ThinkLady

You are not alone: learning more and growing community

Part 4 of wake-up calls, insurance and having a plan

This is the final post in a four-part series started in March on resiliency and emergency planning. Part 1 covered waking up to our vulnerabilities; Part 2 explored responding versus reacting; Part 3, sobering up, covered a few, very basic food and water storage strategies.

In this post, Part 4, the focus is on resources for learning more and opportunities for connecting with others doing the same work.

If you have time, doing your own emergency planning and research will uncover a host of resources to help tailor a plan that’s most suited to your unique situation. A variety of books, blogs and websites offer plenty of information but sifting through them can take time, energy and patience. At the outset if you would rather cut-to-the-chase, here are few resources to serve as a portal.

• Get a Kit – FEMA’s emergency planning guide & check lists
• www.72hours.org – The City of San Francisco’s very comprehensive emergency planning guide
• A Simple Plan -- A post by my dear friend and blogger, Christine Patton, a.k.a. Peak Oil Hausfrau, on short and long-term planning. Plenty of additional info on her blog, about everything from backyard gardening to cooking with a solar oven. She’s one of the most prepared people I know.
• “Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs: The Thrivalist’s Guide to Life Without Oil” by Wendy Brown. Personable, down-to-earth, easy to read, full of useful info and resources and mostly geared to longer-term planning.
• “Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens,” by Kathy Harrison, another book with a practical, down-to-earth approach.
• “The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-to-Basics Guide,” by John Seymour. Although geared toward longer term self-reliant living for those on small farms, it may seem like this book doesn’t have much to offer urban dwellers. Guess again -- this book offers a compendium of how-tos on a range of subjects, from soap-making to composting and is full of beautiful illustrations and graphics. A great resource for the home library and even if you never do any of these things – fun to read and browse.

Organizations providing a portal for actually meeting other people doing the same things, working on the same issues, providing ways and means of sharing knowledge and building community:

• Transition OKC (TOKC) –  a local Oklahoma City group working on these types of issues, sharing info, and networking (I volunteer with this group). TOKC offers an ongoing slate of free or low-cost workshops, films, presentations and events focused on helping people and communities in OKC become more prepared and resilient in the face of climate change, peak oil and economic instability. We like to have fun while we’re doing this work. We collaborate and partner with other groups, businesses, and organizations, serve as a catalyst and connector, and we organize practical projects, often with an emphasis on localization, a strategy that a growing number of leaders around the world believe will help offset many of the challenges we face. We eat a lot of potluck meals together (a lot). We are part of the vibrant Transition movement, which has more than 300 initiatives around the world. My friend and fellow Transitioner, Christine Patton and I started TOKC in Jan. 2009; it’s a program of Sustainable OKC, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
• Oklahoma Sustainability Network -- a statewide nonprofit networking resource with a wonderful listserv and multiple chapters involved in an array of sustainable endeavors.
• Transition US – a nonprofit organization that provides inspiration, encouragement, support, networking and training for Transition initiatives in the U.S. There are now 90 Transition initiatives across the U.S. -- take a look at the map on their website and seen if there’s one near you, or if you’re interested in starting one in your community, school, or town, they can help.
• Transition Network -- the international hub for the Transition movement. You can sort through Transition initiatives from all over the world here and browse loads of ideas and resources.

More books. If you’re into reading, dive into this big fat list of recommended books. Every book on this list is part of our personal library, guiding our family as we work on our own resiliency planning.

Again this is just a starting place. You may have a whole different set of resources you’ve found that work for you (good on you if you do) and if you’re up for sharing, please feel free to do so. What websites, books, blogs do you recommend for resiliency and emergency preparedness planning?

