Blog

My Hometown Joins Transition Movement

Posted by Shelly on Apr 19, 2012 in Education, Featured, My EcoChallenge, Neighbors | 0 comments

I’m sharing a column I wrote for our local newspaper that was published yesterday. Enjoy!

This Earth Day, Local 20/20 is celebrating its official recognition as Washington state’s 11th Transition Initiative.

“Transition?” you might wonder. “From what? To what?”

Glad you asked. This is about making the transition from “the era of cheap oil,” to a future dependent on conservation, a thriving local economy, locally produced food and building materials, sustainable transportation choices and renewable energy alternatives.

We’re in the early stages of what ecologist Joanna Macy calls “The Great Turning” –  “the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization.”

“Adventure?” you might mutter. “Sounds kind of scary to me.”

Indeed, it requires a paradigm shift of the tallest order to see the coming changes as opportunities rather than threats.

There’s no going back to “the way things were.” But take heart. Many of us in Jefferson County are already working on collectively shaping the future we want to see. That’s why we’re joining 425 other communities around the globe in this movement to increase local self-reliance and resilience.

The Transition Movement represents one of the most promising ways of engaging people and communities to take the far-reaching actions that are required to mitigate the effects of peak oil, climate change and economic instability.

Transition Initiatives, designed to achieve re-localization at the community level, are also designed to result in a life that is more fulfilling, more socially connected and more equitable than the one we have today.

While we’re joining a widespread movement with momentum—Jefferson County’s Transition Initiative is No. 111 in the nation and No. 416 in the world. We’re not exactly newcomers. In 2006, the same year that the first Transition Town was launched in England, grassroots organizers here formed Local 20/20. The mission statement developed then still guides the group today: working together toward local sustainability by integrating economy, ecology and community via action and education.

Both education and opportunities for action can be found this Saturday, April 21, at our local Earth Day 2012 celebration.

Learn more about Transition and Local 20/20 at a public presentation from 10:30-11:30 a.m. in the upstairs of the Port Townsend Community Center. (Childcare is provided downstairs.) See the Earth Day calendar of events for other opportunities to learn about this movement.

A successful transition for Jefferson County will depend on individuals who possess a strong sense of place, a belief in local empowerment, and a shared optimism for a better future.

Does that sound like you? Join us!

Fluffy Line-Dried Towels Every Time

Posted by Shelly on Apr 14, 2012 in Education, My EcoChallenge, Renewable Energy | 2 comments

By popular demand, I’m sharing my super-energy-saving tip for fluffy line-dried towels. Now that the spring sun is finally here, give it a try!

Let’s face it: mechanical clothes dryers are a modern luxury our earth can hardly afford. Hands down, they are one of the top energy suckers in the average household. When Jeff tracked our home’s energy use before we made the solar-panel plunge, he determined our electric clothes dryer was using 40% of our household’s electricity. That motivated me—as the primary laundress—to pretty much stop using our drying machine.

The way most Americans use clothes dryers, it’s like turning on a large electric heater full blast and leaving it running for an hour or more. Which is pretty silly, considering the age-old alternative, line-drying, is free and very eco-friendly.

Line-drying also tops my list of Sustainable Together joys: it promotes getting outdoors on sunny days (with Soren in tow, we often end up spending time on the swings or in the garden), getting in tune with the weather (following the forecasts and deciding to wash several loads on sunny days and one or none on rainy days, when we use an indoor clothesline stretching the length of our basement shop), and providing a mental pause in the day when we commit to setting out or bringing in the laundry. The fabric of our clothes lasts longer without mechanical beating, and our family appreciates the line-dried scent that only fresh air can provide.

But line-drying falls short when towels are the subject. I don’t know the science behind it, but the short cotton fibers dry stiff and unpliable when hung in the sun—such a contrast to the fluffiness we’ve come to expect from tumbled-dry towels. And I admit that texture does make a difference when I’m toweling off my freshly showered skin.

For that reason, the husband of one of my friends has forbidden his wife to hang towels out on the line. It’s for her that I post this tip!

