I hear people praying for the post-petroleum age,
Some fear the potential dehumanization it may bring,
And others doubt that this civilization has any humanity at all—
Except for those small moments,
Brief situations that fall through the cracks,
Challenging the foundations, and sprouting,
Breaking the sidewalks into little pieces,
Listening to it crumble, as the birds sing like a friend’s mother
And I—More and more, I know nothing but layers of complexity,
Wandering through the woods, searching for Chaga,
Sacred birch, ancient mushroom, parasitic healer,
Drinking the black earth tea, I glimpse real union,
Two trees, each on their own rock chimney,
Over a wild cliff, they graft together,
And suddenly, I remember:
The best place to store meat is in your neighbor’s belly,
I sit and wonder if the tree could grow around my hand,
Like the character in my comrade’s mythical imagination,
But patience has been incompatible with all the caffeine,
And nicotine, and money, and industrial being,
So, I must flee to the Allegheny forest for freedom,
And pray for that post-petroleum age,
And pray and pray, and fear, and doubt, and listen,
Because cracks in the pavement allow my soul to breath.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tough as a Black Locust
The Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) long used as fence posts for its strong, rot-resistant and durable properties is the feature of today’s post. The black locust is spreading around the world’s temperate climate zones and in some places is considered invasive. The black locust has paired thorns, white flowers, 2-6 bean pods, compound leaves, 3 bud scars, and distinct barks that are deeply furrowed into long rough forking ridges. It is short lived, medium height (40’-80’), and can spread by rapidly sprouting from its stump (coppicing), a property that makes it a good candidate for firewood (but be careful, it is known to spark violently).
Toxicity, Food, and Medicine:
The locust can be poisonous to livestock and horses, but is a wildlife food source to pheasants, mourning doves, bobwhites, cottontail rabbits, snowshoe hairs, wild turkey, and deer.
The tree is reported to be toxic to humans, but the toxins break down when boiled for over 20 minutes.
According to herbs2000.com: the seeds and seed pods taste sweet after being cooked; “The peel of the fruits or berries is also used to prepare a potent, narcotizing and heady beverage;” the bark has been chewed to induce vomiting and to treat toothaches (be careful, the bark is the most toxic part of the plant); “When ingested, the leaves of the tree are able to enhance the secretion and flow of bile as well as soothe the aggravated organs. In addition to these, the juice extracted from the leaves help to combat or restrain viruses.”
The blossoms are used as vanilla flavor substitute, due to a substance called piperonal, and are used in making drinks, jams, and pancakes. Wildman Steve Brill uses the blossoms in a homemade ice cream recipe. The blossoms possess anti-spasmodic, diuretic, laxative and emollient (aptitude to soothe) properties. The flowers have also been reported to “contain an anti-tumor or tumor combating chemical called benzoaldehyde.”
History:
The black locust was the tree used in the original log cabins at
The black locust has a long history in the WV coalfields. Millions of them were used as mine props, structurally supporting underground mines.
Strength:
The wood is tough! The woody cylinder is almost all heartwood, always the strongest part of a tree. It is the stiffest tree in North America, shrinks least when dried, and is the most durable hardwood (2 ½ times that of the white oak). It has the highest fuel value of any American tree, according to Peattie, “being almost the equal, per cord at 20% moisture content, of a ton of anthracite coal.”
Miscellaneous:
It has the peculiar feature of folding up its leaves during the night, a property that was once thought to conserve moisture.
It is a good pioneer species that is planted for shelter belts, and to prevent erosion, including on old strip-mines. The tree can handle rough soils because it has nitrogen-fixing properties. Flavonoids in the heartwood allow the wood to last over 100 years in soil. It is shade-intolerant, pollinated by insects and makes good bird and moth habitat.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Part 1: Entitlement & Modern Industrial Life
Part 1 of Diminishing Entitlement at the End of Empire Essay
Empire Makes People Too Comfortable:
Deep change starts with honesty. Folks need to evaluate what exactly industrial civilization is, and how it affects our being and place in the world. I’m not going to spend a lot of time doing this because a lot of other smart people have already done a great job developing this analysis. If you don’t have an understanding of how structurally flawed, oppressive, and unsustainable this system is, there are plenty of places to look to gain that understanding, not least among them a truthful reflection upon your personal life and how it connects to the world’s problems.
Industrial civilization has been described as a linear progress trap, a pyramid scheme and a cancer—all fitting descriptions. It is a way of life that is based on unrestrained consumption and a total denial of any real world limitations. It is a way of organizing human communities so that they are based on extractive economies (taking from the land and not giving back) and class stratification (inequality as people compete over climbing up the ladder and rationalize taking advantage of each other). The simplest way to understand industrial civilization is that it epitomizes Empire—that really awful way of living that is dependent upon theft, violence, and environmental devastation. If you don’t understand how empire works, take a moment and try really hard to imagine yourself in the shoes of an Afghani villager whose town was just bombed by a US drone attack. Imagine the people you love raped and murdered. Image the places you love destroyed. That is how empires work.
