So where does the sanity all fit in to this?

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

This remarkable story may do a fine job of beginning that conversation.

Um,

So some have commented on the black granite countertops in the photos. . .a bit excessive in the cabin, they say?

Well, maybe. I guess I could have used pig pat.

The fact is I like black granite, and at 5 bucks a square foot there's 150 bucks worth of it.

Or 30 six packs worth.

Or two tanks of gas.

Or 75 lbs of sweet potatoes.

And the truth is, the black granite will be the only thing still here in 50 years.

Rocket Stove Kits

My neighbor who is a steel fabricator and does very fine work will supply rocket stove parts per order, or you can buy the basic kit which duplicates mine. If you have scrap steel that you'd like to use, I'm sure he would accommodate. His name is Shiloh and can be reached at 6405308. I'll help you put the thing together for free as a "build community" sort of thing.

You'll love it.

Another plug for George Soros.

You really need to watch this.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10102008/watch.html

It is interesting. . .

To see the flurry of thoughts and ideas bouncing around out there. More and more every day we seem to hear about the crisis of confidence we face as a society towards the trust we have in each other and our institutions. This crisis in confidence is clearly well founded. Unfortunately, the response seems to be the formation of large numbers of groups out there--all seemingly saying "Trust us! We're building new institutions!" Certainly I'm familiar with the Venus Project, all that Zeitgiest stuff, of course the Large Cap Seasteading guys, and all that. They are very fine at drawing all sorts of nice pictures about what they're going to build. I understand the temptation. When I was in 2cd grade or thereabouts, I was all caught up in UFO's and spaceships and must have drawn blueprints for hundreds. I would proudly show off my plan for a new spaceship with nice little drawing of people growing food in boxes and gymnasiums, and of course somewhere was a squigly device with pumps and smoke that was, the "fusion engine"--or so I'd sagely reply. In fact, they looked a lot like the stuff you will see over there at the Venus Project. In fact, they have one very critical characteristic that is identical. They were, stictly, daydreams. To suggest that such a thing could be built is a entirely differnet issue than will it. Of course anything can hypothetically be built. If we focus on, strictly that which will be built, or on lifestyles that will exist, suddenly the whole picture and the task at hand becomes immediate. We need to get started, immediately, on the immediately beneficial, and the immediately achievable. This is the sole way to a better future.

Of course, central to the issue as well is this. It is a complete waste of time to daydream about ways we personally could live. We must focus on what changes we will make. This and only this engenders progress. It is no good saying that I'm not being visionary enough, or whatever. Visionary thinkers we have no shortage of. We need heroes. We need people that act. Here is our crisis. There is simply no way to anticipate what sorts of options move from the hypothetical world of the possible to the world of the accessible once one has made real steps in that direction. Unfortunately, we have people planning what they will do upon arrival without even lacing up their boots.

Allow me to state the obvious: It isn't visionary in the slightest unless a wholesale attack and complete rejection of materialism as core social value is not central to the vision. It isn't a credible vision, in the slightest, unless real concrete steps towards that vision are evident.

. . .And lastly, none of this will mean a damn thing to you unless these visions and actions aren't personal. . .

Our new institutions will not be formed. They will arise. What they will arise from is the amalgam of each and all of our manifest values and actions. If you want to change the world, get started planting that garden.

If you haven't seen it. . .

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

Click on the phone, you'll figure it out.

Epiphany

Tonight, again raining lightly and chill. Certainly the weather has changed in the last week. I imagine we'll get a couple of weeks yet of good weather before it really comes on, but "summer" is clearly over.

Tonight, cooking on the rocket stove a curry of taro(out of the garden, lauloa ele'ele omao, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong on the variety!) with local onions and local beef. The rockets stove is happly sucking away buring construction scraps. It's very quiet. I type at the computer with the battery bank nicely full. Ran the generator today to power the wirefeed welder, and the whole house is powered up if the fuel gets burned.

Cool outside but toasty in the cabin, and dead silent except for the pop or two of a stick and the hard pat of rain on the roof and the softer hiss of the same on the ferns.

This, of course, is the simplicity we seek manifest.

Of course it wasn't simple in the slightest to achieve it. How soon we all forget that.

