I live and work in rural Japan and do my best to live a responsible life.
I like green woodworking, hugelculture, food forests, woodlands, bicycles, DIY, cooking, cleaning, minimalism, board games, D&D, folk music, good storytelling, and people.
Professionally I work in applied linguistics and education.
For More
Japan, zone 9a/b, annual rainfall 2550mm, avg temp 1.5-32 C
I happened upon this book while doing literature review for my MA studies. I love it. It is an academic book, but it's written in a manner that makes it approachable to general audiences.
I will try to nutshell it: Oral storytelling offers a powerful medium for connecting meaningfully with people and creating space for the listeners to respond. By telling stories of place in those very places the experience of the story may be enhanced in significant ways, especially for encouraging ecological action. These factors are inherently absent in other modalities of narrative like the written word, film, and other recorded works.
There are also countless words of wisdom for storytellers and anyone interested in environmentalism and a sustainable future for humanity.
There is a slightly spiritual or new-age slant to the entire book, but it is balanced somewhat by the author acknowledging the bias and that it may not be something all audiences can swallow, and making an attempt at neutral language and nearly equivalent non-spiritual constructs.
Nanson put a lot of disconnected ideas that I've happened upon myself together into a cohesive text, rich with examples from a life's work as a professional storyteller. More than that he put them together into a meaningful thrust towards a utopian ideal that I can really get behind.
- Get back to my journey towards vegetable self-sufficiency.
- Incorporate permaculture and a more future-friendly life outlook into the courses and lessons I teach to a greater degree.
- Convert my cafe space into a permaculture cafe/tavern.
Wow, nice work everyone! 3 more ideas until 101 is reached!
I wonder if there are any concrete ways we can "Study" or "Learn" from sticks. That's where my brain is at these days, but I'm not in my garden much...
Sounds like great permaculture to me. You're cleaning up a polluted area to turn it into a productive one. Cleaning up trash piles isn't fun... it's often tedious for sure, but it is important work. So if it's any consolation, I greatly appreciate your hard work in cleaning up that space!
I've also used magnets for picking up nails in trash piles as mentioned above. It works pretty well! Especially where the litter is loose.
I miss Mexican food... but a guy moved back here after living in the southwest of the US for like 20 years and opened a taco truck! Still I've only had 2 tacos from him since he opened.
Anyway, my answer is tacos. Or just tortilla chips and salsa. I do my own fish tacos sometimes, Japan has good fish!
Checking in, since I've been away from Permies for a while...
I was really really not okay for a while. Went through a moderately strong depressive episode with a series of panic attacks. It was impetus for me to go get help. I feel really lucky that I'm a 4 minute walk away from a public office that offers some mental health support/guidance. I had thought about asking for help before, but never went for professional help until this time.
I just want to tell any of you, if you feel like you can't manage your brain on your own, there's nothing wrong with asking for help. The hard part is knowing where to go.
Anyway, I'm re-organizing my life with fewer ideals, lower standards for myself, less work, and more "hakuna matata". Also, accepting that I needed, and still need professional help to get to where I want to be.
I'm on the way up again.
My presence on permies will still be minimum for a while. Though I'm wishing you all the best in your lives and endeavors.
The moss grows! and grows... and the succulents do too... they need to be mowed, but mowing isn't really something the fairies seem to do.
They overturned the table and threw the cups around though. Must have been a raucous party. My son wanted to make a swing for them, but it didn't happen, so we haven't seen any more action lately. I'm sure though that if we build it again, they will come to enjoy.
Today I'm grateful that permaculture gardens are remarkably resilient, at least as much as I am, probably more.
The last 4 months have been one whammy after another with a few silver linings in between. My newer garden though has grown despite the weeds and pests, which I have mostly just completely ignored. Stepping on the grass and plants around most of my crops is usually enough to suppress it and let the crops win, we'll see how that goes.
I had thought I was going to just give up on planting out my eggplants... but today it seemed like something I could manage. So I put them all in the ground, a month late. They'll probably still fruit later in the year.
Anyway. I'm grateful that the plants I planted want to grow, whether I had time for them or not.
Angela Wilcox wrote:I have an item to add to the list. Since this list was made into a Wiki, I was wondering if I could please edit it and add my item to the list in order to complete an item for a scavenger hunt?
Please add it! Don't worry about messing it up, we can always clean up after.
Recently the extent of my contributions here is on the level of giving apples and likes... Very busy, so I appreciate the cooperative effort!
Self-seeded annuals like tomatoes are preceded by other plants. If we can take note of what those plants are and watch the timing, we can plant very close to the natural germination timing of the self-seeded ones.
Another observation was, getting the seeds in the ground early gives them a chance to come up when they're ready. Not that they necessarily will, or that they will out-compete the other plants without some nurture, but they have a chance. So if you have a lot of seeds, then just getting them in the ground where you might want them, a month or two early might be beneficial.
