sastyk | November 1, 2010Like my colleague Mike the Mad Biologist, I'm horrified by a story out of Indiana in which parents of disabled children who are no longer receiving state aid due to the state budget crisis, were told that they could drop the kids off at homeless shelters if they were unable to care for them at home:
However, that's exactly what Becky Holladay of Battle Ground, Ind., said a bureau worker told her when she called to ask about the waiver she's seeking for her 22-year-old son, Cameron Dunn, who has epilepsy, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
"We are people and they are people…
sastyk | October 31, 2010With November coming 'round tomorrow, I realize my chances of re-starting the post-apocalyptic reading group for November 1 are probably pretty faint ;-). Again, this is pretty much a reflection of where my brain is these days. I *meant* to get us started for ummm...tomorrow. But while I realize my readers are a brilliant and uniquely talented bunch, probably obtaining and reading the novel by tomorrow is a little unfair. I would, of course, never suggest that your genius blogiste couldn't do it.
So, here is my official announcement - we're getting started again as of December 1, and I…
sastyk | October 31, 2010I admit, maybe because of that intellectual slowdown that the cold weather and dark days call, but I'm confused about which one of these is the real Onion Headline - that thing about the Brookings Institute guy or a BBC headline that reads "World Bank Leads Economic Push on Nature Protection." Really? Seriously? The World Bank? Are we sure this isn't April Fools, not Halloween?
But no, it is serious. Or at least trying to be:
The World Bank has launched a global partnership aimed at helping countries include the costs of destroying nature into their national accounts.
Ten nations will…
sastyk | October 31, 2010A blog is a window into the intellectual world of its owner, I'm reliably told by people who think about this stuff. That's what's so compelling about the good ones - again, so I'm told.
So here's what's been going through my intellectual world lately....
....BOING.
....BOING.
You know that screen saver that bounces the ball across your computer screen. That's about it, here. I'm having a slow period - busy with other things, easily distractable and probably experiencing some measure of late fall shut down as I go into hibernation mode.
Fortunately, The Onion, as always provides useful…
sastyk | October 26, 2010Along the theme of time - finding it, using it, fast, slow, in-between - I thought I'd re-run this post. I have a *lot* of experience with four little boys, one autistic, in getting things done around the kids ;-) - they help now a lot more, but sometimes this is still necessary, so I thought it might be worth rerunning my meditations on how that works. Asher will turn five this week, and Eli is ten now - and while Asher is now one of my primary aids, Eli is still sometimes a lovable hindrance, despite some improvement - but in a nice way, and we're used to it. Still, getting everything…
sastyk | October 26, 2010I really liked Asher Miller's HuffPo article on an assessment of clean energy's scalability by three mostly conservative think-tanks. There are so many analyses done out there that simply work from the assumption that magic technology fairies will erase time and depletion and make it possible for us to live pretty much the way we have been.
Unfortunately, the report reminded me a lot of the failed legislative attempt undertaken by Senators Kerry (D-MA), Lieberman (I-CT), and Graham (R-SC) to pass bipartisan climate legislation. The original bill was a watered-down pile of... um, paper...…
sastyk | October 26, 2010One of the tensions in my life -is that between two kinds of time. "Fast Time" is the world I live in, the one with a two hour meeting scheduled at 7pm, my husband's classes at 12:35, Eli's bus at 8:15 and 3:30... payments due by the first of the month, etc... It is the world run on clocks and calendars, where expectations can be fixed and formalized. All of us live in fast time in some measure, some of us almost completely, others only barely. There is, however, no good way of escaping it entirely.
I also live in slow time. Slow time is the world of things that cannot be subject to…
sastyk | October 21, 2010
(Stachys, at about 3 weeks)
Today Stachys and Hemp enter the monastary. They are the youngest of the boys and at 8 weeks plus, it is time for them to leave their Moms. Stachys is just about 8 weeks, and at that point, could conceivably start breeding his sisters and his Mom (he's *huge* too - I need a current picture - he was a singleton and has gotten all of Mom's rich milk, plus Jessie's, ummm...circular physique). Hemp doesn't have that problem - he was wethered last week, but he'll be going home soon with a new family, along with Basil (who with brother Goldenrod moved up with the…
sastyk | October 21, 2010Robyn's Adapting In Place Blog has a really great sermon she gave about teaching kids about the environment. I really like her points both about multiple environmentalisms, and also about the way kids react to empty nonsense like "101 ways you can save the planet." The whole thing is well worth a read! Robyn is one of the most intelligent and passionate advocates of good education of all kinds I know, and this is her stuff at its best!
