you. I can truly say that every dollar and every hour I’ve spent on learning to navigate and master the operation of my own mind has paid off thousand-fold. More than all of the above investments combined. Note: If you are experiencing any kind of mental-health crisis right now or at any other time, don’t mess around: Call a hotline or seek other immediate help from a professional.

• Music, visual art, storytelling: These arts have been shortchanged in our education system and in greater society, but make no mistake, they are essential to human survival, even if we were only using them to transmit valuable information in memorable form (which of course, is far from being their only value). Solitude and isolation are silent killers; the arts can help bridge the gulf of social isolation. Even in solitude, engaging with the arts reminds us of our connection with all our fellow humans and all of life, across time and space. The elevation of STEM and denigration of the humanities in recent years notwithstanding, a society composed only of scientists, engineers, and MBAs would quickly wither. Resurrect your long-buried art-heart. Sing; play music; even if you simply shake a gourd or bang on a can. And while you’re at it, if you’ve studied sociology, philosophy, anthropology, history — bring those out of the closet as well; we need that knowledge.

• Spirituality, metaphysics, the divine: I know not everyone is into this, but I have to mention it since it is the main theme in my life. Everyone who chooses, can cultivate a connection with the divine, the beyond-earthly realms. Ample resources exist online and in libraries, as well as via priests and shamans, established meditation techniques, spiritual sanghas. I have often found all of the above sources helpful. But also, the divine realms are accessible directly by anyone who is willing and interested. No special training or tools needed. Going out in nature and being quiet is one reliable way. Another is engaging in nondemanding repetitive tasks such as sweeping a sidewalk or path, shelling nuts, and allowing your mind to range untethered (when worries come, let them float past rather than engaging with them; this gets easier with practice). Still another is via our dreams. Yet another is listening to music or tuning in to nature’s sounds (rivers, surf, and the sound of trees and grasses rustling in the wind are some of my favorites). The highest prize in life (in my experience) is being able to engage fully on earth while staying connected with the divine (whether you call it God/Goddess, higher self, the cosmos, all-that-is, the transcendent, or some other name).

In the interest of brevity, I have not gone into deep specifics on any of the above solid investments. But I will be adding to this post and/or making follow-up posts on each topic. In the meantime, a wealth of information on food gardening, rainwater harvesting, and other essentials is available free, via sources such as YouTube and public libraries. If you notice anything I left off this list, drop me a line!

In my recent post about the value of reducing one’s financial overhead (even after the economic shutdown from Coronavirus eases), I mention doing without a car as one major way to cut overhead. I could have sworn I had written you a post awhile back, offering a compilation of articles on the benefits of car-free living. But it seems I did not! Or at least I can’t find it if I did. So … Rustling up some links for you now:

• I Live in the Suburbs Without a Car — Here’s How You Can Too (Realtor.com). I agree with her tip about setting aside $1,000 per year for taxis and other car service. I probably spend about $200-500 a year. A tiny fraction of the cost of car ownership, and none of the headache of car trouble.

• 9 Big Reasons Why You Should Choose To Live Without a Car (The Frugal Gene). Cost, safety, no more parking hassle, etc.

• A House in the Suburbs, Three Kids, and No Car (USA.Streetsblog.org). “The Montgomery family in Brampton [Ontario] realized that the mother’s salary was consumed by the costs of car ownership and day care. They sold both cars three years ago, and now she stays home and the family of five bikes and uses transit.”

• Car-Free Living (Payette.com): Three people’s perspectives. I like how one person ended up expanding her “walkable radius” to 5 miles.

• Living Car-Free in American Suburb (RayAtkinsonPlans.wordpress.com): A transportation planner who loves city life ends up taking a job in the suburbs because the job is very rewarding, offers great opportunity to make a difference.

• Living Car-Free in Rural Areas (discussion thread on bikeforums.net)

I haven’t finished rustling up links yet but those should hold you for now! If you try car-free living, let me know how it goes. Or if you’re already doing it, share your favorite tips!

Photo shows my trusty errand bike, a single-speed Trek Earl with cage-style panniers. The shopping bags are “new”; I sewed them this past week. The fabric is canvas from discarded beach furniture that looked practically new. Love the bright color: Bonus for cycling safety.