The Collapse

[pan]

OK, I'm an idiot - how do you upload video?

Watch this

[Cal]

I'll follow your advice in 6 months time Mouse. Right now all I want to do is climb into my car & drive to the supermarket and buy ICE CREAM. We are having heat waves that last for a couple of days and come to an end with terrific thunder & lightning storms and then we start roasting all over again. The towns people tell me that winter here is very very cold & I should start stocking up on firewood now already. Hopefully I can get that much right ... I'm a forester and we ( the corporate that keeps me in clothed, fed & housed) grow pine, wattle & eucalypts so hopefully I can cadge some off one of the nearby plantations.

Reading the posts here - I feel very lucky to still have my job. My recent transfer from city to northern rural town was even a promotion .... I'm neither young nor cute & I've got a science, not a business degree. I'm good at estimating how much timber is growing out there and how much we can harvest 'sustainably' and I guess in this day & age my gender counts for me. That part is a nice change from 30 years ago when most forestry schools turned me down because women weren't supposed to be able to cope with the arduous nature of forestry work. Another thing that counts for me is that I'm one of the few people around here that still knows how to do what I do ... the majority have emigrated from this southern tip of Africa. I sort of wish I'd done that when I was younger and richer and more adaptable, but with everything I've learnt from you folk here on this site I wonder if anywhere is actually better than right here. Whatever - Africa is in my blood with all it's chaos. I've started my garden at my new place ... I've planted a lemon tree and have beans, parsley & lettuce going in pots. Whatevere shit there is going on out there in the world it is still amazing to watch a bean push it's head of leaves up through the soil.
Our economy was doing ok but we are really starting to feel the global recession. The company I work for exports wood chips to Japan and one very worried individual is currently over there right now to find out if they still want anything from us this year ... and the rest of us are wondering what's going to happen if they don't.

[BO]

Thanks for letting us know what you're up to. Love hearing about your life in South Africa. I feel so damn sheltered, and undoubtably have the wrong idea about what life is like there.

I really need to get out more.

[hannah j]

it got cold enough for our pipes to partially freeze last night, hopefully it will warm up enough by tomorrow. i was caught on the way out of the DAV thrift store in wichita on wednesday but a reporter from a local tv station. i answer his questions about how we were dealing with the cold. they completely butchered my comments, and ran this: (click on the link above the rporter's picture for the video with yours truly- looking pretty scruffy- it was about 9F)

http://www.kwch.com/Global/story.asp?S=9676581

read the comments to see what i really said and the good response i got from viewers. no wonder no one knows what is going on, when they distort even a small news story like this.

patrick is leaving tomorrow for arizona (quartszite) to buy cutting material for our business/art. i just could not deal with quartzsite this year, so am going out with a friend to tucson in about 10 days. we will get a break from the cold, but if it weren't for the friends i have at the mineral show i would stay here in the cold and my little house. i am becoming more and more a hermit, though i love spending time with like minded folks.

a friend of ours in wisconsin was down around -26 lately at night, at -9 now, and that's F. he lives alone, and is thinking about getting a dog, as i haven't found him a gf.

peace and all that, why not?
hannah

[BO]

I think the false empathy the media seems to be spreading these days, is worth a study. It's almost like they figure if they expose the pain us middle-class and po' folk are experiencing that we'll become more docile simply by letting us know there's many in the same boat. Much like CNBC running stories about what a crook Bernie Madoff is/was -- though they helped create him. I think they figure if they show enough people who were fucked over by him, it will defuse some of the anger. The media is now one of us--they've co-opted our misery. It's just part of the complex of distraction to keep us peasants off-balance.

On the bright side...Now that you're a television star, how about using your new-found celebrity to drive some more traffic through here?

[hannah j]

it was funny, the postmaster told patrick she had seen me on tv! and another lady, who wrote a comment emailed me, we know her from shows.

there really is a need for the hippie voice if they would just get over themselves at the networks.

who do we want to come here? i am on a bioregional listserve, so maybe some of them. my stumbleupon fans might like it here. anyone?