The problem is that this horrible way of living has given the privileged minority an absurdly high sense of entitlement that makes people very comfortable and complacent. Once that entitlement has become normalized people generally behave like spoiled children—they have high expectations, are very demanding, and can’t rationalize the need to change what they have become accustomed to. Since the nature of an empire is to exploit other people’s homes the comfortable consumers don’t have to see the damage and destruction first hand. This makes it easy to ignore.
When in Rome…Sell Your Soul
In order to make an honest assessment of this form of human society, and how we fit in to it, I think it is important to not have a distorted or romanticized view of “the people.” Just like it would be unrealistic and inappropriate to glorify an indigenous person as the “noble savage” it would likewise be naïve to embrace some overly simplified populace idea of “the people.” Reality is much more complex than that and personal identity is much more integrated into society’s vast array of structures and institutions. A general rule about “the people” though: given the opportunity to do so, people in this culture sell out. The people in our culture are by and large not motivated by community-oriented concerns, serious convictions to justice and beliefs in creating a better future, Jesus’ golden rule, or any other value system that would create an alternative to ruthless, empire living. Sure, some people care, but their concern is second to paying their bills and maintaining their entitlement.
There are exceptions—and I can’t stress how important they are—but our cultural ethos is generally shallow, selfish, and indulgent. That’s just how an empire functions. It creates citizens who are shallow, selfish and indulgent, and pats itself on the back for doing so. It’s tragic and hard to process, but I think it would be dishonest to romanticize the character and motivations of people in this society, it being the largest and most powerful empire the world has ever known. It’s not that human nature is inherently flawed or that people in our society are particularly evil, it’s just that—and this is the key idea—civilized people’s entitlement will generally increase to the amount of wealth and resources they can gain access to—and whatever level that is, they will rationalize a good self-justification for why they deserve that amount of entitlement.
Case and point: Take the average working-class man, the type who works hard for his money, unlike those rich sons-of-bitches on Wall Street or those lazy hippies. Then, give him a winning lottery ticket for $50 million, and watch how fast he changes his tune about who deserves what in life. Rare exceptions aside, the money will be spent in ways just as superficial, greedy and unhealthy as the wealth blown by the ruling class. Empire: When in Rome, do as the Romans.
In summary: Industrial civilized people like to be spoiled by comfort and increasing resource consumption. It is normalized behavior and it is rare for them to voluntarily decrease their entitlement and not move up the consumption ladder. The entire premise of industrial civilization is to spoil the minority upper and middle classes, who with lots of help (generally access to wealth and power) spend their lives climbing the ladder. The ruthless and violent hyper-militarism and injustice that all empires rely on is inseparable from the comfortable lives of those people higher up the ladder who consume the greater share of the earth’s resources. The costs and consequences of industrial civilization are externalized upon those lower down the ladder, and upon future generations. This situation is impossible to change if the entitlement of the privileged is not decreased, one way or another.
Growing Entitlement = Freedom (& Slavery)
It is hard to convince the privileged citizen’s of empire that they need to decrease their sense of entitlement because increasing entitlement to resource consumption is really what this system means by freedom. Freedom equals slavery, for sure—but even more to the point, freedom equals economic growth. When people indoctrinated with our culture’s value system say “freedom,” they mean free-market expansion. This is the basis of the American Dream. The more the market grows the more options we get and the freer we are, right? Economic growth is the highest good because it means more and more people can climb the ladder.
What the citizens of empire forget, or ignore, is that the growth is dependent upon cheaper labor (slavery) and more resources (extraction), hence empire’s close and necessary companion colonialism. It is a myth that the entire world can be middle class if we all embrace capitalism. The only potential state of equality is one absent of the civilized economic scheme. Freedom = economic growth? It’s kind of like how we freed the Iraqi’s, and a lot of other “developing” nations over the years. We don’t have the largest military budget in the history of the world after all, because we love democratic decision-making processes; it’s because other people don’t voluntarily donate their resources and labor to the empire.
Since the beginning of the modern historical era democracy has been a pretentious joke, the charming tag-along to its bullying big brother who has really been in charge, free-market capitalism. “Democratic participation” has always been the bone that’s thrown to seduce people who are upset by the mafia-like essence of this system. If you don’t like the system, you can work to change it, right? But the change never happens—because, as long as enough table scraps and spoils of war are kicked down the ladder so enough people can sell out (the carrot), this system gets renewed generation after generation. And at times, particularly when the ever-expanding economy is in a downward swing, state violence in the name of security can be used to put down rebellion (the stick). The entire game has nothing to do with genuine political or social freedoms and it never has. The reproduction cycle of empire thrives on people consenting to this system because the “haves” confuse their entitlement with freedom, while the “have-nots” are left with the very un-free options of (a) play along and try to climb up the ladder, or (b) risk your life rebelling. And since risking one’s life isn’t a very favorable option, people usually submit and sell out if given the opportunity.
