My Summer of Sustainability, Part V

This is my fifth entry in a six-part blog series on sustainability.

Sometimes all roads seem to point in one direction. This summer I've been having that experience with the concept of sustainability: assessing where we are now, what will be possible in 30 years, and how do we get from here to there.

The basic premise I'm working with is that humans are rapidly exhausting our supply of accessible resources, such that something has to give. That is, it is not even remotely possible that we can continue for another generation the materialistic lifestyle we're become accustomed to in the US—unless we're willing to forcibly deny the equitable distribution of what's left and to tolerate massive suffering elsewhere in service to the status quo. Rather than continuing the charade that underlies the bumper sticker "How did our oil get under their sand?", I've started looking at two questions: a) How to create a vibrant, satisfying lifestyle that uses only 10% of the resources that the average American is currently consuming; and b) How to peacefully navigate the social challenges that such a massive shift will require.

These questions affect me both on the personal level (how will I live, and what am I called to do to help society to a softer landing in the decades ahead) and on the professional level (what role should FIC play in education and preparation; what is my role as a process consultant to better prepare groups to handle what's coming).

When thinking about sustainability, I like the metaphor of a three-legged stool: there's a ecological leg, a social leg, and an economic leg—and you won't have a very stable piece of furniture unless you have three stout legs. I am interested in what it takes to develop strong legs, and also the integration of the whole, so that the stool will be a tool.

As this is a big, all-encompassing topic, I'm going to tackle it in a six-part series, roughly in the order in which I've been bumping into this conversation over the past two months. Here's the outline:

I. Proposal to build a working model of sustainability
II. The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World by Ted Trainer
III. Sustainability and Cohousing
IV. EDE Course at Dancing Rabbit in 2012
V. Increasing sustainability offerings on campus
VI. Transition Towns

• • •

Increasing Sustainability Offerings on Campus

It's my sense that societal awareness of ecological issues and the impact of lifestyle choices on the environment—which has been steadily gaining ground for decades—has mushroomed to the point where interest in sustainability is manifesting in many places. In fact, it is a hallmark of a growing movement that this happens.

No longer confined to the Green fringe, the seeds of sustainability have recently been finding fertile soil on university campuses. As almost anyone's definition of sustainability embraces community as a key component of the social aspects, this growing interest is naturally something that the FIC is keenly interested in following.

When the FIC's Oversight Committee meets Aug 17-18 in Virginia (for two days of mid-course corrections, midway between our semi-annual Board meetings), a major initiative will be discussing the Fellowship's response to this burgeoning interest on campus. What is our best role? In addition to cheerleader, should we suggest curricula; can we supply adjunct faculty; how about ideas for field trips?

One of the tricky parts here is making sure of the invitation before blessing others with "our wisdom." There is no advice so little regarded as that which was never asked for.

There will be at least two parts to the Oversight Committee's consideration: a) What do we think the FIC—and by extension, intentional communities—can bring to the party; and b) What is the best way to test the waters for potential collaborations? In the end, just like with communities themselves, it will boil down to relationships and points of entree. We will be looking for the connections we already have to explore for potential partnerships. We will be looking for the intersection of our interests and theirs.

Here's an example of what I mean. This topic first appeared on FIC's radar as a result of a conversation between long-time FIC Board member Harvey Baker and Don Janzen, who is a former director of the Communal Studies Association (CSA). It came out that Don knew of a fresh program at Oberlin focused on sustainability and this piqued Harvey's interest as an Oberlin alumnus. When Oversight discussed this briefly on a recent conference call (long enough to agree to set it aside for the Aug 17-18 face-to-face meeting, where there would be adequate breathing room for a thorough and thoughtful discussion), mention of this appeared in the conference call minutes. Communities magazine Editor Chris Roth read the minutes and informed us that he personally knows David Orr, who is heading up the sustainability initiative through Oberlin's Environmental Studies Department. It happens that Chris' parents retired to Oberlin and David has been a dinner guest when Chris was visiting. He offered to either be a go-between or to set up a conversation. Bingo!

In my experience, this is far and away to best way to proceed. While the response to FIC's suggestions will ultimately have to rest on their own merits (and our ability to build a solid bridge between what we're excited to offer and what people like David Orr are excited to receive), the chance for a serious consideration tends to rest far more on the strength of one's connections. All too often, cold calls tend to result in cold responses. Chris, happily, is willing to supply us with exactly the kind of "warm" introduction we covet.

What's more, we probably have other connections like this that we don't even know about yet—both because we have only a foggy notion of the academic linkages within our circle, and because we are only now starting to collect information about which campuses have sustainability programs.