So here’s the easy, low-energy trick that results in fluffy line-dried towels every time. It’s so simple you probably won’t believe me, but just give it a try. Thanks to Aunt Polly in Ohio (a former home-ec teacher) for the tip!

1)      Remove towels from washing machine and place directly in mechanical clothes dryer for 5-10 minutes on “air fluff” or other no-heat or low-heat setting.

2)      After this pre-drying treatment, the towels will not seem particularly fluffy, but hang on the line per usual and you will be surprised by the fluffy end result!

You may also fluff line-dried towels after they are dry, putting them in the mechanical dryer for the same amount of time. Some people swear by adding a damp washcloth to the load if this order is preferred. I prefer to mechanically dry the towels first, because if I do a mixed load, the towels can be pre-drying while I hang the rest of the load on the line.

No dryer sheet is necessary for the air-fluff step. This is a product I stopped buying long ago, after discovering a local lavender farm that sold cloth bags of dried lavender intended for use in the dryer. They make the towels smell heavenly. I also keep two tennis balls in my dryer for maximum fluffing bounce!

Changing your habits around clothes drying will only be as easy as you make it for yourself. It’s well worth investing in a sturdy outdoor clothesline or rack (we bought a dual-reel system in Amish country!), and indoor drying lines and/or racks. We cycle through four nesting laundry baskets—don’t skimp with only one or two. And I sewed a functional clothespin apron out of one of my husband’s outcast button-up shirts—I find having the clothespins handy at my waist makes hanging laundry much more comfortable. So does setting the basket of wet laundry on a stool so you don’t have to bend down so far.

And remember:

~ If your laundry gets caught outside in a light, short shower, don’t panic—just leave it out on the line longer.

~ If your laundry is not dry by dark, you can get away with draping items over your indoor clothesline to finish drying overnight, saving the time of clothes-pinning them.

~ It’s OK to leave your laundry on the line overnight if you just run out of time to deal with it. If it gets a bit dewy, it dries when the sun comes up.

~ It’s OK to run your mechanical dryer when your toddler wets the bed during a nap and you need to wash and dry the bedding before nightfall. I do!

Bringing Down the Dams—and Capitalism?

Posted by Shelly on Mar 16, 2012 in Featured, Local Economy, Renewable Energy | 3 comments

The Elwha River dams stood for a century, blocking migrating salmon’s free access to their watershed, splitting off and exploiting nature, and denying the local tribal people full realization of their cultural heritage.

Today, the dams are being dismantled.

The biggest dam removal project in U.S. history is happening right here in my corner of the world, where the Elwha River flows to the sea on the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula. Along with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and many others, I celebrate the river’s restoration for its symbolic power as well as its local rewards.

Let’s take a big step back and look at another big-picture blockage.

Some form of the current capitalist system has stood for 500 years, blocking people’s free association with their labor, splitting off and exploiting nature dangerously close to the point of ecosystem collapse, and denying us fully realized lives, free from compulsive production and consumption.

Dare we think the capitalist system will fall—like the dams?

We must, as crazy as the idea sounds to most of us.

For the very idea of purposefully dismantling not one, but two dams that had been built for ostensibly beneficial purposes—hydropower and recreation—was vociferously opposed, its proponents ridiculed, the idea called crazy.

Yet it came to pass.

A STORY OF HOPE

“I think that’s the real story,” says filmmaker Jessica Plumb of the dams’ removal. “How did an idea called ‘crazy’ become reality?

“And not just reality, but a celebrated success with community broad consensus? In the case of the Elwha River dams, it genuinely shifted from one extreme to the other.”

It took 40 years of trying. The formal legal effort to remove the dams began in the early 1980s, when questions about fish passage, tribal fishing rights and dam safety opened an avenue for petition against the structures’ recertification by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. For some tribal members in their 50s and 60s, this struggle has literally been their life’s work.

My friend Jessica (the director of Plumb Productions, shown here with her daughter) is stitching together their stories with those of environmentalists, dam operators, fisheries biologists, national park staff and local residents. In collaboration with cinematographer John Gussman—who has collected an unrivaled archive of footage on the project—she is producing a feature-length documentary called Return of the River.