So the epiphany. Everybody wants to live a simple life. Everybody tries, according to their definition of it. No one wants a life full of drugery, stress, pain, worries, and confrontations. No one who isn't pathalogical, anyhow. The problem is simply this--people simply don't know how to go about it.

This is compounded, of course, by the fact that the majority of what is out there marketed with the idea of making life simpler is really just someting being sold for the sole purpose of enriching the seller--making HIS life simpler with a fatter account, but that's about it.

Certainly when you see people plowing away after the big house--a lot of it, at least hypothetically, is that more living space eases tensions in a family, and the house itself is an investment that will pay off with better living down the road. Really? When you see expensive cars it's that they are safer in a collision and are more reliable. Really? When you see people with acid refux and irritable bowel syndrom pulling their hair out trying to get ahead in a "career" the only the reason they do so is so that the income that they will achieve will allow them, at some point, at least, to take a step or two back and maybe a vacation in Bali. . .really. . .

Well, I'm sure most everyone in the developed world is questioning those assumptions at least a little bit at the moment.

With the exception of people who are stunted, and there are more than a handful of those, who can only function in environments with very high levels of stimulation--you've got a brute creature which is nothing more than a bit of human colored spray paint on a brain stem--one that simply has nothing in its head without the racket of roaring motors or the company of bouncing clowns. . .except for those. . .the sane among us only miss out on a life of simplicy and sanity not because of a lack of desire, but because of a lack of hope, skills, and honest guidence.

This is where the responsibility comes in. If you know something, share it. Give it away. We must achieve a critical mass of people who do live in this manner. Unfortunately, most who would desire to live so give it such a bad go that their lifestyles effectively are near indecernable from those who simply don't give a damn about anything but the next fix, whatever it is. This gives a disproportial sense of real values of society--and sells us short.

Moringa

When you start reading about this plant, its uses, and its qualities, you simply must stop for a moment and ask: can this really be true? It is really such a valuable plant that it's difficult to believe that the various claims can possibly be true.

Apparently, they are. I'm sold on the evidence and planted some today. I'll keep everyone posted on how it goes. I see no reason why it should not, and it's widely grown in Hawaii anyway.

This very useful website has a lot of information about moringa, its uses, and propagation methods. As far as I'm concerned anyone who could swing growing it ought to give it a whirl. At least look into it. It's very possibly the most nutritional plant on earth.

http://www.treesforlife.org/our-work/our-initiatives/moringa

This video is pretty good as well.

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/121059/904163

Something Else That Can Get In the Way of Simplicity

This sent to me today. God, so funny I near pee'd myself. Sigh. . .

I take it she thought moving out of the "cage" and back to the "Savannah" wasn't such a hot idea.

We need to work on this kind of getting along a bit too, I expect.

Homesteading meets Seasteading--the base of operations

Those out there living the lifestyle are going to need to sink or swim here. One is going to need to get that boat ready and be pretty creative, I expect, if things keep rolling in the manner they are.

Part of the reason that I came to Hawaii and the Hilo area in general is that Hilo bay is unquestionably the most important port in the Pacific for a Seasteading lifestyle. It is more or less undeveloped, with minimal congestion, and is a relatively easy more or less all weather entrance accessible for a windjammer, even a large one. As well, it's shaping up very rapidly that the Big Island is the only island in the mid Pacific that has the capacity to maintain sensible agriculture, and there's really only going to be one place to get real stores. If the climate models are correct, most of Mexico, especially the Sea of Cortez region may be more or less an ultra arid dead zone. Many of the smaller islands will be in the same place. The Big Island as well will suffer, but it's still big enough that there will remain productive patches in certain areas. While the Pacific Northwest looks good at the moment, the population density is simply too high, it's too expensive yet to make agriculture sensible, and drought in the Cascades, with snowless winters is going to be the norm.

At this point I'm missing only one of the traditional "canoe plants" that voyagers stocked their ships with, and I'm getting very close to being able to produce useful quantities for voyaging boats. Anyone who has their foot in the Pacific rim and are looking to a long term future take note!

The day of making a living in the Pacific as a small time trader is very nearly back. You've got a chance to get it all together here soon with a bad economy and cheap oil for the next couple of years. We have learned how expensive it can get and how fast. We also know what levels of costs it takes to break the economy's back--and that's about 150 bucks a barrel. Less than I would have expected, but it's a known now. Way too close for comfort!