There are four main pathways to academia:

o Places where FIC folks went to college, and still have ties. Harvey's continuing connections with Oberlin is a good example.

o Colleges and universities where friends have become professors, administrators, or trustees.

o Professors we have met through our work in the Fellowship, perhaps through bumping into one another at conferences, or in supplying resources for students to use in classes focused on community living. Our connections with the CSA are a rich vein in this regard.

o Connections established with professors who teach courses touching on community living and have set up field trips to visit our communities.

While this won't provide us a personal inroad to all the campuses out there where sustainability is being explored, it'll get us started and it will be enough to experiment with what our role might be. And that will be enough of a plan for now. It's fundamentally flawed to map out a partnership very far in advance of your would-be partner having arrived at the same table for the first time. Either this will be something we do together, or it won't have legs.

In the interest of symmetry, it's appealing to proceed with a sustainability initiative that itself has a decent chance of being sustainable. Kinda obvious when you think about it.

My Summer of Sustainability, Part IV

This is my fourth entry in a six-part blog series on sustainability.

Sometimes all roads seem to point in one direction. This summer I've been having that experience with the concept of sustainability: assessing where we are now, what will be possible in 30 years, and how do we get from here to there.

The basic premise I'm working with is that humans are rapidly exhausting our supply of accessible resources, such that something has to give. That is, it is not even remotely possible that we can continue for another generation the materialistic lifestyle we're become accustomed to in the US—unless we're willing to forcibly deny the equitable distribution of what's left and to tolerate massive suffering elsewhere in service to the status quo. Rather than continuing the charade that underlies the bumper sticker "How did our oil get under their sand?", I've started looking at two questions: a) How to create a vibrant, satisfying lifestyle that uses only 10% of the resources that the average American is currently consuming; and b) How to peacefully navigate the social challenges that such a massive shift will require.

These questions affect me both on the personal level (how will I live, and what am I called to do to help society to a softer landing in the decades ahead) and on the professional level (what role should FIC play in education and preparation; what is my role as a process consultant to better prepare groups to handle what's coming).

When thinking about sustainability, I like the metaphor of a three-legged stool: there's a ecological leg, a social leg, and an economic leg—and you won't have a very stable piece of furniture unless you have three stout legs. I am interested in what it takes to develop strong legs, and also the integration of the whole, so that the stool will be a tool.

As this is a big, all-encompassing topic, I'm going to tackle it in a six-part series, roughly in the order in which I've been bumping into this conversation over the past two months. Here's the outline:

I. Proposal to build a working model of sustainability
II. The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World by Ted Trainer
III. Sustainability and Cohousing
IV. EDE Course at Dancing Rabbit in 2012
V. Increasing sustainability offerings on campus
VI. Transition Towns

• • •

EDE Course at Dancing Rabbit in 2012

My wife, Ma'ikwe, was part of a four-person team that taught the full Ecovillage Design Education curriculum for the first time in the United States. She, Zaida Amaral, Rich Ruster, and Robert Griffin did this in Albuquerque in 2007-08. Sadly, no else has done it since. Many have taught portions of the curriculum but the whole shebang has only been offered in the US the one time… so far.

Next summer, Ma'ikwe plans to deliver this four-course meal for a second time—at her home, Dancing Rabbit, June 30-Aug 5. The deadline to submit applications to be a part of the faculty for this course closed yesterday, and it was satisfying that so many who live in the tri-communities (Dancing Rabbit, Sandhill Farm, and Red Earth Farms—who all share the same zip code) put their hat in the ring. As the lead teacher (or GEESE, standing for Global Ecovillage Educators for a Sustainable Earth), Ma'ikwe will be making the call on who's selected for which roles and then submitting an application to GEN (Global Ecovillage Netwrok) in Sept, hoping to get the course fully authorized.

As GEN has conceived of it, the curriculum is divided into four major components, all of which interrelate: worldview, ecological, social, and economic. Among the most important choices that Ma'ikwe faces will be selecting the coordinators for each of the four dimensions. These people, in turn, will be responsible for choosing the specific topics to be taught in their area and by whom. The aim in each case will be to achieve a breadth of perspectives and a balance of voices and genders.

Even though we're only at the beginning stages, and the 37 days of total immersion are more than 10 months off, it's exciting to commit to a program that builds directly on Dancing Rabbit's intent to be a model of sustainability. All three of the tri-communities have an explicit outreach element in their mission, and this course will be our strongest effort yet to go beyond witnessing to teach the theory and inspiration of sustainability, based on what we're doing.

