Garbage Warrior

The movie I saw last night was Garage Warrior.... amazing film, by Oliver Hodge, about a 'sustainable futures' architect, called Micheal Reynolds, who has been experimenting with self sustainable housing design in New Mexico for 30 or so years.

He has designed and been part of the building of "earthships" and earth ship communities in a place called Taos in New Mexico (which looks like a dry godforsakenly wretched barren place to me!).


At the end of the 90s he was stripped of his architectual license because experiemental housing does not fit in with the codes, rules and regulations in most places. He then spent 8 or so years trying to get a bill passed in New Mexico to allow people to create and experiment with new sustainble housing concepts on test sites (we test all sorts of other things like BOMBS.. so why not housing...) his houses are great - they need no power or sewage or water lines. They incorporate greenhouse features to grow a range of vegetables and fruit.


His designs are very popular in other places in the world and after the tsunami he was asked to go and help people rebuild sustainable housing - also in places hit by hurricanes.

When the architectual board in the US saw the work he had done for the boxing day tsunami people they gave him back his license and soon after that the bill passed in his state to allow sustainable housing testing.

He builds the houses with earth packed tyres, earth and plastic bottles and beer cans. They are amazing structures (although some are pretty 'ugly' I guess as they are free form structures and very unconventional).
You can check out the website and watch the trailer here

I am seriously considering sending him a wee thankyou card after watching the frustration and resilience he showed through the whole process of dealing with the senate over the experimental housing bill in New Mexico. GOODNESS!

Finding your purpose can change your life...

Transitions, Community and being the change you want to see

It's about putting your money where your mouth is... or rather, perhaps, not - as the case may be. But certainly a case of action speaks louder than words.

Words are easy, you know...but actions, they're a tougher breed of thing altogether. Words can be cast around flippantly with little effort to suit the occasion you are trying to manipulate, the message you're trying to convey, the image you are trying to give. But actions.... that's where the energy is.
You can't be flippant about actions, or can we? I was about to launch down a different path with this blog, but I have just digressed myself onto a path worth processing now...

As creatures we invest energy in things - except, unlike the rest of the creatures, we have created for ourselves this easy system where the energy is to easily replaced for a growing majority of us. Most living things expend energy to get energy - they can't be flippant about it becuase energy supply is not guaranteed. The survival of a species can be made or ended on chasing the wrong piece of food. If you don't catch it, that might have been your last chance.
Not us people. Most of us don't expend anywhere near enough energy to burn up the amount we consume. For goodness sake.. a lot of us actually go to gyms to burn off the stuff we didn't break a sweat to gather. What have we become?
Is this the pinacle of evolution that all creatures should aspire to if only they have the cognitive power to do so? Are we now at the top of some ridculous ladder of greatness that some ethnocentric scholar created?

No. We aren't. We're a sad by-product of our own misguided intelligence. And we are apathetic about it. We may not have lost more knowledge in the last half decade than we've gained but I would suggest that the quality of that knowledge and the skills the majority of us have not bothered to pick up translates to make that loss very important. Can you grow things? Do you know how to feed your family from your garden? Do you know how to preserve food for the winter? Do you knit or sew? Can you make tools? Purify water? Do you even know where your nearest supply of water would be if your tap stopped magically delivering it to your kitchen? Some of these things will be things you remember from your childhood. Someone knitted in your family, someone grew things and cooked them and put them on the table for you to eat.

Do you know where the rubbish goes when it leaves your house? What about the water from your kitchen sink or your shower? Humans are the only animal that doesn't live in a sustainable manner. Basically we shit where we live. In the natural world that's stupid.
Unfortunately, due to wonderful infrastructure and management systems, the majority of us live well isolated and disconnected from the way things actually work. Do your kids know where milk comes from? Do they know that beef is a cow? what about bacon? What are chips made of? When things start to go bad, they will do so in such a rapid way we will be forced to exercise our ability to adapt radically to changing circumstances. I yearn to be ready for that.

I decided to be the change I want to see in the world. It started off small. With me doing what I do, saying what I say, thinking what I think. But it's all very well me having the attitudes I do and the knowledge I do and the awareness I do, but in real terms it means little. It doesn't change the world enough to keep me sleeping at night. My desrire for social action is growing to match my ability to make it happen.
Tonight I attended a public meeting. A gathering of people who understand something is happening and want to know what to do. We are not sitting by and waiting for government to do it - because that would be too late, it's already too late. Government is too big and slow and unweldy. We are going to take back what is really important and just start doing things ourselves.
My town is a transition town. We are not the first one and we will nto be the last one.
A transition town is a group of people living in a place wanting to explore ways to live in a more sustainable way, a more responsible way - a way that will provide for us through the period we are moving into - decline of oil supply and changing climate patterns. Transition Town initiatives will facilitate creative and pro-active responses to energy resource depletion as well as being a ripping good bonding time for the community!
We are a group that is re-localising our community to make it stronger, "resilient and truely sustainable".

