Archive | September, 2011
Couchsurfing with my soapbox
My recent foray to Wisconsin and Michigan had me staying five different homes, hence sleeping in five different beds and eating at many different tables. It was quite an exciting adventure, spent with wide-awake people, and I hope to repeat the experience as many times as the industrial economy allows. I’ve embedded one of the [...]
Continue reading...I am not Troy Davis
22. September 2011
by Anonymous On the street yesterday in my city I saw signs, held by people of many races, economic backgrounds and political affiliations, that said “Not In My Name” and “I Am Troy Davis”. I know, without a doubt, that this callous and unjust state execution will not be in my name, but I also [...]
Continue reading...Who’s the doomer?
16. September 2011
by Kathy Cumbee (bio here, at her first essay for Nature Bats Last) How many of us have been told at one time or another that we are doomers? I was thinking about that and, although it might be correct to call some of us Cassandras , we are not doomers. Suppose a wife tells [...]
Continue reading...Lessons of history
12. September 2011
by Kevin Moore The most important lesson of history is that the lessons of history are not learned. The First World War was the first grand-scale industrial war in which millions of men and women died as a consequence of weaponry made possible by advanced chemistry. It was to have been ‘the war to end [...]
Continue reading...Brace for impact
11. September 2011
Famed energy scholar Richard Heinberg is extremely conservative with his estimates, and he has updated his forecast. Whereas in spring 2009 he was predicting the industrial age would run until 2014 or perhaps even 2016, he’s changed his tune. Radically. Now he says it’s coming to a halt this autumn, a forecast that matches the [...]
Continue reading...Film series: odds and ends
9. September 2011
A few additional items bear mention, and video, even though they do not fit nicely into one of preceding categories. This will be the final clip in the video series and, like the others, it will be posted atop the page only for a couple days. Acknowledgments: Karen Sliwa performed real work on the property [...]
Continue reading...Film series: building human community
7. September 2011
A strong community underlies mere survival for most humans and, contrary to the strong current of the main stream, developing and maintaining a decent human community is imperative if we are to thrive. As I’ve written previously, our self-proclaimed independence based on suburbia is a bad joke made possible only by cheap energy. As we’ll [...]
Continue reading...Film series: maintaining body temperature
5. September 2011
This video clip explains how we maintain body temperature at the mud hut. The nearby river and a small pond help cool us during summer, though they are not shown. Acknowledgments: Karen Sliwa performed real work on the property while Mike Sliwa shot and edited these videos. You can follow the work of Mike and [...]
Continue reading...Film series: food preparation
3. September 2011
This clip explains most of our food-preparation strategies. I’ve included neither the conventional electric oven in the mobile home nor the microwave oven in the outdoor kitchen (though you can see the latter at the 1:30 mark, to the right of the grinding mill). Acknowledgments: As regular readers can guess by now, Karen Sliwa performed [...]
Continue reading...Film series: food storage
1. September 2011
This clip explains strategies we use to store food at the mud hut. Acknowledgments: As usual, Karen Sliwa performed real work on the property while Mike Sliwa shot and edited these videos. You can follow the work of Mike and Karen here.
Continue reading...
29. September 2011
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