The beauty of offering this course in the tri-communities is that for many of the teaching points we'll be able to simultaneously offer the thinking and a practical demonstration—in some cases, with examples of how to apply the same principle with variations. We'll also be able to discuss many of the tough choices we've had to face over the years, balancing quality of life, reliance on technologies we cannot maintain fully ourselves, and the desire to minimize resource use.

For all those selected to be part of the delivery team, we'll be getting paid doing work that's both close to our hearts and close to home. How much better can it get?

If this goes well, Ma'ikwe hopes to offer this course on an annual basis. The question will not be whether we have a good enough venue, or a good enough faculty—it's be whether we have enough students. On the plus side, Dancing Rabbit is a prime attraction for people hungry for examples of communities pushing the envelope of resource-conscious self-sufficiency. In addition, most of the faculty will be local and $20/hour in salary goes a long way in northeast Missouri, where the cost of living is quite low.

On the challenging side, it's not easy for people to carve out 37 days. If you have the time by virtue of being a student, or a recent graduate who hasn't located regular employment, then you're less likely to have the financial reserves to be able to afford the course. If you have the time because you're retired, it's daunting to face the prospect of living in a tent smack in the middle of a hot and humid Missouri summer (you may have noticed that my state is a near homophone for "misery"—it's in summer that this occurs to me most frequently).

While Rutledge has become something of a destination for people seeking examples of sustainable rural living, it's not on the way to anywhere, and people don't tend to just wander in. You have to go there on purpose, and the EDE course will be a test of how many will find enough purpose to make the trek next summer. If this purpose pleases you, you can get more information by contacting Ma'ikwe: maikwe@solspace.net.

My Summer of Sustainability, Part III

Sometimes all roads seem to point in one direction. This summer I've been having that experience with the concept of sustainability: assessing where we are now, what will be possible in 30 years, and how do we get from here to there.

The basic premise I'm working with is that humans are rapidly exhausting our supply of accessible resources, such that something has to give. That is, it is not even remotely possible that we can continue for another generation the materialistic lifestyle we're become accustomed to in the US—unless we're willing to forcibly deny the equitable distribution of what's left and to tolerate massive suffering elsewhere in service to the status quo. Rather than continuing the charade that underlies the bumper sticker "How did our oil get under their sand?", I've started looking at two questions: a) How to create a vibrant, satisfying lifestyle that uses only 10% of the resources that the average American is currently consuming; and b) How to peacefully navigate the social challenges that such a massive shift will require.

These questions affect me both on the personal level (how will I live, and what am I called to do to help society to a softer landing in the decades ahead) and on the professional level (what role should FIC play in education and preparation; what is my role as a process consultant to better prepare groups to handle what's coming).

When thinking about sustainability, I like the metaphor of a three-legged stool: there's a ecological leg, a social leg, and an economic leg—and you won't have a very stable piece of furniture unless you have three stout legs. I am interested in what it takes to develop strong legs, and also the integration of the whole, so that the stool will be a tool.

As this is a big, all-encompassing topic, I'm going to tackle it in a six-part series, roughly in the order in which I've been bumping into this conversation over the past two months. Here's the outline:

I. Proposal to build a working model of sustainability
II. The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World by Ted Trainer
III. Sustainability and Cohousing
IV. EDE Course at Dancing Rabbit in 2012
V. Increasing sustainability offerings on campus
VI. Transition Towns

• • •

Sustainability and Cohousing

Cohousing is a kind of intentional community—one ring among many under the Big Top that is the Intentional Communities Movement, that the FIC strives to represent in an even-handed way. It is a particular design model that features clustered housing, a small footprint, parking on the periphery, housing that faces each other, a central common house that all members have access to, and slightly undersized units (with the idea that the occasional need for larger facilities can be more economically handled by relying on what's held in common).

Like most kinds of intentional community, cohousing groups are resident controlled, and have a strong commitment to both the environment and the quality of life for residents. There are perhaps 140 built cohousing groups in the US today with an additional hundred or so in various stages of development. It's a growing segment of the movement.

Going back to its inception in the late 1990s, the Cohousing Association of the US (Coho/US) has been holding national conferences. Since 2008 these have been annual events, held the weekend nearest the summer solstice (last June it was in DC; next June it will be in San Francisco). For years now their custom has been to offer pre-conference intensives in addition to the regular Friday-Sunday cornucopia of workshops, panels, and keynote addresses.

