We had an energetic, vibrant film night, last Friday, which generated lively, engaged conversation well into the night. The film was on the life of David Fleming, author of Lean Logic, a highly influential pattern-language book. When the credits began to roll, nobody left. When the conversation started, nobody left. I had intended the small group conversations to run for 10 minutes or so, but the energy was still climbing at that point, so we went until the energy started to drop a bit, then joined back together in the larger group, then folks stuck around and talked for some time after the big group ended. What fun! Although we all seemed to enjoy the film, we didn’t necessarily agree with everything in it. Some questions which struck me, that y’all asked:

The folks in the film, and the demographic in the room, were primarily, but not entirely, White folks. Given that the Transition Town ideals appeal to a much more diverse audience than just upper-middle-class White folks, and there are lots of folks who are doing Transition Town work, whether they call it that or not, who are from widely diverse backgrounds–ethnic, cultural, economic, religious, generational…how do our meetings come to more represent that? Transition US is taking this question seriously, as we want our decision-makers and gatherings to resemble America in the most comprehensive ways possible. While we do hold that whoever shows up are the right people, we also hold the question: “Who is not here, who needs to be?” I have heard many responses to this question, what are yours?

Transition Towns, at their outset, took an approach of addressing peak oil and climate change through energy descent and relocalization. Peak oil was seen as an easier gateway, as it was certain to hit folks in their wallets, and inspire action sooner than climate change, which is likely to be a big, vague boogeyman until it is much too late to take action.

So far, we have been wrong about this. Peak oil has turned out to be more nebulous than we thought, oil companies did decide that tar sands and fracking were worth the costs, etc. In our area, we have found that local food systems have been a better gateway, but other regions have found things like urban gardens, social justice, disaster preparedness, community building, relocalizing, local money systems, etc, to be better conversation starters. What do you think? What speaks to you about Transition Towns?

Another question was, paraphrased: are there other local Transition Town initiatives, and where are they? Transition Palo Alto is a hub, in that it doesn’t just serve Palo Alto, but has representatives of other cities, as well: Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Saratoga, Casa de Fruita. Most of us lived in Palo Alto, at some point, but not all, but the name Transition Palo Alto stuck, Transition Silicon Valley did not. Do you want to start a Transition Town initiative in your area? What would it take to get that started? What would your initial focus be?

Lastly, energy descent is a big aspect of Transition Towns. This is the practice of decreasing your energy needs, not just by shifting them over to “clean tech” but actually decreasing the total amount of energy you use. So far, this has been a tough sell in technology-heavy and technology-aspiring cultures, but will need to be adopted, worldwide, if our life is going to continue on this planet, in any form we might recognize. How have you been incorporating this into your own life?

Random and Useful Other Stuff:
Toby Hemenway’s (author of Gaia’s Garden and The Permaculture City) website: http://tobyhemenway.com/articles/
Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land, by Gary Paul Nabhan
Thinking in Systems, a primer, by Donella H. Meadows
Masterminds and Wingmen, Rosalind Wiseman
Queen Bees and Wannabees, Rosalind Wiseman

For the fifth year, Transition Palo Alto hosts the Costume Swap – a chance to pass down old, outgrown, or simply unused costumes, wigs, and other Halloween wear for both children and adults. Then take home something new to you for this Halloween.

This year, we meet at the Museum of American Heritage, who have kindly hosted our Costume Swap and Halloween Scare Faire.

The Costume swap will include a drop-off period from 1pm to 1:20pm – those with costumes will get a number. At 1:20, we’ll admit those with numbers in order to pick up costumes.

That won’t be all – the line-up of Skill Shares is also scary fun:

• A Story Circle to share scares and monster tales from wherever you’re from
• Fabmo will bring fabric and offer a chance for a Costume Makeover
• Face painting
• Pumpkin decorating
• Bike repair
• Goods shares – garden produce, clothes, books, toys, crafts, and Halloween or Holiday decor

If you are able to help, please sign up here.

More details about our Share Faires is available here.

Join us for a Boo-tiful day of sharing and scaring!