The meeting raised many issues that people wanted to explore and then we broke into smaller groups based on what drew our attention and focus. We discussed ideas in these groups and created next steps and actions. I am interested in local organic food and this is the area I have been drawn to over the last half year, in particular the concept of permaculture. I keep banging into it everywhere I go so I joined that discussion and by the end of July I shall be part of a permaculture culture! Things are changing, and they are changing now!

It's exciting!

Below are some links if you want to explore the Transition Town global movement.

Totnes - the first transition town
Transition Towns New Zealand

Another fantastic day! OH THE HUMANITY!

Yes.. another fantastic day IN THE WORKPLACE!

Today we had one of my favourite authors at the sanctuary for the day working with classes of students from our region.
Interestingly this is another one of those things I envisioned and saw in my mind with me participating in way back when I first started this job in Jan.
Andrew Crowe is an author who has a similar attitude to learning that I do.
Learning is living.
Liek me he is interested in everything and often has many interests on the go at once. He will hear about something and become interested and want to find out more, he will then do a range of research and find out more and more then he will think.. hmmm, what book would have been really useful to me when I was doing my research.. hmm.. then he will write that book.
Most of his books are identification guides for NZ native plants, insects, birds - he also has one for spiders and seashells (as well as a book about the Dalai Lama, edible NZ plants that resulted form when he was lost int eh bush and then after he was not lost anymore he wanted to find out how he could survive if that every happened again and there resulted his first book!)
This is the way I originally found out about Andrew. Through my new job I used one of his books to teach myself about some of our native plants and it was SUCH a good book and so easy to use and practical and amazing I wanted to find out about the author. So I researched! I knew from my research that I wanted to meet him and that he would love our project.
Meeting him was just as I imagined. He was very supportive of our project and donated LOTS of copies of his different books. He talked to me and we shared some information and it was GREAT.

I am getting used to meeting my heroes!!! (I will tell you about some of my other experiences meeting my heroes that have occurred since I started in my job, in another blog soon! - you might have to remind me I said that).

My job is fantasic!
When Andrew was finished I got to talk to three groups of students and parents today about the sanctuary and I could tell I excited them and engaged them. About 100 people all together in just one day! (my throat is a tad on the raw side and staying up until 230 am AGAIN last night certainly has not helped).

My next challenge is to work on the talks I give and the programmes I deliver to foster a sense of stewardship for our environment through continued connection with the sanctuary project and other projects in their more immediate community/street/school.



After this I went to a meeting of for "Education for Enterprise" which is an organisation which links schools with industry through contextual programmes that have real meaning in the real world. I came away form this with a positive feeling - the schools were delighted to have a resource (the sanctuary) that has so much potential for environmentally linked programmes of real value. It is great for us because being a community funded programme, all of our workforce, supplies, funds etc all come from donations of time and money. Having students turn some of our wants and needs into projects is wonderful! One of the projects I have on the go right now is a bird feeder. A metal or wooden platform where a number of birds can gather to feed and people passing through the sanctuary can sit and watch them in their natural environment. (supplemental feeding helps to keep the birds in good condition while the forest is regenerating and also due to pests such as wasps which cannot be kept out with the fence and heavily deplete the nectar sources).
I have another young man who has taken on one of my dream projects... a hydro powered webcam to position at a nest box or a bird feeder. One of our goals is to be as sustainable in our energy use as we can be both for our carbon footprint and as a model to our community.
After this meeting I had to go to our trust meeting. The sanctuary is run by a trust. It has twelve members from diverse business/interest background. These people make decisions on the direction and processes of the sanctuary.
I report to them every month. The reporting process has been interesting. My more creative nature as expressed through my board reports, was not entirely understood by all trust members so it has been modified somewhat, LOL. I have to be careful not to loose the charms that gained me the job in the first place though!
The meeting was splendid (even though the tiredness was starting to show with the bleary eyes and the relaxed and casual demeanor! People are impressed by the amount of work I have been doing as reflected by my reports.
also we began planning a SECRET special winter event which involves something so amazing special and wondifious that I grin with glee! Even doing the most ridiculously wretched and tedious of jobs would be BLISS for me to be involved with this event. i can't tell you ab out it now... but stay TUNED!


You might think I am lucky and sometimes I feel lucky too - but to be fair to myself, I have worked hard for this in many ways and also in many ways this job provides the challenges I am ready to meet and I RELISH it!

BRING IT ON, LIFE!
(oh and thanks too, for the lot, the good, the bad and the ugly!)