Now on ScienceBlogs: HeartlandGate: Anti-Science Institute's Insider Reveals Secrets
It is a really simple idea - things that can't go on the way they have been, usually don't. Sooner or later things that have no future just stop. We all know intellectually that we can't all live and consume like middle class Americans, that our kids are going to have a harder time because of our way of life, that Empires end and ecological disasters cause things to come to hard stops. We know it, but we don't KNOW it. This blog is about coming to KNOW, and figuring out where we go from here. I'm a science writer, teacher, environmental activist and small farmer who is trying to put her lifestyle where her mouth is, and live in a way with a future. When not writing books, serving on the board of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, I run my farm with my husband, where we raise dairy goats, herbs, pastured poultry, heirloom vegetable plants, children and havoc.
June 29, 2010
Category: caregiving
life. I cannot say we look at each of these future obligations with delight, but we wish to live in the kind of family, the kind of world where families make a place for people who are not able bodied, who are not fully able to reciprocate, and in order to live in that world someday when I need care, I must begin to make it with my own hands.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 5:21 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: marriage
Gay people may choose each other from love, from the same emotions that motivate heterosexual couples, may live together from love, may care deeply about the religious institution of their marriage (and any discussion of religion and gay marriage cannot ignore the fact that many gay people were married, as my parents were, in their churches and synagogues and covens before they could marry in their states) but they have not had the luxury of pretending that the economic, family and legal ties of marriage are not central to the institution.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 10:55 AM • 27 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 24, 2010
Category: fresh air fund
My family is planning to apply to host Fresh Air Fund children this year - it is something I've long wanted to do. And the Fresh Air fund has also asked me to publicize their situation - they still need both funds to buy bus tickets and pay for camps and also host families
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 3:53 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Economy
Funny how our concern about deficits seems always to play out in the suffering of the poor.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 3:02 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: garden
And you are thinking... I'm doomed. My family is going to be eating bugs, and not the good kind of bugs, which will all have been harvested by Sharon and her family who are so far ahead of us. No, we're going to be eating the bugs she wouldn't even post recipes for.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 2:42 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: solar cooking
It is hot and sticky here - only low 80s, but humid. This afternoon we should have rain, but in the meantime the sun is shining and the very last thing I feel like doing is putting any dinner on...
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 1:52 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 22, 2010
Category: food
In a perfect world, of course, our partners, roommates, children and other assorted members of our lives would say "Oh, I'm so thrilled you are growing a garden/part of a CSA - now I can get rid of the honey-barbecue chips and the fast food, and start really appreciating rutabagas like I've always wanted to."
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 3:49 PM • 31 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 21, 2010
Category: agriculture
For most people who know nothing about agriculture, the word "till" isn't particularly revealing - it sounds like there's no cash register.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 3:34 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: peak oil
Jon Stewart somehow seems to grasp the real importance of Obama's speech: The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cAn Energy-Independent Futurewww.thedailyshow.comDaily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorTea Party If only we'd thought about getting off oil before! But...
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 3:22 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 17, 2010
Category: Adapting in Place
One of the inevitable realities where people get poorer and are subject to more climate-related and infrastructure failure disasters is that people have to take in friends and family who have no other place to go. Hurricane Katrina, for example, for several million people represented an exercise in shared housing.
Posted by Sharon Astyk at 11:59 AM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front
A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil
Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage and Preservation