As a counterpoint to grim environmental news, the return of the Elwha River is a story of hope. Furthermore, it can instruct us on how to approach the colossal struggles that lie ahead. Jessica is well aware of this opportunity, and is trying to make a film that addresses the questions of “How do we get there from here? How do you make that leap of faith with an idea ahead of its time and/or contrary to the people in power?”

“This is a story about a river unleashed after a century of impoundment, and the extraordinary community effort to set it free,” Jessica says.

“The Elwha shows us how there can be a positive transformation when a community works together through a traumatic transition.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

Many documentary films are a labor of love, and this is no exception. Much of the work on this project to date has been done on a volunteer basis. You can help get this story off a hard drive, and onto a big screen, by supporting post-production costs.

A Kickstarter campaign was launched earlier this month to raise $10,000 for Return of the River. I was new to Kickstarter, but now I’m a $100 “backer”—one of more than 100 individuals supporting the film project as of March 16. My credit card (and everyone else’s) will only be charged if at least $10,000 is pledged by April 1.

With 15 days to go, the campaign has raised more than $7,000. Way to go!

If you’re in Port Angeles tonight (Friday), you can drop by the Kickstarter party at the Landing on the waterfront, 6:30-8:30 p.m., upstairs in room 205. For those on the Seattle side, there’s a bash planned at the Mountaineers on Tuesday, March 27.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE ENEMY OF NATURE
Seeking inspiration for the positive transformation Jessica talks about, last week I finally finished reading Joel Kovel’s master work on ecosocialism.

The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? (2002) is considered the most up-to-date exposition of ecosocialist thought. Written by a Bard College professor who campaigned for the U.S. Presidency in 2000 representing the Green Party (merely to raise issues, he notes, with no expectations of winning within the current political-economic system), it is “full of insights into the relationship between ecological degradation and capitalist expansion,” in the words of reviewer Walden Bello.

It’s the densest book I’ve attempted to digest since, oh, 2008—before I became a parent! As evidence to this, I maxed out the three 3-week renewals allowed by our public library and had to personally petition the circulation desk for a fourth renewal. (This was granted because no other patron had placed a “hold” on the checked-out book—which was somewhat dispiriting, considering how vitally important its ideas are to our current discourse.)

I took my time reading it because it was such an eye-opening argument for me, full of “aha!” moments. Uneasy feelings I’ve had about societal inequalities—say, the secondary status of women—were identified (in this case, given a name: the “super-exploitation of women”), explained (the first differentiation of labor in hunter-gatherer societies occurs according to sex, and this labor produces the gender itself), and connected to the rise of capitalism (the possibilities of exploiting another’s labor are always in the direction of male over female, hence the control over labor originates in the forcible control over women). Racial and class inequality were similarly explored in this context.

I could hardly wait to get through the background material on Karl Marx and socialist revolutions of the recent past, and read the last chapter on the alternative society we might hope to see.

ECOSOCIALISM CLIFF NOTES

I googled “ecosocialism cliff notes,” but no luck, so here’s my summary:

Capital’s relentless and pathological mandate for “growth” (money must multiply) is the cause of the growing ecological crisis. This cancerous growth characteristic of capital (multiply, even if it kills the host—in this case the planet) cannot be effectively reformed or regulated, contrary to the declarations of “green economists.”

Realizing that, the world-organizing system of capital must be overthrown if we are to have any hope of averting the ecological crisis—which, in case you need reminding, involves human overpopulation, ecosystem destruction, species extinction, climate change, etc.

(There’s also a good narrative outline of the book in the Wikipedia entry on Joel Kovel.)

It’s taken me a while to process this new paradigm, but the framework has proven useful as I research stories of successful sustainability transitions. I can see how each is creating what Kovel calls a “beach head” in the fight to reclaim our world from capital’s regime, and to “restore ecosystem integrity.”

We free ourselves from capitalism’s grip by removing—not building—dams, so rivers can run free. We organize our labor, we build cooperatives, we create alternate local currencies, we make radical media. (This blog is my attempt to contribute in that way.) Kovel was writing before the Occupy Wall Street movement, but he foreshadows it brilliantly:

Thus it could be that in an increasingly hectic period, millions of people take to the streets, and join together in global solidarity—with each other, with the communities of resistance, and with their comrades in other nations—bringing normal social activity to a halt, petitioning the state and refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer, and driving capital into ever smaller pens. With defections mounting and the irreducible fact all around that the people demand a new beginning in order to save the planetary ecology, the state apparatus passes into new hands, the expropriators are expropriated, and the 500-year regime of capital falls.