I also discovered that I was under a double whammy with kids when teaching conventional environmentalism. First, as I already said, kids can smell a lie, so…
sastyk | October 20, 2010I'll be there this weekend for the first ever Urban Adapting-In-Place event - I'll be speaking on Friday night about urban adaptation and on Saturday a whole host of local resources will come together to talk about New Haven's future. I think it will be absolutely wonderful, and I hope you will be there!
http://www.sare.org/mysare/Events.aspx?do=showevent&event=2734
Sharon
sastyk | October 19, 2010I'm your mamma, I'm your daddy
I'm that farma in the alley
I'm your doctor, when in need
Want sweet taters? Have some nettle weed!
You know me, i'm your friend
Gotcher parsnips, thick and thin
I'm your pusherwoman,
I'm your pusherwoman.
haha
Ain't i clean, veggie queen
Super cool, super green
Feelin' good, for not the man
Onion chick, here i stand
Carrot stash, heavy bread
Baddest bitch in your garden bed!
I'm your pusherwoman
I'm your pusherwoman
I'm your pusherwoman
Solid life, on the farm
Gal of odd circumstance
A victim of agrarian dreams
Feed you my broccoli
And i'll let you trip for a…
sastyk | October 19, 2010Part I : Defining a functional local food system
We got a supermarket in the springtime, and much has been made of that in my area. Many of the area's people rhapsodized about it - one woman told me she'd been waiting 15 years. It is about 8 miles from my house (compared to 13 to the nearest one before), in a town that is making the shift from rural to bedroom suburb, in an area that isn't quite ready for outer bedroom suburbs.
Before the store opened there was much talk about how our area had been and would no longer be a "food desert." This term means an area where there simply isn't…
sastyk | October 13, 2010As most of you will remember, we came very close to moving during the summer. It was an agonizing decision to make - there were compelling arguments on both sides, and while we ultimately came down in favor of staying in place, we also recognized that the problems we saw with our present situation are real, and need to be resolved in some way.
All of this came back to us last week when Eric and I took the boys to our favorite orchard, up near the farm we nearly bought. There was the house and its for-sale sign still there. We'd assumed that the house would sell, and now we were back to the…
sastyk | October 13, 2010Last night was our official first frost, right about at our new average (official last frost date is about October 7 here, but the last 9 years have been increasingly late). I was wholly unprepared - I forgot to check, and had meant to harvest the last batch of Tulsi. Ah well. Green tomato pickles are definitely the order of the day!
We'll be eating out of our garden for a long time yet - with season extension, probably until late December or January, but frost is a marker of change, and it seems as good a time as any to evaluate this year's garden.
In general, it was a banner year for…
sastyk | October 13, 2010Great article from "The Annals of Improbable Research" on "Artificae Plantae: The Taxonomy, Ecology and Ethnobotany of Simulacra." It is about time someone did this research:
A previously unacknowledged plant family of significant economic importance plants has been flourishing around us for many years. The fact that this immense and diverse family has been heretofore ignored by most botanists is astonishing--its members are found worldwide in nearly every society. This family is more than a botanical curiosity. It is a scientific conundrum, as the taxa:
1.lack genetic material,
2.appear…
sastyk | October 11, 2010First and foremost, thank you so much to John Bell, Molly Davis and Niepoliski for their aid and comfort while I was head down in the conference. I admit, I had no idea that I would be going every single second of each day, and running on quite so little sleep. I think realistically, being on the board and being able to blog the conference are fundamentally incompatible, and next year, I probably won't try it. But thanks to my friends and allies, you at least got the beginnings of a picture of what was happening. There's so much information being shared there - someone called it "like…
sastyk | October 10, 2010Final report from John on the ASPO Conference
I am back on the train to New York, reviewing what occurred in the last three days. Thinking over what I learned in the talks given on an autopsy of the Gulf Oil spill brings to mind the ones given in the "Message, Media and Outreach" section.
There was no question that in the speaker's minds that the Gulf accident was the result of a series of almost inexplicable mistakes by the crew on the rig. There was a profound lack of communication between various levels of command both on the rig and above. As the errors were discussed, the realization…
sastyk | October 9, 2010Anthony Perl says America doesn't have to wait for Congress in order to reduce oil consumption from the transportation sector.
by guest blogger Molly Davis
**my second and last blog entry from the ASPO-USA conference**
Discussions on Capitol Hill over the need to reduce fuel consumption often end up offering solutions that require significant movement on the part of policymakers. Pass a climate bill that puts a price on pollution? Pass an energy bill that mandates a high renewables supply? Pass a transportation bill that shifts highway funding to public transit? Easier said than done.
But Dr…
sastyk | October 9, 2010John reporting from the ASPO conference.
I first saw one of them when I was having an early dinner on the first day of the conference. A man in a yellow chicken suit was riding up one of the escalators. He didn't have the head on.
My wife came to town the second day to do some sightseeing at the Capitol while I remained entombed in the bowels of the hotel all day. When I first had a chance to talk to her, she told me how two people in chicken suits were handing out flyers outside of the hotel, one of which she took. Its title was "Oil Production: Is the Sky Falling? Or has the world…