Technorati Tags: awareness,books,change,climate change,community,emergency planning,home,hope,peak oil,partnerships,resilience,sustainability,transition okc,transition movement

One local food meal = one step toward reducing foreign oil dependence

A couple of weeks ago Transition OKC helped host a Local Food Meet and Greet. The Meet and Greet provided a host of folks passionate about growing a local food system the opportunity to network and get to know each other better. It was enthusiastically and well-attended, with more than 110 people coming on a sunny Saturday afternoon to IAO Gallery in Oklahoma City to nosh on locally produced food, wine and do a little “speed meeting.”

The event was organized by the “Going Locavore Group,” a loosely organized and growing grassroots coalition (or alliance) of several Oklahoma City organizations focused on catalyzing and transitioning our food system to a healthier, more sustainable and resilient one – and one strategy for doing so is to localize it. The team organizing the event was for the most part all-volunteer, and although we were scrambling up until the last minute to put all the details in place – we pulled it off – a total team effort if there ever was one. If you have any interest in networking with this group, or want more info, email us at localfoodokc@gmail.com. 

As one of the volunteers working on this event, part of my task was to put together a slide show about the reasons for transitioning to eating local food, and to provide a high-level overview of some of the initiatives in other states focused on growing regional and local food systems. As we researched, we discovered coalitions in New York City and Vermont have aggressive strategic plans for regional and localized food sheds and the body of work on this topic is growing exponentially -- encouraging.

Above you’ll find one of the slides from the presentation and I’ll be sharing more of these in the coming days. Eventually will put the whole presentation online here at ThinkLady and at other sites such as Sustainable OKC’s blog  Fresh Greens and Transition OKC so if it is useful in any way to other local food efforts, it’s available for anyone to use and adapt.

In the meantime, given the high price of gas these days, the fact the era of cheap, easy-to-produce oil is over, and the growing production decline in one of the U.S.’s major suppliers of oil – Mexico -- thought this slide might be a good one to start with. It illustrates one way we can begin to reduce our dependence on foreign oil imports. Ebullient and grateful hat tip to Barbara Kingsolver and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, for helping us imagine a different way of eating in the world.

Imagine abundant local food. Imagine the jobs it will create and the ways it will strengthen our local economy. Envision the health it will bring to our school kids, our communities, the resilience it will give our communities. Imagine how much we can reduce our country’s oil addiction if we eat not just one, but two local food meals a week, three, five, etc. Imagine. And then try it. I think you’ll like it.

If you’d like info on how to get started eating locally head over to Transition OKC’s website where we have a page full of local food resources.

Technorati Tags: Community,local food,localization,locavores,conservation,resilience,peak oil,transition,sustainability

Eat your tweeties

Top Ten Tweeties from ThinkLady over the the past few weeks. Being intentionally vague on the time span because I've been very, very lax recently. Methinks ThinkLady needs a little more thoughtful motivation.

1. I LOVED this retweeted from The Nation -- RT @thenation: RT @JimmaeJames: #welovetheNHS i'd rather be taxed for a hospital bed than a bomb.
2. From the phenomenal Chris Hedges' book I'm reading, "Empire of Illusion" -- "What Huxley feared was there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one, "Neil Postman.
3. Because we need it and it's a good thing -- Do something to build community this weekend. Turn off TV, leave house, walk, talk to neighbors, look up when walking, smile and say hello.
4. Made me laugh, big out loud, belly busting, eye-watering guffaws -- my whole day was better after I read it -- "...odds of Olympics coming to Tulsa ... as high as Sally Kern dancing in a gay bar." Lost Ogle IS best daily LOL http://bit.ly/q8WV7
5. Isn't it about time we did this?! Come on Okies -- lead the way! -- Grass-roots project aims to wean Oklahomans off oil addiction http://bit.ly/89sxb. Thank you Heide and OKC Biz!
6. A classy guy who deserves to be our governor some day! -- Jim Roth unravels special interests on climate-change bill in today's Journal Record http://bit.ly/GJW4i
7. Noted this on a day it was 108 degrees - blech! -- Note to builders of big stores: Parking lots without trees in the summer are like a trip thru hell. People usually don't like hell.
8. From my sweet friend Lindsay, always an erudite observer! -- RT @lindsayvidrine: Why this Kern woman is bad for Oklahoma business. Couldn't have said it better myself. http://tinyurl.com/nkgo86
9. Our energy situation is so far from stable and makes us really vulnerable! -- If you look at history, you have to expect more volatility [in oil prices], Jeroen van der Veer, retired CEO, Shell http://bit.ly/L71AI
10. No a deep thought here, just lovin' the hell out a break in the heat! -- Oh Great Break-in-summer Heat. Thou art a boon to sweat weary souls. Stay awhile. Drop in often! U r the best looking of all the gods!