If you doubt that capitalism’s unrestrained entitlement and greed are the engine that haven driven this culture from the start—as opposed to political accountability and personal liberty—ask yourself the following: Was this nation founded by genocidal slaves-owners who wasted no time raping the continent of it’s abundance and established the most powerful empire the world’s ever known, or was it founded by innocent political refuges who just wanted to escape oppressive circumstances to live in peace and quiet?
How about this one—according to our culture’s value system, what is worth more: one billion dollars of resources, or a healthy, sustainable local community? What do you think most Americans would choose if given that choice? As long as the resources are from someone else’s land and destroy someone else’s home, I think the answer is obvious. Excessive entitlement and greed trump social integrity and democratic tendencies not just because of a few greedy corporations and corrupt politicians (although they certainly help), but because they are the soulless anti-values at the center of any system of civilized economics. They are the rotten essence of the American Dream, and the entire industrial civilization it is rooted in.
Always One Step Behind Our Appetites
Before moving on I want to make one last point about our modern sense of entitlement and what it means to become acclimatized to such a destructive way of life. Even if all the people in our culture somehow did muster up the willpower, thoughtfulness and integrity to not indulge in the excesses of empire, maintaining the necessities of life alone through industrial civilization means keeping this system in tack, and keeping people dependent upon it.
For starters, we need to question—with an extraordinary amount of self-criticism—what is covered by “the basics.” One of the funny things about having an ever-expanding sense of entitlement is that people get very confused about how they define wants and needs. So people need to put a roof over their family’s head and food on the table, right? Does “food on the table” mean bananas in temperate climates and non-preserved tomatoes in the middle of winter? Are any of the products of modern, industrial agriculture really necessities? Does “a roof over their family’s head” justify houses that average 2,349 square feet? Even though energy efficiency has made great gains in recent years, the average house in 1950 used less energy than the average house today, simply because homes have more than doubled in size and have more unnecessary electricity-consuming devices. That’s the problem with a culture hell bent on increasing entitlement—even if you become more efficient per unit of resource consumed, we are always one step behind our gluttonous appetite.
George Monbiot makes a worthwhile point in calling attention to what he has coined “love miles”—the miles we spend in fuel consumption visiting our friends and family who don’t live in our local communities. Most people would consider it essential, a form of emotional necessity (understandably so), to have access to industrial transportation in order to visit their loved ones. Yet, as Monbiot points out, the vast majority of the people in the world will never fly, and if only a small minority in the privileged world continue to do so in order to visit loved ones then one of the most environmentally devastating practices in the world will continue unabated.
With a civilized industrial system that is so inherently damaging and exploitive, even actions considered “necessity,” or behavior motivated “by love,” are doomed to partake in the destruction of our planet and the oppression of the vast majority of Earth’s inhabitants. This system is fucked; it cannot be reformed. It is based on violence, coercion, indulgence, greed, and brings out the worst in humanity, offering economic incentives to those who sell their souls. If we are unwilling to decrease our sense of entitlement and revolutionize how we sustain ourselves on this planet we don’t have the right to pretend we care about our children’s future—it’s about time we admit this to ourselves.
Empire Makes People Too Comfortable:
Deep change starts with honesty. Folks need to evaluate what exactly industrial civilization is, and how it affects our being and place in the world. I’m not going to spend a lot of time doing this because a lot of other smart people have already done a great job developing this analysis. If you don’t have an understanding of how structurally flawed, oppressive, and unsustainable this system is, there are plenty of places to look to gain that understanding, not least among them a truthful reflection upon your personal life and how it connects to the world’s problems.
Industrial civilization has been described as a linear progress trap, a pyramid scheme and a cancer—all fitting descriptions. It is a way of life that is based on unrestrained consumption and a total denial of any real world limitations. It is a way of organizing human communities so that they are based on extractive economies (taking from the land and not giving back) and class stratification (inequality as people compete over climbing up the ladder and rationalize taking advantage of each other). The simplest way to understand industrial civilization is that it epitomizes Empire—that really awful way of living that is dependent upon theft, violence, and environmental devastation. If you don’t understand how empire works, take a moment and try really hard to imagine yourself in the shoes of an Afghani villager whose town was just bombed by a US drone attack. Imagine the people you love raped and murdered. Image the places you love destroyed. That is how empires work.
The problem is that this horrible way of living has given the privileged minority an absurdly high sense of entitlement that makes people very comfortable and complacent. Once that entitlement has become normalized people generally behave like spoiled children—they have high expectations, are very demanding, and can’t rationalize the need to change what they have become accustomed to. Since the nature of an empire is to exploit other people’s homes the comfortable consumers don’t have to see the damage and destruction first hand. This makes it easy to ignore.