When: Sunday, October 7, 1-3pm

Where: Museum of American Heritage, 351 Homer Ave, Palo Alto Map link

There is a great graphic novel…sequential art piece…called Kingdom Come. The premise is that the Humans on Earth have become dependent on the superheroes–Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, etc, even though they complain about that dependence, hating and fearing the heroes. One day, the superheroes are called away to deal with some catastrophe somewhere else in the multiverse, and are not around when the Humans actually need them, and there are consequences. When they return, the Humans are enraged at the heroes for leaving to help all of creation instead of being around to meet the needs of the Humans who hate and fear them. The heroes are finally fed up, and retreat into their civilian identities, living out their lives unnoticed and unavailable to those who have such mixed feelings about them. Over time, new heroes emerge, with more consequences…

…leading to a pivotal crisis, leading the superheroes to wrestle with the question of whether or not to come back and take part, or just let the Humans deal with the consequences of their actions.

Barack Obama spoke in Illinois last week. Rarely have I been so relieved to hear the voice of a public figure, let alone a former President (although Berkeley Breathed and Bill Watterston come to mind). When he ran for office, he was completely clear that he could not…preside…alone, that he needed us on board, that we were a team. I heard him say that and understood completely. I had been in a similar position, myself. Not on anything like that scale, but in one fiefdom or another which could so easily have been a functional community of folks working together to create something amazing.

For all of that, when he revealed his humanity, making decisions I did not approve of, I turned away and let go of my good intentions to help him in his goals. Even so, when I heard him speak in those days, I really felt like he was one of us, someone I could easily go for a walk with, or talk with over tea, solving the problems of the world.

Hearing him speak last week, both at John McCain’s funeral (that seems so long ago), and in the longer speech in Illinois, it felt to me like a giant had awoken, a superhero had cast off their civilian garb and revealed themselves.

He is, of course, a Human (I assume), with all that that entails. He is saying similar things to what he said before: don’t wait for a hero, a savior–be that hero. Be the person who stands up and does the right thing because it is the right thing, because you’ll sleep better at night having done it, because you see in the eyes of that caged child the eyes of your own child, or maybe you see something of your own humanity in that little one.

It is being reported that Trump and Co. are working to build internment camps for children. Some are saying we have not done this since World War II, others that we never have, not solely for children. Is that the outrage which will stir us to action? Is it the appointment of a Supreme Court justice who seems to be actively perjuring himself? Is it enough to march, or do we need to do more?

I’ll leave it to you to learn the decisions of the heroes in Kingdom Come, but will offer a question…what would it take for us to be heroes, peaceful heroes, waking giants? Barack Obama is most certainly a hero, and his words are powerful and moving. He is also a Human, with weaknesses, foibles, ego, a desire to see his children succeed in their lives, to leave a legacy behind which will inspire them, and us, to remember him fondly. Progressives are creating what is being referred to as a “Rainbow Wave”, across the country. How do we help? Barack Obama speaking is important, what can the rest of us do? How do we co-lead, with them?

Who are your heroes? Why are they heroes, to you? What makes a hero?

We had a great first session of our course in Permaculture Design for home gardeners, at Veggielution. The link to sign up is here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/summer-saturdays-veggielution-workshop-series-tickets-47241482546, if you want to join us, going forward. Come check it out, 10am-12:30pm, with an optional lunch.

A flock of Turkeys, 30+ individuals, have been regular visitors to the land, up here. Good to see them crowding around for drinks at the birdbaths, kind of funny watching groups teens, even the smallest of whom dwarfs any of the baths, trying to stand in them while drinking. They don’t seem to want water baths, though, as they all headed off to the mulch pile for dust baths, afterwards. Deer drink from the birdbaths, too. Perhaps a bigger water basin is needed?

Observation and Seeking feedback from the systems you are interacting with are practices dear to the heart of Permaculture Design. Turkeys drinking, and others drinking and bathing in birdbaths is strong feedback that this is a system that needs water. Dust baths in the mulch pile are also a big deal, especially given how quickly everyone headed over there when the call went out. Hummingbirds seem to have a strong preference for one feeder over another. Chickadees don’t drink from the birdbaths, so much, but will drain the water in the basins my plants sit in. *sigh* My best guess is that there are microbes in that water that are not in the frequently-replaced birdbath water.

In that vein, we are seeking feedback from our community, this week. We would love to know what Transition Towns are to you, what they mean to you. What would you like them to be, to mean? Some great thinkers have suggested that, if Humans are to survive as a species, movements like the Transition Towns and Permaculture Community are how that will happen. What do you think? How would that work? What would it look like?

Would we focus on emergency preparedness? Community building? Food systems? Education? Politics? Fun?

