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Someone else raised a question about replacing lawns with gardens, in response to my post about "Surviving the Middle Class Crash." I added... It's actually been done before, during World War II. They were called "victory gardens" and were used to supplement the food supply: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_gardenI grew up watching the show "Crockett's Victory Garden" on PBS. There's a related site here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/victorygarden/And someone has cleverly made the connection between fighting a war and fighting for our planet's survival, calling for the revival of the victory garden as a means of slowing global warming: http://www.revivevictorygarden.org/Our local efforts are coming along nicely. I got a bunch of flowers and a few more herbs planted today. A couple of friends dropped by to give me some spare tomato plants. I'm going to try growing those, although I've had marginal luck with vegetables. (They require a lot of attention, and I can't work in summer heat.) I may try drying more herbs than I need personally, though, and adding those to my list of trade goods. I'm hoping we'll get a good crop of fruit in this year, too. Several other folks I know are planting gardens. We plan to do some food swapping and communal canning later in the year. Tags: community, economics, environment, food, gardening
Current Mood:  busy
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I've had parts of this essay simmering in the back of my mind for many years, since college at least and probably longer. For some reason, this article caused the last piece to fall into place; here is the key section: Representative Filner said he wants the military to demonstrate that confronting and dealing with mental health is something they encourage. "The army and marines should take a midlevel officer, who admitted he had PTSD and was treated for it, and promote him to general so people know that the culture accepts it rather than a stigma being against it," said Filner. My first thought was this: There is a powerful stigma imposed on military personnel with mental injuries, and soldiers are discouraged (or sometimes more actively prevented) from seeking or continuing diagnosis and treatment for it. So promoting one PTSD officer would be tokenism of the worst kind, simply giving the military someone to point to and say, "See? See? There's no stigma, we have a PTSD general," while continuing the disastrous status quo. My second thought was this: A general has a substantial amount of power. Put the right person in that position and s/he could work to change the context. S/he could do things to help other PTSD sufferers get treatment, to prevent other officers from ruining those people's careers, and to assist them in moving up the ranks so as to broaden the number of officers working on those problems. If that happened, then the problem could be deconstructed and solved. Underlying all of that was a long-standing conviction of mine that there was something fundamental missing from the "tokenism" debate. A "token" is a person with a particular feature -- a woman, a black person, a soldier with PTSD, etc. -- who is given a position usually held by someone who doesn't have that feature. It is considered an act of oppression. Always nagging at me was an awareness that somebody has to be first, that there has to be a way to break the dam, and that we're unlikely to find it if we discard all one-spot promotions as "tokenism." Because that's as dismissive of the promoted person as the oppressors' attitude is! So that's what-all sparked this realization ... The difference between a token and a representative or an advocate is that a token is selected because of a certain feature, but not given anything to do for it, just the ordinary duties inherent to the position. A representative is there to stand for all the other people with that feature, to give them a face and a voice, including the process of identifying and discussing why there are so few of them in this context that a single one stands out. An advocate studies what those people need, how to provide it and raise awareness of it, especially in pursuit of helping them to develop the skills, resources, and opportunities needed for advancement. An effective token will always stand out, tapping off the pressure to allow others to advance by maintaining the illusion that they already can. An effective representative or advocate will eventually disappear in the throng, wiping away their own status as such by making it superfluous as more people join that rank. This illuminates some very useful aspects of oppression and how to dismantle it. 1) Attitude matters. If the contextual group desires a token, that's what they'll push for, and change will be slow and difficult. If the contextual group favors diversity, much faster and easier progress is possible -- but they must communicate clearly that they want someone capable of representation and/or advocacy, and explore with that person how to make it work, or else they'll be mistaken for people who just want a token. 