When in Rome…Sell Your Soul
In order to make an honest assessment of this form of human society, and how we fit in to it, I think it is important to not have a distorted or romanticized view of “the people.” Just like it would be unrealistic and inappropriate to glorify an indigenous person as the “noble savage” it would likewise be naïve to embrace some overly simplified populace idea of “the people.” Reality is much more complex than that and personal identity is much more integrated into society’s vast array of structures and institutions. A general rule about “the people” though: given the opportunity to do so, people in this culture sell out. The people in our culture are by and large not motivated by community-oriented concerns, serious convictions to justice and beliefs in creating a better future, Jesus’ golden rule, or any other value system that would create an alternative to ruthless, empire living. Sure, some people care, but their concern is second to paying their bills and maintaining their entitlement.
There are exceptions—and I can’t stress how important they are—but our cultural ethos is generally shallow, selfish, and indulgent. That’s just how an empire functions. It creates citizens who are shallow, selfish and indulgent, and pats itself on the back for doing so. It’s tragic and hard to process, but I think it would be dishonest to romanticize the character and motivations of people in this society, it being the largest and most powerful empire the world has ever known. It’s not that human nature is inherently flawed or that people in our society are particularly evil, it’s just that—and this is the key idea—civilized people’s entitlement will generally increase to the amount of wealth and resources they can gain access to—and whatever level that is, they will rationalize a good self-justification for why they deserve that amount of entitlement.
Case and point: Take the average working-class man, the type who works hard for his money, unlike those rich sons-of-bitches on Wall Street or those lazy hippies. Then, give him a winning lottery ticket for $50 million, and watch how fast he changes his tune about who deserves what in life. Rare exceptions aside, the money will be spent in ways just as superficial, greedy and unhealthy as the wealth blown by the ruling class. Empire: When in Rome, do as the Romans.
In summary: Industrial civilized people like to be spoiled by comfort and increasing resource consumption. It is normalized behavior and it is rare for them to voluntarily decrease their entitlement and not move up the consumption ladder. The entire premise of industrial civilization is to spoil the minority upper and middle classes, who with lots of help (generally access to wealth and power) spend their lives climbing the ladder. The ruthless and violent hyper-militarism and injustice that all empires rely on is inseparable from the comfortable lives of those people higher up the ladder who consume the greater share of the earth’s resources. The costs and consequences of industrial civilization are externalized upon those lower down the ladder, and upon future generations. This situation is impossible to change if the entitlement of the privileged is not decreased, one way or another.
Growing Entitlement = Freedom (& Slavery)
It is hard to convince the privileged citizen’s of empire that they need to decrease their sense of entitlement because increasing entitlement to resource consumption is really what this system means by freedom. Freedom equals slavery, for sure—but even more to the point, freedom equals economic growth. When people indoctrinated with our culture’s value system say “freedom,” they mean free-market expansion. This is the basis of the American Dream. The more the market grows the more options we get and the freer we are, right? Economic growth is the highest good because it means more and more people can climb the ladder.
What the citizens of empire forget, or ignore, is that the growth is dependent upon cheaper labor (slavery) and more resources (extraction), hence empire’s close and necessary companion colonialism. It is a myth that the entire world can be middle class if we all embrace capitalism. The only potential state of equality is one absent of the civilized economic scheme. Freedom = economic growth? It’s kind of like how we freed the Iraqi’s, and a lot of other “developing” nations over the years. We don’t have the largest military budget in the history of the world after all, because we love democratic decision-making processes; it’s because other people don’t voluntarily donate their resources and labor to the empire.
Since the beginning of the modern historical era democracy has been a pretentious joke, the charming tag-along to its bullying big brother who has really been in charge, free-market capitalism. “Democratic participation” has always been the bone that’s thrown to seduce people who are upset by the mafia-like essence of this system. If you don’t like the system, you can work to change it, right? But the change never happens—because, as long as enough table scraps and spoils of war are kicked down the ladder so enough people can sell out (the carrot), this system gets renewed generation after generation. And at times, particularly when the ever-expanding economy is in a downward swing, state violence in the name of security can be used to put down rebellion (the stick). The entire game has nothing to do with genuine political or social freedoms and it never has. The reproduction cycle of empire thrives on people consenting to this system because the “haves” confuse their entitlement with freedom, while the “have-nots” are left with the very un-free options of (a) play along and try to climb up the ladder, or (b) risk your life rebelling. And since risking one’s life isn’t a very favorable option, people usually submit and sell out if given the opportunity.
If you doubt that capitalism’s unrestrained entitlement and greed are the engine that haven driven this culture from the start—as opposed to political accountability and personal liberty—ask yourself the following: Was this nation founded by genocidal slaves-owners who wasted no time raping the continent of it’s abundance and established the most powerful empire the world’s ever known, or was it founded by innocent political refuges who just wanted to escape oppressive circumstances to live in peace and quiet?