Amazing feats of urban farming & volatile oil

Two stories, one from the NY Times magazine yesterday on an amazing urban farmer in Milwaukee, Wis., named Will Allen, and the other, one of the top stories in today’s NY Times, on how unprecedented oil price volatility is hampering economic recovery, illustrate the challenges we face. However, in the urban farming piece we also catch a glimpse of the potential for one positive-change model for our food system, and I think it’s hopeful knowing there are projects with elements of Allen’s work in cities and towns throughout Oklahoma.

The piece on oil price volatility illustrates once again the need for grass-roots localization and making our communities more resilient and less vulnerable to oil prices, supply and demand.

Swings in Price of Oil Hobble Forecasting

By Jad Mouawad

NY Times 

The extreme volatility that has gripped oil markets for the last 18 months has shown no signs of slowing down, with oil prices more than doubling since the beginning of the year despite an exceptionally weak economy.

Highlights:

· “To call this extreme volatility might be an understatement,” said Laura Wright, the chief financial officer at Southwest Airlines, a company that has sought to insure itself against volatile prices by buying long-term oil contracts. “Over the past 15 to 18 months, this has been unprecedented. I don’t think it can be easily rationalized.”

· But to Jeroen van der Veer, who retired as chief executive officer of Royal Dutch Shell last week, prices are increasingly dictated by long-term assessments of supply and demand, rather than current market fundamentals. He advised taking a long-term view of the market.

· “Oil has never been very stable,” Mr. van der Veer said. “If you look at history, you have to expect more volatility.”

Complete article here.

Street Farmer

By Elizabeth Royte

NY Times Magazine

Will Allen, a farmer of Bunyonesque proportions, ascended a berm of wood chips and brewer’s mash and gently probed it with a pitchfork. “Look at this,” he said, pleased with the treasure he unearthed. A writhing mass of red worms dangled from his tines. He bent over, raked another section with his fingers and palmed a few beauties.

And a few highlights:

· With seeds planted at quadruple density and nearly every inch of space maximized to generate exceptional bounty, Growing Power is an agricultural Mumbai, a supercity of upward-thrusting tendrils and duct-taped infrastructure.

· If inside the greenhouse was Eden, outdoors was, as Allen explained on a drive through the neighborhood, “a food desert.” Scanning the liquor stores in the strip malls, he noted: “From the housing project, it’s more than three miles to the Pick’n Save. That’s a long way to go for groceries if you don’t have a car or can’t carry stuff. And the quality of the produce can be poor.” Fast-food joints and convenience stores selling highly processed, high-calorie foods, on the other hand, were locally abundant. “It’s a form of redlining,” Allen said. “We’ve got to change the system so everyone has safe, equitable access to healthy food.”

· Allen, too, has achieved a certain momentum for his efforts to bring the good-food movement to the inner city. In the last several years, he has become a darling of the foundation world. In 2005, he received a $100,000 Ford Foundation leadership grant. In 2008, the MacArthur Foundation honored Allen with a $500,000 “genius” award. And in May, the Kellogg Foundation gave Allen $400,000 to create jobs in urban agriculture.