2) Teamwork matters. Just because the contextual group is resistant to change doesn't make it unbreachable. It's usually possible to ram through a single member if you keep battering away at the barrier. If you stop at the token stage, you're letting the oppressors win. Aim for a spearhead and keep pushing to widen the access. Consider that once upon a time, Irish immigrants were intensely oppressed; one thing they did was make a concerted effort to get some of their youths onto the police force, which worked so well that "Irish cop" became a cliche. By this time they've faded into the mainstream. Anti-Semitism used to be a huge problem, and has lessened substantially -- in no small part because the Jews determined to produce a large number of lawyers. Women have cracked the glass ceiling but not broken it. One reason for that limited success is that, while some female executives mentor younger colleagues, many do not -- they treat other women as competition and work against them, which aids the overall oppression by blocking younger women out of the higher ranks. So there are some tools we can use to replace oppression with participation. It's a lot of work. Any time you bring in someone who stands out because of a notable feature, it's going to create some friction -- if for no other reason than they'll have a different perspective than other folks. Our qualities shape our experiences, and that affects how we perceive and process both problems and opportunities. If you want a diverse group, you have to be willing to accept some extra processing effort in exchange for a greatly expanded idea pool and problem-solving parallax. Not everyone is willing to do that, which is one thing that makes oppression popular: it's easier in some ways than mingling is. Activists sometimes try to gloss over this by saying "we're all the same underneath." No, we're not. That's the whole point. If we were all the same, we wouldn't have disagreements, we wouldn't have a wide range of abilities and ideas, and oppression would be irrelevant so it wouldn't happen. With very few exceptions, a person's salient features don't affect what they could do but may significantly effect how things are done. Your features affect the kind of opportunities and choices you have, the kind of experiences you have, and those things color the approaches you develop for moving through life. The wider the experience base, the higher the chance your group will have someone capable of a prompt and appropriate response to whatever happens. The narrower the experience base, the more and worse trouble you're likely to be in when faced by something outside it -- and the larger the range of "outside it" is. Think of an ecosystem: the more diverse its community of plants and animals, the more robust it is and the better it can withstand minor to major stresses. The less diverse or the more specialized it is, the less robust it is and the lower the threshold of stress or total collapse. If you want to fight oppression and foster diversity, look for opportunities to establish or support people working as representatives and advocates. Sometimes you can even subvert a token into broadening their role in that direction. Network. Cooperate. Out-organize the opposition. It works. And when you hear "just a token" ... mention the alternatives and their advantages. Tags: community, politics
Current Mood: busy
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Today several friends came over to help with yardwork. Specifically, we made several trips to a place that was giving away free mulch -- it's where yard waste is collected, and they chip it up. We managed to get five pickup truck loads. This was much better than we expected; with six people to unload, there were more of use than could even fit in and around the truck, so we were able to take turns and not wreck anyone. I now have a lovely hill of mulch for use on the hedges, raspberry patches, and so forth. Huzzah for community effort! Third Saturday of the month, we've arranged to swap off and do the same for the truck owner's yard. She has a newly planted orchard to care for, and a fencerow of raspberries established last year, and some other stuff. That's going be community accessible space too. Yeah, community building is a lot of work. There are times when we get into horrible arguments and just about want to strangle each other. But then there are days like today, when it just flows and everything gets done so much better and faster than expected. It's like laboriously hiking up a mountain, and every once in a while you get this breathtaking view of the peak on your way up. For such days, I am grateful and gratified. Tags: community, gardening, personal
Current Mood:  satisfied
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Today's topic in "How to Herd Cats: Essays on Pagan Leadership" is "The Social Contract." This is what lies between leaders and followers, and among the many people who make up a society. It's a set of rules -- some overt, some covert -- that we live by. We may call it a constitution, a set of bylaws, something else, or nothing if we don't think of it consciously. When a new group forms, so does a new social contract. So it's a good idea to make sure that it says what the members really mean.
- What do you think a social contract is for?
- What are some social contracts that apply to groups you inhabit? What are some points the contracts cover? What don't they cover?
- What are some things you consider essential for a social contract to ensure or forbid?
- Have you ever participated in negotiating a social contract? If so, how well did that work out?
- Have you ever observed misunderstandings because of an incomplete social contract, or because people disagreed over what the social contract entailed? If so, what happened (omitting details that might cause harm)?