One of the goals of the Transition Town Community is to make the whole thing fun. Are we doing that? What could we do differently?

Transition Palo Alto is a hub, that is a focal point for Transitioners from all over the South Bay, from Casa de Fruita up to Palo Alto. We tried calling it Transition Silicon Valley, but that didn’t take, so we have the increasingly inaccurately-named Transition Palo Alto. Do you want other Transition Towns in the area? Do you want them enough to learn how to start one in your city?

This was written by my mother, who, inspired by our TPA Garden Shares, began her own in Scripps Ranch, in San Diego:

by Suhasini Jayakumar

Transition Cafe notes from William Mutch…

In setting up Bird feeders and houses on the land I’m stewarding, I have been trying to balance having a consistent, convenient food supply with wanting the Birds to have to work for their food, so they don’t take it for granted and unlearn their foraging skills. The goal, here, is not to create domesticated, tame cultures of the formerly-wild, but to supplement their diet, replacing what my people have damaged and destroyed, until such time as the land is teaming with food for the wild folks, again. Work in progress…

Convenience, of course, is a major issue in Human culture, as well, especially in the age of amazon.com and the internet. We Humans have been grappling with our own domestication for at least as long as the rise of grocery stores and convenience stores, which offered to remove the burden of growing and preparing food, as well as making needed products and goods. How many skills did we let go, along the way? I discover new ones, constantly. How many things used to be done by hand, in the home, village, or city, that are now outsourced to slaves-Human, Machine, or otherwise?

It is hard to have a privileged class, if everyone is making things for themselves and helping each other out, and hard to motivate people to go to work to make money for themselves and widgets for others if they don’t have a life of privilege to look forward to, hopefully with enough of their life left to enjoy it. Convenience stores supply, among other things, a sense of ease and affluence which was formerly available to a very few.

Online convenience stores seem to be the next big iteration of that. Why trouble yourself to walk a few blocks, or bike into town, when you can click on a picture of something you think you want and have it appear on your doorstep soon thereafter? I have heard that there are even houses which have amazon.com-based security systems, which allow for your stuff to be dropped off inside your house by the people whose job it is to do so, eliminating even one more step in the accumulation of stuff, and you never even have to see them or talk to them. There are even, the rumors say, houses which are completely controlled by a computer system contained within the home. This must be an internet legend, of course, as surely folks see the potential issues with that. Have we not seen enough sci-fi to be concerned?

What is the cost of all of this? Is money the only metric we should be using, here? Has all of this really improved our “quality of life”? Why, or why not?

How many of you, reading this, still go into your bank and speak to the tellers behind the counter? Can you recall their names? Do you know anything about their families? How many of you prepare your own food, as opposed to having food prepared for you? What are the ingredients of your food? What are the names of the folks who got your food to your table? Are they all still alive at the time you are consuming it? Why, or why not? That thing you ordered online-who made it? What are their names? Why would you care, if it’s not Convenient to do so?

I hear, over and over, via articles, studies, and friends who experience this themselves, that many many people in this world relate to each other via their computers, and are near-phobic of personal interactions, having spent so much time at, or even growing up with, computer-mediated interactions. But then, why sacrifice the convenience of an e-mail blast for the messiness of in-person relationships? What would you learn about those around you, if you did so?

Transition Cafe notes from William Mutch

I arrived home, the other night, at the beginning of a concert. The players were just warming up, gathering, tuning their instruments, figuring out where they could play to best advantage. I was sitting in my car, in the driveway, when I felt like I should walk around the house. When I arrived at the front of the house, my headlamp picked out eyeshine, in the dark between the clothesline and the big Cork Oak. Probably seven individuals, glowing eyes bobbing and weaving as they checked me out, then they disappeared toward my neighbors’ place. I circled back around, encountering them again on the little road that runs up the hill, still checking me out. Then the concert began, Coyotes bursting into full voice.

If you’ve never experienced being near Coyotes howling in large numbers, it is something. I’d only been close to it a couple of times, before moving onto this land. My first Coyote song was scary to me, actually. I couldn’t figure out what it was, and the alien, not-Dog-ness of it had me jumpy. It didn’t help that I was one of two Humans designated to scout the Dark and figure out what on Earth that sound was… The second close experience had me right in the middle of a howling pack. I still don’t know how they felt, having me there, but I was close enough to feel the compression waves as their voices hit the air between us, and it took my breath away.