PROTEST ‘SEDIMENTED HOPELESSNESS’

In addition to Occupying, which is our best attempt yet at global solidarity for a new order, what should one do?

On the last page of his book, Kovel answers: One must protest “against the sedimented hopelessness that passes for common sense.”

What a great metaphor for this essay on sediment-trapping dams!

I’m going to take my cue from the Lower Elwha Klallam tribal leaders who fought so tenaciously for dam removal, and consider that dismantling capitalism may well be my generation’s life work.

With the dams gone, the Elwha River is healing itself. On a planetary scale, can our world do the same if we remove the biggest blockage of all?

DAM PHOTO CREDIT: Jessica Plumb

PORTRAIT PHOTO CREDIT:  David Conklin

‘Get to Know Your Neighbors’

Posted by Shelly on Mar 14, 2012 in Featured, My EcoChallenge, Neighbors | 4 comments

“Sustainability” can be an overwhelming concept. How do you engage those who are feeling fatigued, powerless or baffled about where to start?

This was the question posed to me last week by a newspaper reporter. She’d called me up and was angling for a quote to accompany her article publicizing the kick-off meeting for Transition Port Angeles—which is tomorrow evening, March 15, for those of you in Clallam County who should consider attending!

The Transition PA press release identified me as the keynote speaker (see FOOTNOTE below), which was why the reporter was calling. She’d emailed me a heads-up on the sustainability question, so I’d made some notes the night before. Here’s how I replied:

~~~~~~~~

How do I engage the fatigued, the powerless, the baffled? Well, I ask, “Can you introduce yourself to your neighbors?” Hopefully that’s not too overwhelming.

Need help with this first step? See related post on organizing a neighborhood progressive dinner.

If you can make that simple outreach and get to know your neighbors better, you will have made your neighborhood more sustainable. By that, I mean more cohesive, more resilient, and a more friendly, fun and enjoyable place to live. You will have started to tackle the problems of alienation and isolation, and the unrealistic expectations of stony self-reliance, that plague our society.

Humans evolved to be much more mutually reliant than most Americans are today.

We can’t respond to the impending post-peak-oil/global-warming crisis alone, nor should we. As individuals, our priority should be building a support system for ourselves and our family in these transitional times. This is about “going sustainable together,” as I title my talk.

~~~~~~~~

I penned the above before I read the closing chapter of Richard Heinberg‘s book, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality (2011). We couldn’t agree with each other more.

“The maintenance of social cohesion must be our single highest priority in a future of mounting economic and environmental challenges. … [T]hroughout the vast sprawling suburbs of the US and Canada, most people simply don’t know their neighbors. Any of them. At all. This is a bizarre situation, and it will probably be a dangerous one in the case of crisis.

It’s hard to emphasize this point sufficiently: Get to know your neighbors. These may be people with whom you share very little in terms of politics, religion, or cultural interests; that fact is beside the point. When push comes to shove, these are people you may need to depend on.” (p. 269-70)

I feel there are so many benefits—social, economic, psychological—to creating true communities to live and work within. We do this by:

• “Relocalizing” and meeting our socio-economic needs close to home, therefore mutually supporting our neighbors’ enterprises;
• Forging relationships in the cause of living more sustainably, and these new friendships make us more secure and more fulfilled;
• Building resiliency by strengthening our fall-back systems so we are not so vulnerable to disruptions—be it from tomorrow’s earthquake or the collapse of the global economy in who knows how many years.

And we don’t have to create this community-based system from scratch. There are plenty of people alive today (ask your parents or grandparents or local tribal member) who remember how this used to be.

Why would we not want to move in the direction of sustainability? Why should we wait a minute longer?

Rob Hopkins’ “cheerful disclaimer” about the Transition movement fits perfectly here:

• If we wait for the governments, it’ll be too little, too late
• If we act as individuals, it’ll be too little
• But if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.