How about this one—according to our culture’s value system, what is worth more: one billion dollars of resources, or a healthy, sustainable local community? What do you think most Americans would choose if given that choice? As long as the resources are from someone else’s land and destroy someone else’s home, I think the answer is obvious. Excessive entitlement and greed trump social integrity and democratic tendencies not just because of a few greedy corporations and corrupt politicians (although they certainly help), but because they are the soulless anti-values at the center of any system of civilized economics. They are the rotten essence of the American Dream, and the entire industrial civilization it is rooted in.
Always One Step Behind Our Appetites
Before moving on I want to make one last point about our modern sense of entitlement and what it means to become acclimatized to such a destructive way of life. Even if all the people in our culture somehow did muster up the willpower, thoughtfulness and integrity to not indulge in the excesses of empire, maintaining the necessities of life alone through industrial civilization means keeping this system in tack, and keeping people dependent upon it.
For starters, we need to question—with an extraordinary amount of self-criticism—what is covered by “the basics.” One of the funny things about having an ever-expanding sense of entitlement is that people get very confused about how they define wants and needs. So people need to put a roof over their family’s head and food on the table, right? Does “food on the table” mean bananas in temperate climates and non-preserved tomatoes in the middle of winter? Are any of the products of modern, industrial agriculture really necessities? Does “a roof over their family’s head” justify houses that average 2,349 square feet? Even though energy efficiency has made great gains in recent years, the average house in 1950 used less energy than the average house today, simply because homes have more than doubled in size and have more unnecessary electricity-consuming devices. That’s the problem with a culture hell bent on increasing entitlement—even if you become more efficient per unit of resource consumed, we are always one step behind our gluttonous appetite.
George Monbiot makes a worthwhile point in calling attention to what he has coined “love miles”—the miles we spend in fuel consumption visiting our friends and family who don’t live in our local communities. Most people would consider it essential, a form of emotional necessity (understandably so), to have access to industrial transportation in order to visit their loved ones. Yet, as Monbiot points out, the vast majority of the people in the world will never fly, and if only a small minority in the privileged world continue to do so in order to visit loved ones then one of the most environmentally devastating practices in the world will continue unabated.
With a civilized industrial system that is so inherently damaging and exploitive, even actions considered “necessity,” or behavior motivated “by love,” are doomed to partake in the destruction of our planet and the oppression of the vast majority of Earth’s inhabitants. This system is fucked; it cannot be reformed. It is based on violence, coercion, indulgence, greed, and brings out the worst in humanity, offering economic incentives to those who sell their souls. If we are unwilling to decrease our sense of entitlement and revolutionize how we sustain ourselves on this planet we don’t have the right to pretend we care about our children’s future—it’s about time we admit this to ourselves.
Intro: Diminishing Entitlement at the End of Empire
Diminishing Entitlement at the End of Empire:
Why We Need Real Limits If We Are Going To Make The Necessary Transitions
“America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
“Crises are caused by people who don’t want to do anything for themselves.”
-Bill Mollison
Introduction:
It is obvious by this late in the game that our society is addicted to this all-consuming, growth-driven, extraction machine called industrial civilization. This monstrosity grants us a sense of entitlement that surpasses that of the divine monarchs of antiquity, allowing us to consume far beyond our fair share of the planet’s resources, and without giving anything back to the land. Our over-population and bloated consumption capacity both continue to grow, and with the slightest sign of economic slowdown this culture’s mantra becomes: by any means necessary, keep this thing going. After all, our “quality of life” and “livelihood” depend on it.
The truth is our ancestors sold off (or were robbed of) any healthy land-based living ethics they had long ago, and, although a fringe minority are conserving and/or creating dynamic low-input life support systems, we currently lack an adequate rehabilitation program for this destructive way of life. Our lead foot remains on the accelerator, and as distant as breakdown and collapse may seem after we’ve been so comfortable for so long, the prospect of making a meaningful and necessary transition is even more distant and unrealistic. The amount of change we need is not going to come from liberal/progressive politics, financial reforms and legal regulations, a retrofitted “green” industrial economy, or any institution that remotely resembles modern, western governance—that much is clear.
What we need is a truly grassroots revolution; not the type where the privileged buy a little token change, corporations greenwash new spectacles, and the non-profit industrial complex organizes people to pressure the Big Government to put a little restraint on it’s friends who run the Even Bigger Corporate Apparatus. The time has come for a grassroots effort where local communities are transformed to actually live like local communities, shaking off the chains of servitude and reliance in order to establish real autonomy and independence from this global exploitation racket. If these changes don’t happen voluntarily, climate change, peak oil, mass extinction, resource scarcity, global war, and other severe consequences will cause us to scale back population and consumption anyways, with greater human suffering and ecological catastrophe along the way.