In 2010 Laura Fitch (from Pioneer Valley in Amherst MA) and Bryan Bowen (from Wild Sage in Boulder CO) put together a pre-conference offering on Sustainability. They proposed to offer this again in 2011, as a two-day workshop, and Ma'ikwe and I explored the possibility of collaborating with them on the delivery.

While the offering was ultimately cancelled (not enough registrations) the four of us sat down together for half a day on the Thursday morning before the conference opened to discuss in depth how we saw the topic of sustainability and its relationship to cohousing. Ross Chapin from Langley WA and Greg Sherwin from Boulder Creek Cohousing joined us as well. We had a stimulating conversation on the roof deck of Eastern Village, a cohousing development straddling the Silver Spring/DC border.

Laura & Bryan are both architects and the previous offering they put together understandably emphasized Green design and construction. While these are deservedly legitimate elements of sustainability, Ma'ikwe and I were advocating that more attention be given to the social and economic aspects, as sustainability is a broad topic.

Happily, Laura & Bryan were fine with this expansion of what could be covered. Even more impressive was that all six of us were willing to accept the analysis that the US population needed to aim for something like a 90% reduction in current resource use over the next generation in order to not exceed the limits of accessible resources (or condemn wide swaths of humanity to a life of misery because we were taking more than our share).

This was a watershed conversation in the context of cohousing, which is the portion of the Communities Movement that is most accessible to the mainstream—because it looks the least different from what people already know and typically asks residents to make the fewest lifestyle changes. While intentional communities as a whole are overwhelmingly progressive and Green in their politics and values, within the Movement cohousing presents as the materialistic end of the intentional communities spectrum.

Thus, when a cohousing project is built such that operational energy costs have been slashed in half (which is not uncommon), it's a good news, bad news situation. The good news is that that represents a terrific savings and an important step in the right direction. The bad news is that isn't nearly enough and we shouldn't be spending too much time patting each other on the back.

To be sure, some cohousing projects are achieving greater savings in resource use than some non-cohousing communities. However, in broad strokes, Ma'ikwe and I believe that there is an important role for intentional communities to lead the way in modeling how to manifest a high-quality life based on only 10% of current US resource consumption and we are not expecting dynamism of this magnitude to come from cohousing—unless that segment is willing to risk its carefully cultivated reputation as a reasonable choice for mainstream Americans.

Happily, there is no need (or benefit) to getting into a pissing contest about who's the most sustainable. We need a multiplicity of approaches, and everyone doing what they can to build a better world. It is important and valuable if cohousing only continues doing what it has already demonstrated great skill at: enticing dissatisfied mainstream folks into trying community living for the first time—it's my sense that the vast majority of people who get their first taste of community living in cohousing would not consider any other option at the outset.

This is a huge benefit. Perhaps it will be the ecovillages that pioneer what it means on a practical level to live on 90% less resources, and somewhere ahead we can establish a viable bridge between the new construction condo associations of cohousing and the strawbale, mud-plastered, and earthen floor adobe abodes of our future.

[Note: I'm not predicting that all future housing will be adobe; I'm only trying to graphically illustrate the distance that remains to be bridged. The lifestyle changes required of us will not be small.]

It does no good to ask anyone to take a larger step than they are ready for. Our job is to build a road from where we are to where we need to be, such that no one is afraid to step forward. The point is not how few the steps are; it's whether all the steps are visible and accessible.

Laura, Bryan, Ma'ikwe and I plan to cook up a robust and comprehensive pre-conference offering on Sustainability at the 2012 conference, based largely on the EDE curriculum created by the Global Ecovillage Network. Amplifying what I mean by that will be the focus of my next blog.

Or you can contact Coho/US now and see if you can register early for the Sustainability course—for all I know, operators may be standing by...

My Summer of Sustainability, Part II

Sometimes all roads seem to point in one direction. This summer I've been having that experience with the concept of sustainability: assessing where we are now, what will be possible in 30 years, and how do we get from here to there.

The basic premise I'm working with is that humans are rapidly exhausting our supply of accessible resources, such that something has to give. That is, it is not even remotely possible that we can continue for another generation the materialistic lifestyle we're become accustomed to in the US—unless we're willing to forcibly deny the equitable distribution of what's left and to tolerate massive suffering elsewhere in service to the status quo. Rather than continuing the charade that underlies the bumper sticker "How did our oil get under their sand?", I've started looking at two questions: a) How to create a vibrant, satisfying lifestyle that uses only 10% of the resources that the average American is currently consuming; and b) How to peacefully navigate the social challenges that such a massive shift will require.