[littleoldme]

I'm freezing my butt off right now as we speak. I guess all that crap about your blood thinning in the south is true or maybe it's the broken heat pump, but damn I'm cold. Our little space heater usually does a pretty good job of keeping the living room livable but this morning I'm just down right cold, and can't seem to warm up. Oh and as a kinda funny side note I was up late night before last watching the police pull a car outta our retention pond. You know your point of view is slightly jaded when your more worried about the ducks being hurt (none were) then the fool who stole the car that ended up sunk in the pond. Florida....home of the really freakin' toopid.

[BO]

Nothing better than an Airstream. I likes 'em because they look like giant Prozacs. Makes me all warm inside just lookin' at 'em..

And, I have nothing but respect for those living off grid. Those solar panels are awesome. Ought to keep that transister radio running fine on those sunny days.

Me? I wanna suck up as much of that juice as I can before it's all gone. Screw the next generation. I want a Georgie Boy with 10 slide-outs, 14 air-conditioners, 6 LCD Tv's, a microwave, Playstation, automatic buttscratcher, and every other energy-sucking toy I can think of.

Gonna dump my sewage in every creek I find.

Just sorry I missed the rally at Waldo's. I could see myself waxing my GB in that big ole barn.

OK, juss kidding. I do have a woody for one of those diesel pusher busses though. My wife has always wanted a house with a basement. And you could store a years worth of food down there.

Gonna name it Mad Maxxy. Mad Maxxy Pad?

[pan]

When I was a kid they held a couple of Wally Byam Rally in the parking lots of the Iowa State University Center. There were acres of Airstreams parked as close to each other as possible. Rows and rows of silver suppositories. Very surreal.

The site as a history page devoted to Wally - who they assure us "... was a real person, not a myth, as we have heard some profess."

[curt]

"a lack of trust"

[waldopaper]

curt! where ya been? this guy is good! although in this case he uses "earthquake" as a metaphor, in THIS case it is not!

[Cal]

Complentary Currency

Creating Currency For A Resilient Local Economy

By Crystal Arnold

Imagine a world of sufficiency where needs are met through a web of local relationships, where meaningful exchanges circulate goods and services independent of the availability of national dollars.

One of society’s most common misunderstandings about money is that it is an object, when it is actually an agreement of trust. According to Lewis Lapham, author of Money and Class in America, “Money ranks as one of the primary materials with which mankind builds the architecture of civilization.” Economic textbooks describe money according to its functions—a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a standard of valuation. Money itself is actually a symbol of exchange that carries value through agreement only. What would the numbers in our bank account be worth if no one would agree to accept them in exchange for goods or services?

In my view money is a social interface of provision, a tool for engaging with others to satisfy needs. As many people uncover their own behaviors and attitudes about money, they realize the way they relate with money is often the way they relate with most everything in life. Lyn Twist, in her book Soul of Money, writes, “Money is a current, a carrier, a conduit for our intentions.”


In dozens of communities across the United States, complementary currencies (CCs) have become powerful tools that generate resilience in local economies.


.... more ....

[curt]

The idea of reintroducing bartering swept rural USA a few decades ago. What has become of it, I cannot say. But the idea did strike me and my siblings as one worth sustaining. Here where I live and play and occasionally work, that's a lie, a sort of bartering or mutual favour doing is part of the culture. I haven't been here long enough to say this is new. I doubt that it is. Currencies, money, we can almost do without. But not quite. Consider e.g. my offering a favour my neighbour wishes not to cash in on after he did me a favour I did cash in on but a third neighbour could very well do with my favour and he wasn't directly involved in the first favour. This is where currency comes into play. I've found that the way people deal with it without introducing currency is to simply give and assist whenever you can, unconditionally.....on a communal level. In return, you will receive all the help you need on most any project you set out to accomplish. All you need to do is to stay on good terms with thy neighbours. All of them.