· “We need 50 million more people growing food,” Allen told them, “on porches, in pots, in side yards.” The reasons are simple: as oil prices rise, cities expand and housing developments replace farmland, the ability to grow more food in less space becomes ever more important. As Allen can’t help reminding us, with a mischievous smile, “Chicago has 77,000 vacant lots.” (NOTE: This made me wonder many how vacate lots Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Edmond, Norman, Stillwater, Shawnee, Broken Arrow, Bartlesville, Tahlequah, Woodward, Clinton, etc. might have?)

· “Not everyone can grow food,” Allen acknowledged. But he offers other ways of engaging with the soil: “You bring 30 people out here, bring the kids and give them good food,” he said, “and picking up those rocks is a community event.”

· This nondogmatic approach may be one of Allen’s most appealing qualities. His essential view is that people do the best they can: if they don’t have any better food choices than KFC, well, O.K. But let’s work on changing that. If they don’t know what to do with okra, Growing Power stands ready to help.

· If there’s no place in the food movement for low- and middle-income people of all races, says Tom Philpott, food editor of Grist.org and co-founder of the North Carolina-based Maverick Farms, “we’ve got big problems, because the critics will be proven right — that this is a consumption club for people who’ve traveled to Europe and tasted fine food.”

· … Growing Power isn’t self-sufficient. But neither is industrial agriculture, which relies on price supports and government subsidies. Moreover, industrial farming incurs costs that are paid by society as a whole: the health costs of eating highly processed foods, for example, or water pollution. Nor can Growing Power be compared to other small farms, because it provides so many intangible social benefits to those it reaches. “It’s not operated as a farm,” said Ian Marvy, executive director of Brooklyn’s Added Value farm, which shares many of Growing Power’s core values but produces less food. “It has a social, ecological and economic bottom line.” That said, Marvy says that anyone can replicate Allen’s technical systems — the worm composting and aquaponics — for relatively little money.

· Allen predicts that because of high unemployment and the recent food scares, 10 million people will plant gardens for the first time this year. But two million of them will eventually drop out, he said, when the potato bugs arrive or the rain doesn’t cooperate. Still, he was sanguine. “The experience will introduce those folks to what a tomato really tastes like, so next time they’ll buy one at their greenmarket. And when we talk about farm-worker rights, we’ll have more advocates for them.”

Complete article here.

Lessons from Transition Boulder County for Oklahoma

Nice story on Transition Boulder County on CNET today by reporter Daniel Terdiman. Overall the article expresses the concept of the transition process and goals very well. Some good insights into how the transition process can work in Oklahoma City and throughout the state.

Highlights:

Because a massive spike in the cost of fossil fuel-based energy would drastically change most of our systems -- food, energy, economy, employment and so on--re-localization imagines a new era in which local communities work to meet their own needs rather than depending on a global infrastructure.

Brownlee explained that although the Transition movement is built around a recognition of the hard realities of fossil fuel depletion, the impact of climate change and likely economic instability, it doesn't spend a lot of time saying that using fossil fuels are a bad idea. Instead, the message is that, in the not too distant future, such energy will not be as easily available or as inexpensive as it is today.

"Communities cannot depend on globalized systems to continue to support them," Brownlee said.

.... until local governments get on board, we won't be able to depend on them to take care of the problems that will come in a post-peak oil world, either, Brownlee argued. That was one of the chief lessons from Hurricane Katrina, he said. "It's going to come from the local level, from the citizen level."

... he's never seen a grass-roots movement spread at the pace he's seen with Transition. While most of the organizations have sprouted in small towns, there are currently efforts under way in cities like Denver and Los Angeles. However, in cities, he said, it is likely that work will have to be done at the community level and coordinated city-wide, rather than be driven by a top-down structure.

Money quote:

"Transition is a social experiment on a grand scale, and we don't know if it will work. But we do know that if we wait for government it will be too little, too late, and if we rely on individuals, it will be too little. But if we come together as communities, it might be just enough, just in time."

Full story here.