Ron Clerk

I have a suggestion for long term recovery.

In a previous incarnation I was a computer programmer. This as you know involves long hours sitting at a desk in a cubicle doing intensely mind bending work. One of my contracts was with a very small start-up. The “office” was the guest bedroom in a house. There were desks for the owner, the engineer and the programmer. The cat was not told nor did he entirely approve of a company moving into “His!!!” room. The chair I was to use was the cat’s chair. Just ask him. So… my first unofficial job was to negotiate with the cat. I found that if I shooed the cat out of the chair I got scratched and when I came in the next day my desk was trashed. I then found that if I was polite and gently lifted the cat up, sat down, put the cat in my lap and petted him a minute or so before I started work I earned the cats approval. This turned out to be the most stress free programming job I ever had. It is hard to get work stress when there is a contented cat purring in your lap. And a cat can be a very good listener when you need to try out an idea or to vent.

My suggestion is get a cat that will let you share his chair.

Imagine if when we were 5 years old we colored in a picture like this titled Mr Plumb Tree and his friends

John Weiland wrote:
With some exceptions, it sounds like Gert is living quite close to the tenets of the "Original affluent society": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society

Light Bulb experience: "Original affluent society" = When my food forest is working I can live like Baloo the Bear

Dale Hodgins wrote:Farm the boulevards and the back and front yards of agreeable home owners. Victoria has lots of gardens in unusual places.

Hi Dave

Good idea, I read the book One Magic Square by Lolo Houbein, and I found a friend that will let me plant out two of them in their back yard.

Ron

Deb Rebel wrote:Need to add, batch your cooking. If you turn the oven on fill it or do serial baking/roasting, and do it in colder hours or on cold days. Buy a few Nokero lights and put them in a window for the day. (rechargeable portable alternatives to lanterns, good for task lighting). Put all your energy vampires (printers, etc) on a power strip so you can turn them OFF easily when not needed. Learn to knit or crochet-if you are in a waiting room or in-line (like DMV) you can do something that will make you warm with that wasted time. (DMV lines, I have completed a scarf or hat while waiting. Tote over my shoulder feeding the yarn...)

Hi Deb

I haven't had my knitting out in a couple of years. I will start up again. Some time ago I made knitted washcloths for Christmas presents and I had my knitting bag with me all the time, on the bus, at work, a the coffee shop. It amazed me how many conversations started because a guy was knitting in permies. I thought I was obsessed with mt new hobby. I was doing permaculture by accident.

Thanks for the reminder.
Ron

The gathering of ideas here reads like a healthy combination of university education and trade school.

Universities are designed primarily to train educators; a trade school is where you go to learn how to make a living (feed yourself and your family and your community when you get good at it); and permaculture insists that we do stuff that makes every thing around us better and doesn't leave a mess behind. Universities are also a sort of proto-community. Have I adequately described Wheaton University?

Also, I would like to see the permaculture community (I suppose that includes me now), take back the word Farmer and restore it to a meaning that includes the concept of steward of the land and steward of the community. That is how I think of my grandfather.

I bring this up because training draft animals is a skill to add to the list. Grandpa put off buying a tractor until after the dust bowl because he loved his horses. If he had known about no-till farming he might not have bought the tractor.

Hi Ernie and Erica

I would like a printed book mostly because I want a signed copy!!!