These questions affect me both on the personal level (how will I live, and what am I called to do to help society to a softer landing in the decades ahead) and on the professional level (what role should FIC play in education and preparation; what is my role as a process consultant to better prepare groups to handle what's coming).

When thinking about sustainability, I like the metaphor of a three-legged stool: there's a ecological leg, a social leg, and an economic leg—and you won't have a very stable piece of furniture unless you have three stout legs. I am interested in what it takes to develop strong legs, and also the integration of the whole, so that the stool will be a tool.

As this is a big, all-encompassing topic, I'm going to tackle it in a six-part series, roughly in the order in which I've been bumping into this conversation over the past two months. Here's the outline:

I. Proposal to build a working model of sustainability
II. The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World by Ted Trainer
III. Sustainability and Cohousing
IV. EDE Course at Dancing Rabbit in 2012
V. Increasing sustainability offerings on campus
VI. Transition Towns

• • •

The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World by Ted Trainer

Trainer is an Australian and futurist who works at the University of South Wales and has been writing for a quarter century about sustainability and the need for drastic change in contemporary lifestyles. His most recent book was published in 2010 and I was given a copy to review for consideration of inclusion in the offerings of Community Bookshelf.

It is a big book (in imagination, not pagination—it's only 330 pages, counting the index) and I took a couple weeks to digest it, making notes as I went along. First of all, I struggled with it because it's poorly written and poorly edited. As a writer and editor myself, I'm a snob and it irritates me when authors are sloppy like this.

The argument is highly repetitive, the metaphors are wooden, overused, and often confusing—and it's not apparent that the text was ever copy edited. I had the sense that this work was just carelessly rushed to press, which is a shame because the message is important.

Moving on to the content, which I liked much better than the delivery, the essential argument of this book is that humanity is out of control and headed for a very rude awakening in the next 30 years unless we start doing something about it now. The something that Trainer advocates is embracing what he styles The Simpler Way, the essential elements of which I'll explain below.

Trainer comes across as a scientist who has done careful work in analyzing what resources it will take to sustain the current Western lifestyle (which developed countries have already achieved and which developing countries—notably China and India—still aspire to) into the decades ahead, based on projected population levels. This is not just a question of Peak Oil; it's also a question of Peak Water, Peak Timber, Peak Arable Land, Peak Greenhouse Gases, and taking a peek behind the curtain to glimpse the upcoming natural limits on many basic resources.

The challenge is of such magnitude that it will not be solved through minor adjustments, techno-fixes, or the miracle (mirage?) of supply side economics. Trainer makes a persuasive case for our needing to reinvent our culture, where we value conservation over consumption and are able to build vibrant, fulfilling lives based on consumption that is only 10% of current levels. This is huge, folks.

He postulates that federal governments will largely be irrelevant and that day-to-day decisions will need to be made overwhelmingly at the local level, where needs and conditions are best understood. He goes on to say that we'll need to move toward a much more cooperative culture (read less competitive) and that community and relationships will be the fundamental building blocks of a sustainable society. With less resources, we'll need to share to a much greater degree and hence the need for a more cooperative attitude.

Trainer does not believe that capitalism and the free market can lead us to anywhere but ruin (as the pursuit of profit is inimical with the objective of creating a sustainable or just future). In particular, Trainer points out that there are three key stakeholders who invariably possess little or no market power today: the poor, future generations, and non-human species. How can we manifest a decent future relying on an economic system that consistently short changes these segments?

I buy his analysis of the problem and the need for drastic change, and I agree with his prediction that we'll need to focus much more locally. That said, I am less sanguine about his prescription for how it will all work. Cooperation isn't for wimps.

Trainer blithely posits that anyone can be a good decision-maker and that well-intentioned locals should have no problem sorting things out sensibly (just look at what the Anarchists were able to achieve in Spain in the late '30s, or the bootstrapping accomplished by the Mondragon system in Basque for a more contemporary exemplar). I know better. I've been a process consultant to cooperative groups for the past 24 years and good intentions and correct analysis (assuming for the moment that a consensus on that is attainable) are not nearly enough to guarantee good results.

As I sat with Trainer's decentralized vision, it occurred to me that some local groups will be far more successful in making the transition to cooperative culture and high-functioning local operations than others. When I coupled that realization with the analysis that competitive cultures tend to squeeze out cooperative ones (reference Diamond in his seminal anthropological work, Guns, Germs, and Steel)—especially when the cooperative culture possesses something the other culture wants—it gave me pause. The journey to sustainability is going to be fraught with road hazards.