To conclude, reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz of the Peninsula Daily News quoted me to a “T” in her article of March 11. (Thank you, Diane!) Zoom in on image below or view a PDF.

PROMISED FOOTNOTE:  The invitation to speak came about in a fortuitous but round-about way. I met Transition Port Angeles organizer Dave Taylor, a retired engineer, at a steering committee meeting of Local 20/20, where he and his wife were wrapping up a “field trip” day in Port Townsend. Earlier they had dined with other steering committee members, picking their brains about how to start a similar sustainability organization in Port Angeles.

At that meeting, I reported—in my usual enthusiastic manner—on the progress of plans to announce Port Townsend’s Transition Initiative (official as of January 2012!) at an Earth Day event here on April 21.

The next day, Dave resumed searching for a guest speaker for Port Angeles’ kick-off meeting, and returned to the Transition US website, where I had recently created a user profile. On a whim, I had checked the box that said I was available as a speaker. Dave did another geographic-area search for speakers, my name came up, he recognized my picture, he went to my website, he watched a few of the videos I have posted of my Chamber of Commerce presentation, he picked up the phone, and the rest is history.

I’m speaking on “inspiring sustainability initiatives” from my home town, according to the press release. If nothing else, I aim to be inspiring!

FOR THE ARCHIVE:  An earlier PDN article (3/1/12) on Transition PA, for which I was interviewed by a different reporter.

Biomass 101 for Families Forum

Posted by Shelly on Mar 7, 2012 in Education, Featured, Local Economy, Renewable Energy | 0 comments

The proposed biomass power plant at the Port Townsend Paper Mill site and its potential health impacts on our most vulnerable citizens—our children—is the subject of the first “Biomass 101 for Families” forum.

The free educational event is scheduled for 10:30-11:30 a.m. Saturday, March 17 at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (QUUF) in Port Townsend.

To encourage attendance by parents and guardians of young children, “Biomass 101 for Families” is scheduled mid-morning on a Saturday and free childcare is provided.

“I have been educating myself on the biomass project, but I hear many of my peers say they don’t have a good grasp of the issues,” says Caroline Erickson, one of four Jefferson County moms who stepped up to organize the event.

“So we decided to offer a family-friendly primer on this critical and timely issue for parents of young children.”

Learn about potential costs and benefits of this project, including construction costs, the permit process, ownership structure, projected emissions, proposed pollution controls, potential for job retention, taxpayer subsidies, what materials are considered “biomass,” potential environmental and human health effects, and the regional picture for biomass power generation.

Attendees will hear from both a proponent and an opponent of the Port Townsend biomass power generation expansion, whose state-issued air emissions permit is currently under appeal.

Following their two 20-minute presentations, a question-and-answer session will be moderated by Shelly Randall, a fellow mom-organizer who blogs at SustainableTogether.com.

Presenter Larry Bonar will make the case for locating a biomass cogeneration facility at the mill site. He is a retired research scientist and patent manager who has lived in Port Townsend since 1999 and been active in Democratic Party affairs and various progressive causes. He holds a PhD in biophysics from MIT and was a research fellow in orthopedics at Harvard Medical School from 1959 until 1984.

Kees Kolff will address the potential economic, environmental and health detriments of the project. A retired Public Health professional, pediatrician and former Port Townsend mayor, he served 17 years as medical director for SeaMar Community Health Centers headquartered in Seattle. He is chair of the East Jefferson Biomass Committee of the Sierra Club’s North Olympic Group.

A reception will follow with light refreshments.

The forum is sponsored by QUUF’s Green Sanctuary Committee. QUUF is located at 2333 San Juan Ave., Port Townsend. Questions? Contact Randall at 360-301-2540 or shelly@sustainabletogether.com.

______________________________________________

One of the causes I’ve been volunteering for lately!

Thanks to Elaine Bailey for the mill photo.

Affordable Local Food…But How?

Posted by Shelly on Feb 9, 2012 in Education, Food, Local Economy | 5 comments

“How to eat better on a budget” is the title of the brochure Brwyn Griffin, the Port Townsend Food Co-op’s outreach/education manager, is holding here.