It’s to ask ourselves: What would it mean to create a local community that is not dependent upon the inevitably unaccountable higher-ups and the greed-heads who are only too happy to sell off the future for a quick buck? How much do we need to transform our day-to-day living practices and the entitlement that anxiously rests at the heart of modern identity? In essence, what would our liberation look like? What would it take to create a healthy post-industrial culture?
Why We Need Real Limits If We Are Going To Make The Necessary Transitions
“America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
“Crises are caused by people who don’t want to do anything for themselves.”
-Bill Mollison
Introduction:
It is obvious by this late in the game that our society is addicted to this all-consuming, growth-driven, extraction machine called industrial civilization. This monstrosity grants us a sense of entitlement that surpasses that of the divine monarchs of antiquity, allowing us to consume far beyond our fair share of the planet’s resources, and without giving anything back to the land. Our over-population and bloated consumption capacity both continue to grow, and with the slightest sign of economic slowdown this culture’s mantra becomes: by any means necessary, keep this thing going. After all, our “quality of life” and “livelihood” depend on it.
The truth is our ancestors sold off (or were robbed of) any healthy land-based living ethics they had long ago, and, although a fringe minority are conserving and/or creating dynamic low-input life support systems, we currently lack an adequate rehabilitation program for this destructive way of life. Our lead foot remains on the accelerator, and as distant as breakdown and collapse may seem after we’ve been so comfortable for so long, the prospect of making a meaningful and necessary transition is even more distant and unrealistic. The amount of change we need is not going to come from liberal/progressive politics, financial reforms and legal regulations, a retrofitted “green” industrial economy, or any institution that remotely resembles modern, western governance—that much is clear.
What we need is a truly grassroots revolution; not the type where the privileged buy a little token change, corporations greenwash new spectacles, and the non-profit industrial complex organizes people to pressure the Big Government to put a little restraint on it’s friends who run the Even Bigger Corporate Apparatus. The time has come for a grassroots effort where local communities are transformed to actually live like local communities, shaking off the chains of servitude and reliance in order to establish real autonomy and independence from this global exploitation racket. If these changes don’t happen voluntarily, climate change, peak oil, mass extinction, resource scarcity, global war, and other severe consequences will cause us to scale back population and consumption anyways, with greater human suffering and ecological catastrophe along the way.
It’s to ask ourselves: What would it mean to create a local community that is not dependent upon the inevitably unaccountable higher-ups and the greed-heads who are only too happy to sell off the future for a quick buck? How much do we need to transform our day-to-day living practices and the entitlement that anxiously rests at the heart of modern identity? In essence, what would our liberation look like? What would it take to create a healthy post-industrial culture?
Friday, January 29, 2010
The Wonderful Black Walnut
The Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) is one of North America’s most prized trees and its nutmeats have been treasured for centuries if not thousands of years. It likes well-drained, fertile bottom-land soils, especially along streams, and is common as a dooryard tree around old farmhouses and cabins. It don't know how to spot one, look at a field guide or google it.
Harvesting, Processing, and Storing:
So I’ve heard and read different things here, but this is what I’ve personally found out to be the most time-effective way to go about gathering a good quantity of the fruit.
Note: Once you find a tree, before getting started you should probably take a moment and ask the tree for it's gift. And you'll probably want to thank it after you collect it's fruit. I usually pause and have a moment of silence, close my eyes and try to visualize all it's been through and seen, and offer it a little prayer. When thanking it, I'll usually take a couple fruits and hold them in my hands and bless them, and then offer them back to the ground below tree. This is just what I do. It's subjective and variates. It seems like a good idea to develop some grounding rituals as we forage and connect with our local habitat, for sure.
Anyways... here's the process...
1.Find a bunch of the black walnuts on the ground in the fall. It doesn’t matter if they are fresh and green, or all oily and black. Just collect a bunch. I usually put them in a big bucket.
2. Take them home, dump them in a big pile, and let them sit till there are no green hulls left. Don’t worry about the maggots, they don’t get through the shells, they stay in the hull.
3. Then rip the nutshells out of the hulls and throw them in a bucket. You might want to use gloves; some people get skin irritations. I personally like the way my hands feel after they get all saturated in the oils (and maggot guts-ha!).
4. Let the hulls dry out and store them if you want to use them later for dyeing or medicine.
5. Next, fill up the bucket the nuts are in with water. Separate and discard any that float because they are not good.
6. Then put on some clothes that you don’t mind if they get stained, get a piece of bamboo (or broomstick, random sturdy branch, or whatever) and stir the nuts as fast as you can. The tough shells will scrape off all the extra hull pieces and clean themselves up nicely. Repeat this a few times. When you dump the water out it will be super black and you might want to put it in a separate bucket and use it for dyeing. (Throw in a couple rusty nails to make the black color of the dye a little redder). Don’t poor out the water on your garden or near any perennials.
7. After they look pretty clean dump them in the sun to dry, or put them on a heating pad for a little while to dry if the sun isn’t out (if you use a pad don’t leave them on to long or they will begin to crack open a little and not store as well).