Trainer bravely suggests that we need to move from a market economy where monetary capital is accumulated, to a local economy where social capital is accumulated. While I like this picture, it's not at all clear to me how we'll get there. The market will not simply go away. Look how hard it is to get people to stop buying from Walmart, even after it's been well documented that that conglomerate is driving locally-owned businesses into bankruptcy, and quality of life is degraded when profits are siphoned away from where shoppers live, to reward faceless stockholders living elsewhere.

The power held by the rich will not evaporate overnight (it may, perhaps, be handed out for doing favors for the Party; but it is not handed out like party favors); political control will not pass seamlessly from US Senators to county commissioners.

What's more, the issues of mendacity and power abuse will not suddenly go away just because the scale shifts from national to local. While the stakes may be different, I don't believe that local politicians are inherently more trustworthy or less likely to be self-serving than national figures. For my money, we have still not done a decent job of creating positive models of cooperative leadership, and this will be a crucial step.

For the social part of his analysis, I think Trainer is whistling in the dark. On the positive side, he looks to both intentional communities and Transition Town initiatives (I'll have more to say about them in part VI of this series) as hopeful signs for a constructive social response, and I do, too—though there's plenty of road building ahead.

In short, while I think Trainer's writing is in transition (at least I hope he can do better), I think he's offered a powerful and useful framework for understanding the transition needed by our culture in order to achieve sustainability. Further, I think he's pointing us in the right direction by emphasizing cooperation, community, and relationships. While I expect a bumpier road on the social side than he, I think he's at least pointing out the right path.

I have devoted most of the last 25 years to better understanding the social road to sustainability and the FIC believes that's the singular gift of intentional communities to the wider society—learning how to tackle tough issues, getting everything out in the open, and not moving forward if you're going to leave people behind. While it's too early to tell whether we're learning enough fast enough, at least we have our oar in the water.

My Summer of Sustainability, Part I

Sometimes all roads seem to point in one direction. This summer I've been having that experience with the concept of sustainability: assessing where we are now, what will be possible in 30 years, and how do we get from here to there.

The basic premise I'm working with is that humans are rapidly exhausting our supply of accessible resources, such that something has to give. That is, it is not even remotely possible that we can continue for another generation the materialistic lifestyle we're become accustomed to in the US—unless we're willing to forcibly deny the equitable distribution of what's left and to tolerate massive suffering elsewhere in service to the status quo. Rather than continuing the charade that underlies the bumper sticker "How did our oil get under their sand?", I've started looking at two questions: a) How to create a vibrant, satisfying lifestyle that uses only 10% of the resources that the average American is currently consuming; and b) How to peacefully navigate the social challenges that such a massive shift will require.

These questions affect me both on the personal level (how will I live, and what am I called to do to help society to a softer landing in the decades ahead) and on the professional level (what role should FIC play in education and preparation; what is my role as a process consultant to better prepare groups to handle what's coming).

When thinking about sustainability, I like the metaphor of a three-legged stool: there's a ecological leg, a social leg, and an economic leg—and you won't have a very stable piece of furniture unless you have three stout legs. I am interested in what it takes to develop strong legs, and also the integration of the whole, so that the stool will be a tool.

As this is a big, all-encompassing topic, I'm going to tackle it in a six-part series, roughly in the order in which I've been bumping into this conversation over the past two months. Here's the outline:

I. Proposal to build a working model of sustainability
II. The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World by Ted Trainer
III. Sustainability and Cohousing
IV. EDE Course at Dancing Rabbit in 2012
V. Increasing sustainability offerings on campus
VI. Transition Towns

• • •

Proposal to build a working model of sustainability

Toward the end of May, FIC received an unsolicited communication from a guy with big plans. Inspired to help fund a grand experiment in sustainability, he hopes to create something that is big enough to be noticed—by the media, by academics, and by a curious public—and big enough to be fully featured and therefore inspiring as a replicable unit of a workable future. Appropriately enough, he's from Texas.

He has already pulled together nearly $1 million and is committed to generating five times that amount to underwrite his dream. He was approaching FIC as a potential partner to help clarify the vision, and to help with the nuts and bolts of manifesting it. After receiving his introductory email, we set up a phone date. Based on my subsequent report, the FIC Board is definitely intrigue by the possibilities, but it's early days and we're still at the draw-it-up-on-the-back-of-a-napkin phase.

FIC's strength is on the social side of sustainability, and I made a pitch for the Fellowship being given the job of creating the criteria by which candidates would be measured once an RFP was posted (one can only imagine how many proposals will crawl out of the woodwork with $4 million on the table), overseeing the selection process, and perhaps training the group selected in community living skills—aimed at thriving, not just surviving.