She developed the brochure for the Making Local Food Affordable forum she presented at (and I attended) back in November. Ever since, I’ve been meaning to write up the tips I collected there.

Prioritizing this post was one of the commitments I made to myself last weekend at the end of the first annual Thriving Communities conference at the Whidbey Institute (Feb. 2-4). More than 100 attendees from communities throughout Cascadia (including five from my own community) gathered to discuss “moving forward intentionally into a hopeful and life-affirming common future.” I’ll blog more about the conference later (I promise!), but what’s pertinent here is that the focus of this first year was food and how it can nourish our communities.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

When I launched Sustainable Together as a personal/professional endeavor, I made an ancillary pledge: to make food my main hobby.

I have other hobbies, many of which have fallen by the wayside as I raise a young child (pleasure reading, scrapbooking, kayaking, the list goes on!). Thankfully, I also enjoy cooking, baking, gardening, and shopping at farmers markets. At some point in my sustainable transition, I realized I wouldn’t be able to consistently feed my family seasonal, local, fresh, homemade meals unless I embraced sourcing and preparation of the food.

This takes time, so it helps if you enjoy it.

It also takes a financial commitment. We in the U.S. are conditioned to expect cheap food, year-round. But learning to shape your food budget around seasonal and local foods has many levels of benefits, both for your health and your community.

“With our food dollars, we create the future we want to have,” says Malcolm Dorn, co-owner of the new Chimacum Corner Farmstand, which proactively sources its offerings from local farmers and producers. “The dream is beautiful farmland, healthy people and a healthy habitat.”

Money tight? It helps if you follow the three simple rules the Food Co-op brochure lays out for “eating better on a budget”—with some of my own additions:

1) Eat food. (Not junk!) Avoid highly processed foods and consider the nutrient value of foods you ingest. (I found these handy charts of fruits and veggies with the highest nutrition for the least cost at the Sightline Daily blog). The fresher the food, the more nutritious it is.

2) Cook. Meal plan. Make it once and eat it twice or thrice (leftovers!). Prep your produce for longer life. Preserve the harvest bounty. Use a whole-foods cookbook. Share recipes, try new ones, get inspired!

3) Shop smart. Make a shopping list and stick to it. Buy produce in season. Definitely buy organic if it’s on the Dirty Dozen list. Buy direct from the farmer. Buy in bulk. Join a buying club. Special-order your regular buys for 15-20% discounts (a co-op member benefit). Shop sales. “Shop” from your garden, i.e., grow your own groceries. Shift your budget to spend less on luxury items and more on good food. Etc., etc.!

I learned a lot about our county’s food system at the affordable food forum, and I was so impressed by the wealth of knowledge and experience represented by the seven panelists that I wanted to know what personal steps they had taken to eat local foods more affordably. So in the Q&A period, I asked each of them to share a tip. Here’s what they had to say.

Seth Rolland of Quimper Community Harvest (a gleaning network) said he picks “free food” from his neighbor’s apple tree and has built a rodent-proof box on his porch for outdoor storage of apples.

Malcolm Dorn of the Chimacum Corner Farmstand said he worked out a trade with a farmer to plant an extra row of pickling cukes for him. He harvested them himself and preserved them with a friend, resulting in a stockpile of one of his favorite foods: pickles!

Al Latham of the Jefferson LandWorks Collaborative said he built a greenhouse to extend his garden’s growing season. He claims six millimeters of plastic added 600 miles of latitude to this indoor climate!

Judy Alexander of Citizens for Local Food (for more, see cover story of Nov./Dec. 2011 Food Co-op newsletter) said she bakes her own bread every week. She’s still using the 100 pounds of wheat she received as her share for volunteering for two years with Jefferson County’s dryland wheat project.

Candice Cosler of the Farm-to-School Coalition said she increased her garden’s production by adding “loads of compost”–which boosts the food’s nutrient content as well.

Irene Marble, a dietician at Jefferson Healthcare (our rural hospital) said she grows her own winter squash and preps them for storage by dipping their shells in a bleach solution.

Brwyn Griffin of The Food Co-op said she simplified her diet to be plant-based with little to no processed foods.