8. After they are dry put them in a cool, dry place and let them cure for 2 weeks.
9. We usually take a few minutes before dinner and put a few of the walnuts in a pillowcase, hit them with a hammer, and pick them into a bowl. Then we sprinkle them on salads, pies, or whatever seems good. If we want to get a bunch at once to make butter or pie with them, we crack a lot of them and pick them while we watch a documentary.
It takes a little time, but is well worth it. And if you get a few buckets of them, they'll last all year!
Nutrition:
The black walnut nutmeat tastes great and is very nutritious. It includes beta-carotene, thiamine, iron, riboflavin, niacin, magnesium, potassium, carbohydrates and protein. It is rich in the essential and seldom-eaten Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (linolenic and linoleic), containing 60% fat. It also contains 20-24% protein, and 10-15% sugars.
Medicinal Uses:
Leaves can be decocted and used on skin as antiseptic for sores and infections. Green hull juice applied to skin to treat ringworm. Used internally to treat yeast infection. Native Americans used inner bark tea as a laxative, and chewed bark for toothaches. Leaves, bark and hull used as astringent against diarrhea (can stop milk production). Valued as tonic and strong anti-fungal. The hulls can also be used to treat intestinal parasites. According to Peterson guide, juglone, a growth inhibitor in leaves, possesses sedative activity comparable to diazepam (Valium).
Video on treating intestinal parasites:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx3G6NPAvNc
Story-time:
According to Donald Culross Peattie, the prized black walnut became so rare by the middle of the last century, except in the southern Appalachians, that lumberman went on a door-to-door hunt throughout the country tempting owners to cut down and sell their shade trees for a fraction of their true value—tree owners sometimes unknowingly sold trees that were worth more than their entire house.
Proving once again that trees are shady, but businessmen are even shadier.
Miscellaneous:
Husk juice will stain hands and cause irritation dermatitis on some people’s skin
Hull can be used as natural dye
Leaves can be used for flea remedy
Apple trees or tomato plants will not survive near them, and don’t put shells in compost.
Bark used in tanning.
Prized for gun stocks and cabinets.
Husks were once used to stun fish for food, a practice that is illegal.
Every year in Spencer, West Virginia there is a Black Walnut Festival:
http://2009.wvblackwalnutfestival.org/
Books to check out:
Medicinal Plants of the Southern Appalachians
By: Patricia Howell
The Herb Book, By: John Lust
Peterson Field Guide: Medicinal Plants and Herbs
Natural History of Trees, By: Donald Culross Peattie
Harvesting, Processing, and Storing:
So I’ve heard and read different things here, but this is what I’ve personally found out to be the most time-effective way to go about gathering a good quantity of the fruit.
Note: Once you find a tree, before getting started you should probably take a moment and ask the tree for it's gift. And you'll probably want to thank it after you collect it's fruit. I usually pause and have a moment of silence, close my eyes and try to visualize all it's been through and seen, and offer it a little prayer. When thanking it, I'll usually take a couple fruits and hold them in my hands and bless them, and then offer them back to the ground below tree. This is just what I do. It's subjective and variates. It seems like a good idea to develop some grounding rituals as we forage and connect with our local habitat, for sure.
Anyways... here's the process...
1.Find a bunch of the black walnuts on the ground in the fall. It doesn’t matter if they are fresh and green, or all oily and black. Just collect a bunch. I usually put them in a big bucket.
2. Take them home, dump them in a big pile, and let them sit till there are no green hulls left. Don’t worry about the maggots, they don’t get through the shells, they stay in the hull.
3. Then rip the nutshells out of the hulls and throw them in a bucket. You might want to use gloves; some people get skin irritations. I personally like the way my hands feel after they get all saturated in the oils (and maggot guts-ha!).
4. Let the hulls dry out and store them if you want to use them later for dyeing or medicine.
5. Next, fill up the bucket the nuts are in with water. Separate and discard any that float because they are not good.
6. Then put on some clothes that you don’t mind if they get stained, get a piece of bamboo (or broomstick, random sturdy branch, or whatever) and stir the nuts as fast as you can. The tough shells will scrape off all the extra hull pieces and clean themselves up nicely. Repeat this a few times. When you dump the water out it will be super black and you might want to put it in a separate bucket and use it for dyeing. (Throw in a couple rusty nails to make the black color of the dye a little redder). Don’t poor out the water on your garden or near any perennials.
7. After they look pretty clean dump them in the sun to dry, or put them on a heating pad for a little while to dry if the sun isn’t out (if you use a pad don’t leave them on to long or they will begin to crack open a little and not store as well).
8. After they are dry put them in a cool, dry place and let them cure for 2 weeks.
9. We usually take a few minutes before dinner and put a few of the walnuts in a pillowcase, hit them with a hammer, and pick them into a bowl. Then we sprinkle them on salads, pies, or whatever seems good. If we want to get a bunch at once to make butter or pie with them, we crack a lot of them and pick them while we watch a documentary.
