Or, maybe NOT tomorrow.

Hmm.  If I remember correctly, this second section was supposed to be posted "tomorrow,"and "tomorrow" was supposed to occur on October 16th.  (Ahem.  That's what I get for making resolutions.)  According to Google, Garth Brooks once wrote a song entitled "What if Tomorrow Never Comes" that might be appropriate here...I'll let you  go ahead and figure out that one if you're into that kind of thing.

[Depending on your point of view, however, you might raise the concern that the kinds and amounts of natural resources that we use, combined with the number of us using them and the mammoth amounts of pollution that result are presenting us already with an uncertain tomorrow.  (Ha! How's that for a segue?)]

In my last post, I proposed that there are practical, frugal, ecological, and apocalyptic reasons for my canning of tomatoes, dithering with chickens, and working toward a future where I am able to step outside of the consumptive economy as much as possible.  Here are my thoughts on the last two motivations:



The ecological:  When we first knew we were buying a house down the street, Jason & I stopped at the community park along the White River, down by the town hall of Rocky Ripple--and were staggered and deflated by the two signs below, surely posted by someone aware of their irony. 

While we have a canoe, we have learned that any large rainstorm overwhelms Indianapolis's storm-water system and floods the river with raw sewage; if we want to paddle around, it is best to go after a long dry spell.  Instead of getting to play in the river, I can't help but view it with suspicion.

We have collectively made a choice in our advanced and modern age that occasionally astounds me:  we choose to live in a dirty, polluted world.  We vote for this every day, with our dollars, our ballot boxes, our opinions and conversations with others.  (I shudder to think about what was voted into place yesterday.  *sigh*)  It is just fine, apparently, because doing so implicitly waves the banners of "Progress" "Economic Growth" and "Free Enterprise"--even as all of the mining, manufacturing, and fuel-burning give us cancer, render us sterile, or make it a struggle for our poor, asthmatic children to breathe.  We vote for people who will provide ecologically devastating loopholes to encourage business & industry or who flinch before the idea of enforcing regulation and taxes (or providing incentives) that will allow us to safely fish and swim our rivers again.  

The White River:  pretty.  (Pretty polluted, that is....)

 Blind consumption is an insidious part of American life, but I am trying to learn a different way.  Stuff is important to us, and I don't think there is any changing that.  But I do think that what we value as stuff can be shifted, and we can make it a goal to reuse things as much as possible--we can value things with history, with stories.  I try to check craigslist.org and freecycle.org frequently, and I have been finding treasures at second-hand shops for almost twenty years. I read something recently that recommended shopping antique stores when you need a new kitchen utensil--there are a bunch of peelers and graters out there, made of metal, still sharp, and infinitely more durable and of better quality than the plastic riff-raff available now.  I know that it is easier to go somewhere huge that carries everything--I am proposing that soulless new cheap junk from China is not worth it.

And now, very briefly, the Apocalyptic:

There is a gargantuan amount of evidence showing that the Earth's ability to absorb our wastes and chemicals and provide us with raw materials and fundamentals like usable water is not infinite, after all.  Probably the most obvious of the evidence revolves around anthropogenic climate change.  As in, human caused.  We all know that, yes, the planet warms and cools over geological time and we all also know, whether consciously or not, that we cannot continue to be the fossil fuel-burning, resource-gobbling creatures that we've morphed into over the last 150 years.  Oy vey.  It pains me that this is a question in anyone's mind.

Sadly, though, you can pick your poison.  Climate change doesn't work for you?  If you are a Peak Oil enthusiast, I hear you.  If you are a Loss-of-Diversity campaigner, I totally agree dude. If you are an "Exceedingly large corporations owning everything is an enormously bad idea" engineer, I am on the same damn train, man.  Meet me in the dining car later for cocktails.  My point is, I keep hearing different groups of people say that there are a lot of us concerned, and I can't help wondering if perhaps the optimists are right & a critical mass of awareness is about to be met.  Maybe we are teetering on the tipping point.  Maybe not.  In any case, it feels good to be doing what I can...by doing it myself.

So there are the basic premises under which I am exploring urban homesteading.  The beauty of it is that there are so many benefits--great food, good books, exercise in the fresh air, time to spend with friends and family, plenty of meditation and reflection, the satisfaction of creating something useful, tasty, or lovely with my own two hands....

Funny, how lucky I feel.