I was working in the garden today laying out a path through a new garden area.

From Path soon taken

It became usable when I cut down a cedar whose roots were a problem.

From The Cedar must Fall

I also cut down three fir trees. I stood on top of the barn roof to cut down two of them, leaving stumps 12 feet high. Then I tore apart the barn and used the materials to build a shed roof next door. On the way I cut down the third fir.

From Path soon taken

I had built the barn using two live firs as uprights and arranging for the supports to slide on the trunks as the wind blew them about. That meant a lot of creaking during high winds. Which was fine until I moved in next door — into what had been the kitchen shed.
I decided to redo the barn completely so that I could have a larger southern view area that would look out onto the pond. Part of the plan is to include a root cellar over here. I also want to build a rocket stove/mass heater and I might experiment with building one here.

I love the increased light in the new living space. Free advice: in the Northwest build your house in the sun and not under the trees. The awesome window area is a delight and the stove easily offsets the cold from the heat drainage since the cabin is ony 12×16. It’s a little iffy below freezing but that doesn’t happen too often here. And the large porch with polycarbonate panels is working out well too. It’s not convenient to cook out there when it’s freezing but in the 40s it’s not bad.

From Drinks on the house

I’ve finally got my water filter system set up and next to it you can see my new flour mill. I’m working on whole wheat English Muffins. They’re convenient because you cook them on a griddle and I don’t have an oven.

From My muffins

The Tango Practice Room was under the trees.

From Los Bravos

And it was in a low spot AND I didn’t leave room for air movement under the floor so it was rotting. So I tore up the floor.

From Good-bye tango floor

A tool shed works fine with a dirt floor and the windows give me enough light to find things.

From Tool shed

I needed a place to store the stuff in the barn so I moved my most favorite vehicle of all time out of its resting place.

From Bringing the bus back

And I put it in what I thought was going to be the bicycle shop or the duck palace. Plan 11b is to use the van as a bedroom. I lived in it for some years as a home in between house sitting gigs. During the winter I would head down to Oaxaca, Mexico. When my nieces come to visit I’ll give the family my cabin and move out into the Van once again.

From VW van

All hail the Brussels Sprout!

From Brussels sprouts

I had a great crop this year and I’ve been enjoying giving them away before they turn woody. They can keep on the stem until March and I still have plenty for myself. Meanwhile the shallots are starting to sprout. By Jove, I think I’ve got a garden.

I have been frustrated for years in my drive to acquire sufficient compost. Some years I would get a little, but I yearned, I craved, I lusted, after more.
And now at last, AT LAST, I have reached satiation. I have enough goat shit and straw to mulch my garden and start a real compost pile that heats up.
Oh lord, my goal in life has been fulfilled, take me now.

From Nov 27 sun height, compost

Notice the impressive array of Brussels Sprouts in the background.

The population of Shedville is watching the occupy movement with skepticism but also foolish hope.

Without structure Occupy Wall Street is a blank upon which you can project your hopes and fears. I hope it is not just a move to re-set the thermostat on The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.

Therefore I was cheered by an article in the New York Observer: Occupy Wall Street and the Poetry of Now-Time –love the head line.

Of course we asked them about what everyone outside this movement—especially members of the media—seems want to talk about, and nobody on the inside is particularly concerned with: What do you all want? What are the demands? How do you know when you’ve won and can go home?

The poets were polite. They tried to answer. They were tired, as everyone is down there. Running on pure adrenaline. But these were the wrong questions, the ones you ask when you don’t yet get it. These were the questions of the world outside the park—the world of prose. Occupy Wall Street is actually, it turns out, occurring in the realm of poetry and spirit. It’s a sort of waking dream. Which is why it’s so strangely powerful and cannot be sneered away or shoveled over with cynicism (not that we didn’t try) or kettled into history, and may even survive the winter in New York.
…
Mr. Marinovich marveled at the “immediate, urgent intimacy” he felt in the park, among the occupiers. “It’s completely natural and unforced,” he said, “and it has so much to do with the absence of money as a center, because when that’s not in the center, what is in the center we don’t know, and into that opening everything can flow.

Michael Albert reports on long term occupations.

But as days passed, and then weeks, it got too familiar. And it wasn’t obvious to folks what more they could do. There weren’t tasks to undertake. We weren’t being born anymore, we were dying. It was hard. For many it was impossible to keep learning and keep contributing. There was a will, but there was not a way. Folks didn’t have meaningful things to do that made them feel part of a worthy project. We felt, in time, only part of a mass of people.

After a time, many asked, why should I stay and listen to boring talks? Why should I be hugely uncomfortable and cut off from family and work, if I have nothing to do that is constructive, nothing that is empowering, nothing that furthers worthy aims? And so people started to attend less, and then to leave.

…

What is the solution, I asked, in each new city, and we discussed possible answers.

Occupy but better yet, self manage, I was told. The former option is basically passive – the latter is active and yields tasks and opportunities to contribute.

Have occupations self manage and create innovations artistically, socially, and politically. Have occupations occupy indoors, not just outside. It is a leap, perhaps, but not much of one. In Barcelona and Madrid – some have tentatively begun occupying abandoned apartments and other buildings

He uses the term “self-manage” which I think is OK. I’m toying with “artful action”.