It takes a little time, but is well worth it. And if you get a few buckets of them, they'll last all year!
Nutrition:
The black walnut nutmeat tastes great and is very nutritious. It includes beta-carotene, thiamine, iron, riboflavin, niacin, magnesium, potassium, carbohydrates and protein. It is rich in the essential and seldom-eaten Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (linolenic and linoleic), containing 60% fat. It also contains 20-24% protein, and 10-15% sugars.
Medicinal Uses:
Leaves can be decocted and used on skin as antiseptic for sores and infections. Green hull juice applied to skin to treat ringworm. Used internally to treat yeast infection. Native Americans used inner bark tea as a laxative, and chewed bark for toothaches. Leaves, bark and hull used as astringent against diarrhea (can stop milk production). Valued as tonic and strong anti-fungal. The hulls can also be used to treat intestinal parasites. According to Peterson guide, juglone, a growth inhibitor in leaves, possesses sedative activity comparable to diazepam (Valium).
Video on treating intestinal parasites:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx3G6NPAvNc
Story-time:
According to Donald Culross Peattie, the prized black walnut became so rare by the middle of the last century, except in the southern Appalachians, that lumberman went on a door-to-door hunt throughout the country tempting owners to cut down and sell their shade trees for a fraction of their true value—tree owners sometimes unknowingly sold trees that were worth more than their entire house.
Proving once again that trees are shady, but businessmen are even shadier.
Miscellaneous:
Husk juice will stain hands and cause irritation dermatitis on some people’s skin
Hull can be used as natural dye
Leaves can be used for flea remedy
Apple trees or tomato plants will not survive near them, and don’t put shells in compost.
Bark used in tanning.
Prized for gun stocks and cabinets.
Husks were once used to stun fish for food, a practice that is illegal.
Every year in Spencer, West Virginia there is a Black Walnut Festival:
http://2009.wvblackwalnutfestival.org/
Books to check out:
Medicinal Plants of the Southern Appalachians
By: Patricia Howell
The Herb Book, By: John Lust
Peterson Field Guide: Medicinal Plants and Herbs
Natural History of Trees, By: Donald Culross Peattie
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Tips for Hunting Reishi Mushrooms
The Reishi is one of the most medicinal things you can possibly forage in the forest, and has been known as the “herb of spiritual potency” to the Chinese for centuries.
There are two basic types you’ll find in the eastern United States. The Ling Chih (ganoderma lucidum) prefers the warmer climate and is especially keen on the forests of the southeast. It grows on deciduous trees (oaks, elms, beeches, maples), and I have found on several occasions that it grows around the bases of dead, standing southern red oaks in the oak-hickory forests of the piedmont region. If you find one on a red oak snag I would go carefully dig around the bases of other red oak snags in the area and you might find some more. They grow very slowly, so if they are small remember what tree they were on a give it between a few weeks to a few months.
There is also the Hemlock Varnish Shelf (g. tsugae), which can be found in colder and more northerly regions. As its name implies it is found on dead coniferous wood like hemlocks and spruces.
They are great for all kinds of medicinal reasons, including anti-bacterial/candida/inflammatory/oxidant/viral, blood pressure, cardiovascular, general immune support, kidney and liver tonic, etc…
If you find some Reishi, break them up and put them in boiling water. Put a lid on the pot and let the pieces soak over night to make an infusion of the “mushroom of immortality.”
Consult some field guides or mushroom websites for images and further descriptions. They are pretty distinct and there are no poisonous look-a-likes.
Book to check out:
Reishi Mushroom
By Terry Willard, Ph. D.
There are two basic types you’ll find in the eastern United States. The Ling Chih (ganoderma lucidum) prefers the warmer climate and is especially keen on the forests of the southeast. It grows on deciduous trees (oaks, elms, beeches, maples), and I have found on several occasions that it grows around the bases of dead, standing southern red oaks in the oak-hickory forests of the piedmont region. If you find one on a red oak snag I would go carefully dig around the bases of other red oak snags in the area and you might find some more. They grow very slowly, so if they are small remember what tree they were on a give it between a few weeks to a few months.
There is also the Hemlock Varnish Shelf (g. tsugae), which can be found in colder and more northerly regions. As its name implies it is found on dead coniferous wood like hemlocks and spruces.
They are great for all kinds of medicinal reasons, including anti-bacterial/candida/inflammatory/oxidant/viral, blood pressure, cardiovascular, general immune support, kidney and liver tonic, etc…
If you find some Reishi, break them up and put them in boiling water. Put a lid on the pot and let the pieces soak over night to make an infusion of the “mushroom of immortality.”
Consult some field guides or mushroom websites for images and further descriptions. They are pretty distinct and there are no poisonous look-a-likes.
Book to check out:
Reishi Mushroom
By Terry Willard, Ph. D.
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