Saw this on boingboing
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-myth-of-the-panicking_b_83...
This except makes me happy. I always tend to focus on how bad things are in disaster situations. And why shouldn't I if that's all the news media focuses on. But this article is saying that those are isolated incidents and that the majority of the surviving communities of disaster are strong and even become stronger in new and interesting ways.
With the current happenings on the other side of the globe in Africa and the Middle East, it is easy to see that there are signs of a large scale unraveling. It's not just Libya, or the country of the week. Read deeper and it's happening all over the place over there. I think these events are dominoes tipping with lots more to come over the next year.
The point of this post is to remind myself that in hard times and even disaster, earthquake or war or anything else, the good side of humans does prevail, and hopefully like this article says, more often than not. I have a renewed drive to make myself better physically and mentally. In emergent situations our best ally is going to be health. The healthier we are of mind and body, the better we can act in emergent situations with calm and with respect for the people in our immediate community.

I came across this post while doing some research on SF Brightworks, which isn't fully live yet. So the google search tunred up brightworks.net. Their year-opener post is a great call to action. It lacks the angry urgency of the 2000's and it's before the, hopefully avoidable desperation of the 2020's where we still haven't come to our senses on a meaningful scale. It's calm, and real, and the time is now.

This week started what most people knowledgeable about the weather think is going to be a long spat of rain! I almost wish I hadn't wasted all the water planting everything last summer, but this rain will pretty much assure that everything is going to take successfully without any water this year! I sat outside for a while the other day during the heaviest rain and just watched the rain gutter work. It never got more full than in this picture, even with a good gallon a minute(atleast) pouring out of the gutter that you can see at the top of this picture. I am wondering how long it will take for it to silt up. My guess is several years at least, but for now it's working like a charm and we are making use of so much water that would otherwise collect where it isn't needed.
I also made a make-shift rain catchment with a 35 gallon garbage can on wheels on a down spout in the backyard that I have emptied twice in 4 days! The other down spout in the backward was easily redirected to the base of our orange tree, which is probably really loving the water right now.
This is a low tech solution to things like water shortages, and run-off issues that everyone can do. It's super fun to problem solve, and ultimately it saves money, water, and our wetlands(run-off issues).

I salvage "waste" building materials and build home furniture and crafts, such as this picture frame, out of it. One of the beauties of the craft is in saving perfectly good materials from the landfill where it would become the next generation's problem. On a walk today, I saw this scene(picture) at a new development in our neighborhood. The typical building process is so wasteful, it makes my heart heavy to think about. At large scale "cookie-cutter" development, there is no room for mindfulness of resources. Waste is just factored into the cost of business. Whats worse is that new construction uses such crappy materials that not much of it is even worth salvaging. Most of my salvage comes from remodels and rebuilds. In these cases they are removing good, sturdy older wood and replacing it with laminates(particle board), flimsy aluminum and plastics.
This craft is one of symbolic beauty more than anything, and it is very satisfying. It is tough to want to build ones livelihood from it since it would be necessary that our building practices stay the same, not to mention it is logistically tough. Financially it wouldn't necessarily be impossible if one found their niche among the population that could afford to purchase it. But again, this would also assume the status quo in building would remain, else you'd be out of a job.

I spent a good deal of time this memorial day weekend working in the front yard. I had some help one day from my sister in-law and cousin and that made the work speed by as we shared stories not worth repeating, but no less meaningful(not to mention funny!). [For some really good writing on the subject of (repeatable) stories, check out this posting by our friend Chad working in Chattanooga on a farm.] I tried to share my thoughts praising manual labor, I think maybe a little bit got through, but they peeled off after a while to play cornhole. Can anyone blame them! Our pile of weeds mounded up tangled with a green plastic mesh that must have been put down under the sod when it was laid decades back. I continue to work through my difficult feelings on labor, suburbia, living, and the environment.