The current concert seemed to involve three packs, or three sizeable subsets of the same pack. The music swirled around, for awhile, then moved down the driveway and across the hill. I was right in the middle of it for around…awhile…which was probably shorter than it felt…

The first time I heard a Coyote, I couldn’t sleep through the night for worrying about what it might be. On a recent campout, I apparently slept right through a great chorus. I usually find it soothing, for reasons contemplated in the Transition Café archives. Not that I’m advocating for standing in the Dark, in the middle of a pack of howling omnivores…do be safe out there…

It’s funny, living in the Age of Convenience. We think nothing of traveling great distances to see things we can’t see around these parts, visit relatives who live far away, but so close via powered vehicles, order stuff from all over the globe. So much I will miss about this, when it all goes away, not least of which being the access to books, tools, and seeds I haven’t heard of. And it will, of course. I love being able to “easily” visit my sister in the North Bay, friends in the East Bay, places I love, like Mendocino, Ashland, Corvallis…things which will be so much farther away, when the cheap oil disappears. So many things we take for granted, that won’t be available anymore, at least not at a price most of us can afford. Mostly I probably miss the innocent ignorance of the early and mid-era.

The Guru and the Cat

Once upon a time, there was a certain guru. During meditation, the temple’s resident Cat would wind around amongst the meditators, meowing loudly and making it hard to concentrate on anything other than her. So, the guru ordered that the Cat be tied up outside the the meditation hall. In due course, the guru departed the physical realm for more ethereal pursuits, and the students continued to tie the Cat up outside the hall, although few had been with the temple long enough at that point to remember why. Time passed, and the Cat eventually joined the guru. So…the students procured a new Cat, who they duly tied up outside the meditation hall, while they were sitting. Centuries later, scholars would write learned treatises on the importance of having a Cat tied up outside the room in which one is meditating.

-Source unknown, but possibly fictional…

Kind of a silly story, and a trap which, in these enlightened times, none of us would ever fall into. Or…would we? How many of us have habits which we adopted so long ago that we have forgotten why we do them? How many of those habits were consciously adopted, long ago, and now are so far from consciousness that we would deny doing them if asked? How many of those habits have stories wrapped around them to justify their existence, even though they don’t make sense? How many of us make a habit of questioning those habits, when they show up, or even of seeking them out, when they don’t? For instance…how many of us refer to making an auditory duplicate of an event as “taping” it? How long has it been since that term made sense? How about the ring or wristwatch (remember wristwatches?) you no longer wear, but keep adjusting, anyway?

So, to, with Superstitions. Some make sense, sometimes called “constructive paranoia”. In other words, the behaviors do not objectively make sense, but, given the life history of the individual, not only make sense, but their life without them wouldn’t make sense. Habits like going back to check the stove, even if you know you didn’t turn it on, which drive your friends and relatives crazy, might make sense in someone who had lived in a situation where stoves were routinely left on when housemate(s!) had left for work. Others, like a dread of the number 13, might have historic or cultural roots that simply don’t make sense in the current age.

There are also funny ones, like a practice which had become Superstition, bleeding Humans with Leeches, and which, for a long time, was synonymous with barbaric medicinal practices, is now recognized to have valid medical applications. Superstitions around certain Plants being poisonous or medicinal, which turn out not to be (The Milkweed Effect).

What Superstitions are active in your life? Why do you believe them? Are they constructive, destructive, neutral? Do they make sense to you, but to nobody else? Are they cultural? Familial? Personal? Do you remember the moment you were taught one, or when you started to believe one? Is it only a Superstition if it is active in the life of someone who is not you?

Superstitions, at Red Rock Coffee, this Friday, 13 April. We often go to dinner afterwards, maybe we will this week, too.

Triggers…everyone’s got ’em…those things which turn you from a reasonable, rational human being who is having a conversation into someone who is shrill, yelling, or otherwise way more intense than the conversation calls for, leaving the people around you wondering what just happened. Some have relatively few triggers, are aware of them, and are able to make skillful conversations happen, regularly. Some have so many it is less like walking on eggshells and more like walking through landmines. I’ve been reading a book, lately, which asserts that an essential quality in a leader is the ability to manage one’s own upset in a way which doesn’t severely impact those around one, although this comes up over and over in the literature on living in community.

Talking about Triggers, at Red Rock Coffee, this Friday, 9 March. We often go to dinner afterwards, maybe we will this week, too. –William Mutch