Tags: community, daily spell, paganism
Current Mood: busy
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Yesterday we had some friends over and got a lot of yardwork done. First a couple of folks showed up to remove the poision ivy from the northwest corner of the ritual meadow. (They aren't allergic to it.) Then two more people came over and we worked on carting brush to the firepit, pulling up dead field weeds along the north and south edges, and digging up thistles. The raspberry canes along the south fence are pretty well exposed now. The ritual meadow is looking nicer. Today I bought more grass seed for bare patches in various parts of the lawn. I raked the leaves off the strip garden next to the cistern garden and weeded the strip. I also gathered up ashes from the firepit and dumped them down the big hole that some critter keeps digging in the cistern garden. There are big clumps of herbs growing where they don't belong, as usual. I've already given away two pots of chocolate mint. There's catnip and motherwort out the wazoo. Also lemon balm, horehound, tarragon, and some other stuff. Last year I dug Attila the Tarragon out of the cistern garden and this year -- no doubt in response to the power vacuum -- the spearmint seems to be advancing. Comfrey, Lady's mantle, and rhubarb are all sprouting so those survived the winter. I'm hoping to get a couple truckloads of mulch with a friend's help, some time after Beltane. Then we can re-mulch the south hedge to help keep the weeds down there. I'm tired but happy. Well, except for the fact that the friggin' lawnmower did its usual trick again, mowing for a few hours and then breaking down. Tags: community, gardening, personal
Current Mood:  tired
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Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems. Cyberfunded CreativityI'm venturing into cyberfunded creativity. If you enjoy what I'm doing and want to see more of it, please feed the Bard. The following options are currently available: 1) Sponsor the Fishbowl -- Here is a PayPal button for donations. There is no specific requirement, but $1 is the minimum recommended size for PayPal transactions since they take a cut from every one. If you make a donation and tell me about it, I promise to use one of your prompts. Anonymous donations are perfectly welcome, just won't get that perk. 2) Buy It Now! -- Gakked from various e-auction sites, this feature allows you to sponsor a specific poem. If you don't want to wait for some editor to buy and publish my poem so you can read it, well, now you don't have to. Sponsoring a poem means that I will immediately post it here, with the name of the sponsor (or another dedicate) if you wish; plus you get a nonexclusive publication right, so you can post it on your own blog or elsewhere as long as you keep the credits intact. You'll need to tell me the title of the poem you want to sponsor. I'm basing the prices on length, and they're comparable to what I typically make selling poetry to magazines ( semi-pro rates according to Duotrope's Digest). 0-10 lines: $5 11-25 lines: $10 26-40 lines: $15 41-60 lines: $20 Poems over 60 lines, or with very intricate structure, fall into custom pricing. 3) Commission a scrapbook page. I can render a chosen poem in hardcopy format, on colorful paper, using archival materials for background and any embellishments. This will be suitable for framing or for adding to a scrapbook. Details are here. Additional Notes1) I customarily post replies to prompt posts telling people which of their prompts I'm using, with a brief description of the resulting poem(s). If you want to know what's available, watch for those. 2) You don't have to pay me to see a poem based on a prompt that you gave me. I try to send copies of poems to people whose eddresses I already have. If you want to see the poem inspired by your prompt, give me your eddress; I recommend using {at} and {dot} to discourage spammers. These are for-your-eyes-only, though, not for sharing. 3) Sponsors of the Poetry Fishbowl in general, or of specific poems, will gain access to an extra post in appreciation of their generosity. Feed the Fish!Now's your chance to participate in the creative process by posting ideas for me to write about. Today's theme is civic poetry, which spans politics, sociology, civilization, community, and related concepts. I am especially looking for:
- characters
- settings
- current or historic events
- cultural quirks
- poetic forms
But anything is welcome, really. If you manage to recommend a form that I don't recognize, I will probably pounce on it and ask you for its rules. I do have the first edition of Lewis Turco's The Book of Forms which covers most common and many obscure forms. I'll post at least one of the fishbowl poems here so you-all can enjoy it. The rest will go into my archive for magazine submission. Tags: community, cyberfunded creativity, fishbowl, poetry, politics, writing
Current Mood: busy
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