When I lived in The Nederlands I was struck cross-eyed by squatters taking possession of unoccupied buildings. But, but, but, but, I sputtered, but, IT’S PRIVATE PROPERTY. It took me quite a while to calm down and think about what is really important. In some cases the state allowed the squats to develop and I visited one that had been turned into apartments.
I think the concept of occupation offers a wealth of playful possibilities. However let’s give people time to adjust and let’s be artful.
Advocate occupations of abandoned property by imitating Jericho and march around the property singing. Do your homework, and do your publicity. Who is benefiting from that property being vacant? How could you get the use of a property from a supporter? What would it take to find a supporter to buy the property in the spirit of Random Acts of Kindness? Some $300,000 dollars has been donated. Use it to rent to buy and fix the property up.
Demonstrate discipline, demonstrate working class values, and use the resulting HQ as a post from which to occupy public spaces long term by visiting consistently and “occupy to rules”, making obvious the constraints officaldom puts on free speech.

At the heart of RealityPivots is a belief that the ‘insoluble’ problems we face are often the products of our stance toward the world. When I learned about debt jubilees it was a practical surprise but a theoretical confirmation.
Steeped in Science Fiction I’ve always tried to imagine solutions to world problems and it became obvious that hard science wasn’t sufficient. I tended to believe that a change in consciousness was necessary. And the influence of a song was my preferred method. At heart I’m just an old hippie blowing in the wind.
I imagine forays of OWSers surging through the streets singing La Marseillaise or Stout Hearted Men.
Serendipitously I ran across a blog post, The Great Change: What Occupy Wall Street can learn from the Singing Revolution that hits a similar note:

As we described in our post of May, 2010, White Nights and Chicken Skin, the Estonians seized on Solidarnosc’s momentum in 1991, with The Singing Revolution. As Soviet tanks attempted to roll back Estonian progress towards independence, the Estonian Supreme Soviet together with the Congress of Estonia proclaimed the restoration of the independent state of Estonia and repudiated Soviet anti-freedom legislation. Surrounding the Parliament building in Tallinn, Estonians of all walks, using the social networking tools of the day, spontaneously dropped their activities and converged, linked arms, sang and forced the hardliners out. By serving as human shields to protect radio and TV stations from the Russian tanks, these singing revolutionaries brought Estonia its independence without bloodshed. A counter-coup attempt failed amid mass pro-democracy demonstrations in Moscow.

To the barricades!

The singing of Beethoven’s 9th in a Madrid square gave me a thrill. Wouldn’t it be great to see that example spread to the Occupy movements around the world? What a meta-message of a goal. I’m supportive but sceptical of populist movements. I wouldn’t last ten minutes at a meeting using the human megaphone and consensus. I’ve lived in a consensus driven group and found that eventually the charismatic individual prevailed 90% of the time. A belief in consensus seems like a belief in the Invisible Hand regulating finance.
I like the, perhaps apocryphal, idea of the Plains Indians choosing their leaders by acclamation of wise elders. The system the U.S. has evolved of electing the used car salesman with the most psychopathic drive for power is terrible.
I’ve been ‘singing’ myself lately. I use the term advisedly because I’m the guy the choir director of the Christmas pageant in school told to just move my mouth rather than emitting any sound. A friend told me about the YouTube channel of Alonzo Garbonzo. My tastes are simple and his rendition of City of New Orleans makes me sing along.
When they ask the Occupy Wall Street crew what they believe, I advise, “I believe in singing.”

I don’t know if I’ll continue blogging but my focus is going to change. My desultory tango life may be featured occasionally when I host a Milonga de los Bravos in The Cantina, whose dance floor (8 ft. by 24 ft.) just needs some paint to be usable.

From The Cantina

I think blogging about tango is intrinsically difficult. Speaking politely about your partners is good etiquette but boring dish. I’m fond of Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s line, “If you haven’t got anything good to say about anybody, come sit next to me.”
As part of the shift I’ve updated my tango links and want to shout out to two blogs. I think Irene does a great job of making tango sociability a living world. Tango Commuter focuses on connection and movement in ways that resonate with me.

Over the last years I’ve been reading about politics, finance and economics and have organized some lists of my favorites.
My new focus is oriented around my reaction to a web site called The Dark Mountain Project. It takes its title from a Robinson Jeffers poem:

Rearmament

These grand and fatal movements toward death: the grandeur of the mass
Makes pity a fool, the tearing pity
For the atoms of the mass, the persons, the victims, makes it seem monstrous
To admire the tragic beauty they build.
It is beautiful as a river flowing or a slowly gathering
Glacier on a high mountain rock-face,
Bound to plow down a forest, or as frost in November,
The gold and flaming death-dance for leaves,
Or a girl in the night of her spent maidenhood, bleeding and kissing.
I would burn my right hand in a slow fire
To change the future … I should do foolishly. The beauty of modern
Man is not in the persons but in the
Disastrous rhythm, the heavy and mobile masses, the dance of the
Dream-led masses down the dark mountain.

Robinson Jeffers, 1935

I follow sites about transition, peak oil and survival but I’m partial to a world view that takes into account humankind’s potential for depravity. If you have a Fascist inspired Holocaust in recent history I think it would be remiss to let a ‘serious crisis go to waste’ by not including it in your view of what collapse might mean for our society.
When I want some straight forward green living I go to a group web site Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op.

I joined Dark Mountain in part because I liked the blog of one of its members, Ran Prier. He goes into detail about fixing his house and building a cob house on ten acres in Spokane. I’m interested in the day to day details of building a transition to a new reality. Maybe I will find people who appreciate my Cantina in its quirkiness and its usefulness as a place to work when the lights go out.