My tip is to start my weekly grocery shopping at the farmers market. (I am fortunate that there are two weekly farmers markets in my neighborhood that run April-December.) With fresh produce, local meat, eggs, and a few value-added goodies (cheese, salsa) in hand, I go home and meal-plan, creating a shopping list of necessities to get at the Food Co-op. This one-two punch works well for my family, enjoyably involves my 3-year-old son, and I miss it in the winter-time!

NOTE:  The affordable food forum was ably moderated by Scott Wilson, the publisher of our local weekly newspaper The Leader. It later carried a nice wrap-up of the event by reporter Lauren Salcedo. You can read it here.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

I want to put in a final plug for the Food Co-op’s free series of Natural Foods Classes. I attended the Grains class a few weeks ago on a rainy Sunday, just to refresh myself on the uses of the many grains I’ve stockpiled in my cupboard but have not been eating up. I also got my questions answered about baking flours (I’m now considering getting a small grain mill to grind my own to add to commercial varieties) and granola (I’ve since made a date with a friend to do a homemade batch!).

In these classes, Brwyn Griffin (pictured above, holding brochure) walks you through the ins and outs of whole foods—what that means, how to purchase and prepare them, and the health benefits of doing so. The series of 6 classes (grains, beans, oils, eggs/dairy, etc.) is offered three times a year, and each 2-hour class (always Sundays, 2-4 p.m.) stands alone, so you can attend one or all. Pick up an easy-to-read co-op class schedule in the store or click here for the 2012 calendar.

VIDEO: Transportation (Presentation to Chamber of Commerce, 11/14/11)

Posted by Shelly on Jan 22, 2012 in Education, Transportation | 2 comments

We’ve been snowed in the last couple of days, and the walkability of our 1880′s-era neighborhood has had a chance to shine.

As Soren and I traveled on foot to the corner grocery, the post office, the coffee shop, and our friends’ houses, we encountered 10 times as many pedestrians as we normally do and 10 times fewer cars. It was so sociable, so cheery, so safe to pull Soren on his sled down the middle of the road. I almost wish the snow would stick around!

Port Townsend’s historic core was built before automobiles were mass-marketed, so it is inherently walkable. Redesigning car-oriented cities around people instead is the challenge for our times.

Creating walkable communities is – to mix metaphors – “the silver bullet in the sustainability toolkit.”

Residents’ health, safety and sense of place are all improved by lessened dependence on automobiles for transportation.

In the continuation of uploads of video from my November presentation to the Chamber of Commerce, this 5-minute video excerpt on “Transportation” describes some of the ways innovative businesses and nonprofits here in Jefferson County are replacing gas-guzzling transportation with walking, bicycling and even sailing!

I highlight Bob’s Bagels‘ bicycle deliveries,  Finnriver Farm & Cidery‘s collaboration with Salish Sea Trading Cooperative to get their product to the Seattle market using no fossil fuels, and the  ReCyclery, a community bicycle shop that recently moved to a more visible location in town with plans to anchor a non-motorized transportation learning center.

My talk also introduces the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute, which relocated here from Florida in 2010. I’m really excited about their presence here, and the role they can play in making Port Townsend and Jefferson County a learning lab for sustainability issues.

A sample of the Powerpoint images I displayed to showcase the work of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute can be seen below. Photomorphs courtesy of WALC.

Potential for a road remake in Orange Beach, Ala.

WALC’s vision for a road remake in Orange Beach, Ala.

Resolve to Be “Curious, Doubtful” in 2012

Posted by Shelly on Dec 30, 2011 in Local Economy, My EcoChallenge | 6 comments

‘Tis the time for making New Year’s Resolutions, and I’d like to offer a sweeping suggestion for these transitional times:  Be curious, entertain doubts, get angry!

That’s roughly the sequence I’ve followed this past year, and it is nicely summed up by journalist William Greider.

“Curiosity and doubt are the first steps toward action, especially when accompanied by well-earned anger at the way things are,” Greider writes in The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy. I just finished reading this book, and although it was published in 2003, it is one of the best overviews I’ve read of the wrongs of capitalism and how they can be righted.

