Brad’s Take

Sharon Astyk writes on Casaubon’s book about “Toys R Not Us”

Abbie commented on the post,

This post really speaks to me. Both my mom and my mother-in-law can go overboard with presents, and I fear that next Christmas will be way overindulgent for our baby. I’ve spoken to each of them about guidelines for what will be appropriate, and spent time reminiscing with my brothers and my husband’s siblings about our favorite toys: blocks, sticks, cardboard boxes, dolls… and of course our favorite things to play with were our pets. So I think (hope) that the moms will understand and give presents that reflect our simple values. I don’t want an overwhelming sea of plastic for each birthday and holiday!

My reply to Abbie, as usual, is bigger than a simple comment should be. So here is my reply to Abbie:

@ Abbie,

The honor of the recipient of a gift is to use that gift in a manner that the giver doesn’t regret the giving. (I read that in a science fiction novel.)

That said, I think the issue of respect must be addressed. You might approach your mother and aunts, and state you are concerned there is a problem coming up for the holidays. Explain that you and your house have chosen to address meaningless values of things, vs. values of spirit and self esteem. Explain that you see much danger in commercial gift giving, that you are focusing on enriching the inner life, and reducing the distractions of clutter and overabundance.

Explain you would prefer gifts of a recorder and song book, to a popular CD or Guitar Hero add-on. Song books and instrument books guide one to the beauty of culture, history, and art. They take time to master, and have no arbitrary “end of game”. The perseverance of learning to play well or sing well is a justly earned discipline, and builds character – instead of merely passing time, admiring an arbitrarily assigned idol.

Don’t get me wrong, there is much to learn from music, whether classical (endurance?!), country, rock, rap, etc. Some lessons should not be learned, but knowing that such a message is false and to be avoided is a valuable lesson, too. Also books, drama, movies, even TV. But electronic versions tend to represent more commercial interest than personal growth. And I am convinced that it is the short, bright intrusions of advertisements into TV programs that largely explains the growth in ADD and ADHD diagnoses – ads disrupt and distract from story telling, which destroys concentration and persistence over the seven (7) minutes between commercials. Some computer games return to the epic story format, and engage for protracted periods of concentration, effort, and persistence. Yet there is little, oftentimes, to learn about people or life from computer games. There are exceptions, yet they require the player to be willing to transfer game knowledge to life skills, something computer users tend to disassociate very early on.

Accept that you can and should not impose your own beliefs on others. But watch closely what they do. Gifting is *always* about respect and responsibility. Pay attention to what your gifting, and the gifts you receive, say about each relationship.

Giving an unwanted gift should be a disappointment to the giver. Within reason the recipient should acknowledge the gift – that is being “polite”. Giving a child a gift in despite of a parent’s request is a clear and aggressive act of disrespect. Disrespect through inappropriate gifts might be a slander to the parent’s parenting skills, their lack of adequate assets to parent, or it might be a simple bullying of the parents (perhaps a continuation of the poor parenting skills the now-parent survived as a child.)

A well-chosen gift is an endeavor of love, not a trip to the “most popular” aisle of a store. Using the above example of a recorder – a first recorder should be a gift. It should be chose with the finger agility and reading ability of the recipient. A certain amount of knowledge is needed to find an instrument suitable for a beginner – not just the “beginner” model the local store happens to carry. It should be easy enough for a beginner to play, and play adequately in the ranges a beginner will manage first. Like ponies, horses, bicycles, books, etc., buying a professional, Olympic competition model is great – when the craftsman that will be using the tool chooses one that fits his or her needs. For a beginner, a hammer is indistinguishable from a concert-grade recorder, a sawhorse from a world champion race horse, jumper, or other performance horse. Buy what the beginner needs. For later acquisitions, enable the craftsman to acquire the tools needed for the next level of growth, next usage. Overbuying kills dreams, because the beginner doesn’t get the tools to begin, and cannot acquire the skills to advance to the advanced tools.

If you have someone bent on a mega-huge purchase – ask for a good, solid, used upright piano, maybe a couple of beginner books. And a visit from a good piano tuner to condition and tune the piece.

Actually, I think the piano is an insidious family endeavor. Because the practice advances from “hit a key” to “hit the right key”, everyone in ear-shot learns about correct timing, correct notes, phrasing, etc. Plus, old tunes get dusted off.

Where electronic games create a world of fantasy, music and music lessons return awareness of earlier cultural values.

I suppose threatening Mom with picking a third-rate nursing home, when the time comes, next week, would be a bit of over-reaction. Depending on Mom, of course.

The New York Times wrote, on Oct 11, 2009, a piece on property values and disputes over hanging laundry out to dry, “Debate Follows Bills to Remove Clotheslines Bans”

. . . Like the majority of the 60 million people who now live in the country’s roughly 300,000 private communities, Ms. Saylor was forbidden to dry her laundry outside because many people viewed it as an eyesore, not unlike storing junk cars in driveways, and a marker of poverty that lowers property values.

In the last year, however, state lawmakers in Colorado, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont have overridden these local rules with legislation protecting the right to hang laundry outdoors, citing environmental concerns since clothes dryers use at least 6 percent of all household electricity consumption.

The dispute is serious.

“It seems like such a mundane thing, hanging laundry, and yet it draws in all these questions about individual rights, private property, class, aesthetics, the environment,” said Steven Lake, a British filmmaker who is releasing a documentary next May called “Drying for Freedom,” about the clothesline debate in the United States.

The film follows the actual case of feuding neighbors in Verona, Miss., where the police say one man shot and killed another last year because he was tired of telling the man to stop hanging his laundry outside.

Tree ‘em.