If we form a partnership, this project will give FIC a chance to showcase what it can do, and also a somewhat rare opportunity to be compensated for what we've largely been doing on a volunteer basis the past quarter century. (In other words, the administrative aspects of this project might be economically sustainable, not just nourishing to our psyches. It doesn't get any better than getting paid to do what you're passionate about.)

Fortunately, the benefactor is open to having this model be located anywhere in the US (it needn't be built in the Lone Star State). He wants something that could attract both rural and urban participants, and is close by a well-regarded university (so that their research and chronicling will carry weight). Fortunately, community is needed everywhere, so I'm not worried about the location. I'm more concerned with finding the right group.

As the conversations mature, I'll keep you posted on what happens.

The Calm After the Storm

Continuing my recent construction saga, I had a perfectly lovely weekend not working on Ma'ikwe's cistern. After storming the work site for seven of the previous nine days, forced marches were no longer needed, and thus no blocks were lifted nor any cement bags opened the last three days.

Once the backhoe arrived to dig out the site July 14 (history buffs may note that we liberated the project from its clay incarceration on the 222nd anniversary of Bastille Day), we pushed the pedal to the metal in an effort to complete our below grade work before there was another cave-in. This meant battling temperatures in the high 90s on a daily basis, yet we reached an important milestone last Friday afternoon when we completed surface bonding the walls—which makes them both watertight and strong enough to withstand backfilling.

Everyone on the crew was relieved that there would be no cistern work over the weekend, and it was interesting to note the release we felt when a thunderstorm rumbled into northeast Missouri Friday evening. Having weathered the storm of construction, we were uniquely poised to appreciate Nature's storm right afterward.

There was no question that our gardens and crops could use the water. After a wet spring we've received less than one inch of total precipitation this month, and nothing significant since a half-inch shower July 12 (to say we're dry would be like noting that Roy Orbison could sing a little). Yet if the rain had arrived any earlier we would have been holding our collective breath about another collapse of the excavated walls—and the horror of starting over again.

So much of country living is about working with what the weather gives you. While it seemed we were fighting Nature by undertaking concrete work in the elevated heat indices of mid-July, we actually found the perfect 10-day window to complete a project that absolutely needed dryness. Whew!

There is something exquisitely sweet about a rain that arrives right after the hay is in the barn. Not only do you get to enjoy the immediate drop in temperatures, you also get to exhale the tensions you'd been carrying for days hoping that it wouldn't rain. The thing you'd been fearing is now suddenly transformed into a joy, as simply as excising the "h" from threat to yield treat.

It's the same for us each fall when we're trying to allow our sorghum crop (one third of Sandhill's income harvested in three week rush) maximum time to ripen, while not losing the crop through frost damage. We get the best yield if the seed is dead ripe, yet we're gambling marginal increases against the possibility of catastrophic loss if we're caught by the mercury dropping to 28 degrees or lower with the crop still standing. (A hard freeze bursts the cells walls of the cane and when temperatures rise again, the oxygen exposure can sour the juice beyond saleability within 24 hours.)

Every day we carefully interpret the tea leaves of the long-range weather forecast and make decisions about how long we dare wait before sending the campesinos out into the fields with machetes. When, finally, the crop is all in, there is a palpable relief that invariably accompanies the first hard freeze. With the sorghum in the barrel we're no longer vulnerable, and can appreciate how the frost puts our summer garden out of its misery, knocks back the flies, and signals the advent of the heating season (think cups of coffee with a good book sitting near the woodstove).

When you farm, you necessarily dance with the weather. However, as a partner, the weather is notoriously capricious, and it's nice to get through a whole play list now and then without any missteps or anyone cutting in.

Grace in the Heat of the Moment

I just finished reading Richard Russo's That Old Cape Magic. (I had read Bridge of Sighs earlier this year and loved it.) While not a major work, it's a sensitive and humorous exploration of one man's journey to understand and distance himself from the influence of his quirky, dysfunctional parents. In the end—at his daughter's wedding, no less—he comes to accept that influence, and to recognize the love that was buried deep within the snobbery and sarcasm, as a necessary step in his metamorphosis to becoming a lovable person himself. It's a story of middle age discovery.

As the protagonist was forever stopping to analyze the deeper meanings of conversations (whether they were any or not), this past week I was getting into the habit myself. In the book, Russo describes how an otherwise pleasant and connected moment between the main character and his wife disintegrates into a cascading sequence of brittle missteps that by the end of a single day has blossomed into the start of a separation that leads to months of misery and second guessing.