But I have a solution. For communities with restrictions, and that don’t want to gaze, rapt, at the holes in the neighbor’s knickers flapping in the breeze – plant trees. Poplars, evergreens. Establish a wind-break zone about the homeowner’s association boundary, plant with wind and view-blocking, carbon dioxide-fixing, trees. Maybe hazel, pecan, or walnut trees for their annual bounty of edible nuts. Maybe apples and pears or oranges and plums. Cherries or peaches. A bit of gardening and landscaping, and in a brief time, watch the cycle of nature cover up those unsightly undies for four to six months of the year or more.

And all without bothering the neighbors. Or would the green-laundry types, intent on saving the air and the climate, object to the extra trees? Naw.

If the roof caves in.

If the homeowners association were to change it’s policy, the mature trees could double as clotheslines. They could use something like the Tuff Enuff Tree Saver to keep the rope from scarring the tree bark (could damage the tree or limb).

More on clotheslines at Project Laundry List.

Proof positive: Global warming

Project Laundry List is making air-drying and cold-water washing laundry acceptable and desirable as simple and effective ways to save energy.

Look at the information and products at The Clothes Line Shop, LLC. Or shop clotheslines and clothesline accessories at Amazon.com.

Casaubon’s Book.

Hat tip to Sharon at Casaubon’s Book.

Sharon Astyk posted an unusually angry message today about how to handle the currently eroding economy. Her point is that with intelligence, we can use our resources to preserve lives and options – but the bailout seems awfully short sighted, self-serving, and inept – and squanders resources uselessly.

Sharon Astyk, Casaubon’s Book, is awesome.  Sharon potently advocates preparing for Peak Oil.  Peak Oil is a code phrase, or description of the event that will cause immense economic rearrangement.  Change is measured in pain.  The gist of Peak Oil, is that inexpensive energy – fossil fuels in particular – will soon reach (or have reached) the ‘peak’ availablility, while demand for energy will continue to grow.  The result will be that, as we saw last summer, other nations and new applications will introduces undreamt-of levels of demand.  The result?  The end of ‘cheap’ energy.

Where today a single family dwelling is the ‘American Dream’, suburb life and horrendous commute to work in mostly single-occupant vehicles, and easy access to cooking and heating fuels, and access to the electric utilities grid, will all be challenged.  Sharon advocates growing your own food, re-learning canning and housekeeping from times before the first electric appliances, and relying on ecology-friendly approaches.  Other Peak Oil views expect a massive shortfall in food availability – farmers that can’t afford to plant for the low price of produce, and transportation costs so high no one can afford the available food.  Loss of municipal water sources, fire and medical services may well follow, making the Great Depression and the attendant deaths from starvation and disease and suicide likely to reappear.

Me?  I think we should plan for something like Sharon plans for.  That rural communities and groups of families and neighbors will gather to share resources, skill sets, tools, and trade labor.  I grew up in 1960’s NW Iowa.  Some of our neighbors had a flat-rack (made for hauling hay bales),  A few had a baler.  Dad helped three or four neighbors bale their hay, then they helped bale ours and put it up in the barn.  No muss, no fuss – and no begging off.

That is certainly doable again.

I enjoy working with draft horses.  Working draft horses can be the center-point of a rural lifestyle of hard work, rewarding life, and a great place to raise kids.  Ask the Amish - they have believed that for centuries, Their Anabaptist forbears were persecuted for witchcraft in Europe – when their fields outperformed their neigbors.  The Anabaptists introduced what became today’s modern agriculture.  Simply rotating crops, devotion to maintaining soil quality, fertilizing – were weird and suspect practices, and caused many martyrs before they migrated to the New World.  Today their lifestyle mingles only lightly with the modern world.  And they still believe that working the soil is the right way to raise children.

We have Amish examples that we can live today without the electric utility that some Peak Oil analysts believe will be too expensive for half the families in the US to afford, by about .. umm .. 2012.  Three years, give or take.

Our grandparents and great-grandparents that lived through the Great Depression of the 1930’s, and the food rationing of World War II, grew much of their own food.  Even in cities and apartments, there were ‘victory gardens’ to supplement what food was available.  And there are many people that concede the Peak Oil worries are valid – that are already growing their Victory Gardens.

For a number of years, people have been  interested in a slower-paced life.  Small Farmers Journal, published quarterly in Sisters, OR, covers rustic skills and early recipes, working and training workhorses and oxen and goats, etc.  Rural Heritage magazine from Jackson County, TN, covers an Appalachian perspective of regressed living styles.  The venerable FoxFire books detail the elder skills and implements for those looking to retreat from modern life, Mother Earth News helps the back-to-nature people find their way.

I think, if Peak Oil hits as the analysts claim, that we will see prices skyrocket – then return to a higher level, then keep ratcheting ever higher.  Companies will lay off workers and close doors as costs to provide services and produce and transport products put them out of business.  Those few tilling the land in the old ways will have the best access to the food – that they grow.  Small communities of like-minded neighbors will share work and resources.  Many will find themselves sharing a home with others, some with families, some with others.  Ready, continuous access to propane, natural gas, electricity, heating oil, diesel fuel, and gasoline and ethanol will become intermittent and prices will become prohibitive.

Most food will be locally produced.  To assure the best availability of local food, the time is now to begin preferring and seeking out local producers.  Establish the market now, so that production increases to keep up – and will be available when food from other counties, other states, or across the ocean will become rarities.

What is the down side of preparing?  If it doesn’t happen in our lifetimes – we recover some skills from history, we learn to live with less reliance on fossil fuels, we (eventually) live healthier, more active lives, we save a ton of money.  And we provide a useful, sane role model for our kids.