How do such rivulets of misunderstanding and meanness so quickly erode relationship until there exists an unbridgeable chasm between people? Today I want to write about a moment of such caliber that had great potential for spiraling out of control but didn't.

It happened this morning as Ma'ikwe and I were gearing up for a day of surface bonding the walls of her cistern. This was an important accomplishment in that it makes the cistern watertight and strong enough to be safely backfilled. We had been working hard to reach this step as quickly as possible, lest a rain cause a cave-in that necessitated a third excavation of the hole.

It was the fourth day in a row we'd been working on this project and the seventh day in the last nine. Temperatures haves consistently been in the 90s, reaching triple digits the day before. The crew had been working with heavy materials in the hot sun every day and we were all looking forward to wrapping up this phase of the construction. On top of the accumulated exhaustion of the labor itself, no one had been sleeping all that well in the blistering July heat, further diminishing our reserves of grace.

In addition to these general stressers, Ma'ikwe had just broken a week-long fast the day before and had to be careful about what energetic claims she accepted in her weakened condition. All of which is to say that there were a number of reasons to suspect that "simple" informational exchanges this morning might not be that simple.

I was over at Ma'ikwe's around 7:30 am, after having walked the three miles from Sandhill, and our first order of business was figuring out how to consistently measure the right proportions of ingredients for 50-lb batches of the surface bonding mix. There are eight ingredients:
portland cement
fine sand
hydrated lime
3/4-inch glass fibers
calcium chloride
calcium stearate
latex admix
water

Three of the ingredients are relatively light and exotic (calcium stearate, calcium chloride, and the glass fibers). It was important that they be added in the proper amounts and I had neglected to review how we were going to do this before yesterday morning. So we needed to sort this out in short order.

Unfortunately, Ma'ikwe doesn't have a reliable scale. Fortunately, I had anticipated this necessity when I had purchased the ingredients 15 months ago, and had taken the time to measure (on a scale back at Sandhill) what we needed per batch of the three exotics mentioned above. I had even located a dedicated container for each of the three and sealed it inside the bag with each ingredient. So things were looking up.

However, here's where it got tricky. On the measuring containers for the glass fibers and for the calcium chloride, I had indicated with a black marker how high to fill the container for a batch load. But when Ma'ikwe looked at the container for measuring the calcium stearate, she didn't see a fill line indicated. Because this ingredient cakes easily, the measuring container was completely dusted in calcium stearate and it was hard to see the sides. Thinking there may be a black line that wasn't visible, Ma'ikwe asked, "Is the black line on the other containers on the inside or the outside?" She wanted to know where to look for that elusive fill line.

Not having tuned into the caking problem on the sides of the stearate container, I wasn't able to make any sense out of this question at all. I figured that there was no fill line because we were supposed to load it to the top. I thought we were all set with the three exotics and could switch our focus on how to measure the hydrated lime, which was our one remaining question mark. Not understanding why it mattered whether the black lines were on the outside or inside, I gave Ma'ikwe a blank look.

Actually, it was worse than that. The look conveyed a unstable concoction of confusion and irritation. (We needed to be moving along and here we were being held up by a question that seemed totally irrelevant.) While I'm not sure what I'm doing with my face in such moments, nor am I always conscious that I'm doing it, there's no doubt that this message was sent and Ma'ikwe was not happy receiving it. Responding to my judgment, she repeated her question with attitude and I knew immediately I was on thin ice. While I still didn't know what was under the ice, I knew I could fall through at any moment.

This was exactly like some of the key dialog moments in That Old Cape Magic, where there's as much internal analysis about what's happening in real time as there are actual words being said. The best I could manage in the moment was recognition of the fog and the danger: "I don't understand why you're asking that question, and I feel that any response I give in this moment is likely to be wrong."

From here we got enough information exposed to make sense of the other's position and could back away from the brink without falling into the abyss. Things got better and both the cistern walls and our relationship got surface bonded by the end of the day.

On the one hand, it's frightening how easily conversations between intimate partners can go off the rails (often because one person is making assumptions that seem obvious to them yet remain clouded to the other, and we are unguarded in our reactivity) and flare ups can occur. On the other, I consider such moments as proof of the everyday miracle of love. There was ample excuse for that early bad exchange to escalate into ongoing nasty treatment throughout the day. Yet it didn't happen. Instead, we recalibrated, forgave, and starting work together again.

While I'd rather not being testing our relationship so much, my partner's resilience is damn impressive.