It’s an especially cheering read because Greider predicts the Occupy Wall Street movement and presents a hopeful story for how society can alter capitalism’s distorted value system and how Americans can collectively acquire decision-making power that is now wielded by a limited number of powerful institutions.

“[A] more contentious time is approaching, when big questions about American economic life are back on the table again for serious reconsideration,” he writes. Economic inequality and ecological destruction will gradually persuade more and more citizens that “something in our system is seriously out of whack and ought to be changed (even if they cannot identify exactly what is wrong or how it might be corrected).” Sounds like OWS to me!

So once you’ve stoked your curiosity, percolated doubts about the current economic system, and stashed away some justifiable anger to unleash at just the right moment, what concrete actions might you take in the coming year? Here are some ideas.

Shift at least one of your bank accounts from a mega-bank to a community bank.

(A community bank, a.k.a. local financial institution, is typically defined as having less than $1 billion in assets). Moving your money is one of the simplest things you can do to support your community and its independent businesses.

We started this process in 2002 when we built our house and took out our mortgage at a savings and loan that operates only on the Olympic Peninsula and is a generous philanthropist in our hometown. In successive waves, we have shifted all of our personal and business accounts to First Federal. We are really pleased to be a part of their community giving, and two immediate benefits of banking with this small, truly customer-friendly bank is that we are not charged a fee to use other banks’ ATMs, and using our debit card in Canada is cheaper than using our (ahem) Bank of America credit card.

(I’m still seeking advice on a more sustainable credit card option. Please leave a comment if you have a recommendation.)

Shift at least one of your significant, ongoing purchases from a mega-retailer to a local merchant.

Examples: office supplies, books, wine. If you spend a dollar locally, it circulates locally, positively impacting 3-7 different local businesses before it leaves the area. That same dollar spent at a national or multi-national chain has very little positive impact on the local economy.

If you live where I do—a 45-minute drive from big-box stores—try weaning yourself from the weekly or monthly “trip to town.” When I did this shortly after my son was born, I found I saved money by shopping locally because I was less tempted to buy items that I didn’t really need from the dizzying array of options on the big-box shelves. Before long, I didn’t miss the trips at all. To the contrary, I love walking on my errands and popping into local shops where I have a relationship with the owners and employees.

Downscale your cash spending by trading or sharing a service you currently pay for.

Examples: childcare, haircuts, yard maintenance. Take back your money by not spending it at all!

I decided a year ago that my preferred bob hairstyle was simple enough to cut at home. While I’ve never tried cutting my hair myself, I’ve had it trimmed by a friend, my mother, my husband, and—this past Christmas day—by my visiting sister.

One of my 2012 resolutions is to become active in the Fourth Corner Exchange barter network that I joined last year, but have yet to use. I’m thinking of requesting help with housecleaning and yard weeding, and offering to help others with photo editing and photo gift projects for their friends and family, and delivering an extra loaf of the bread I bake each week.

Speaking of bread-baking…

Develop or practice a skill that makes you and your family more self-sufficient.

Americans have come to internalize the label of “consumer.” But I’d rather be identified as a “conserver” and a “creator.” Examples: Bake, sew, repair, build, grow, preserve food. Attend a “reskilling fair.” Take a class. Mentor with someone more skilled than you.

Another 2012 resolution is to bake most of my family’s bread and pizza dough. I’ve been practicing for the last couple of months, experimenting with no-knead recipes that can sit in the fridge all week as well as food-processor kneading, and to that end, my Christmas gift requests were a dough whisk, a new bread pan and a big package of yeast. My friend and bread mentor Luke surprised me with a present of a lidded, clear, 1.5-gallon “bread bucket.” I’m set!

Read. Learn. Be inspired by new perspectives.

Read YES! Magazine or The Nation or Mother Jones, or any other publication that stretches your worldview. We have to learn to think about the economy and society in an altogether new way, says Greider, and we should seek out compelling stories that are “more promising for society than the reigning narratives of self-centered capitalism.”

Tip:  Share a subscription with a friend or two, and pass the issues along as soon as you read them. You’ll have conversation starters galore. I just subscribed to YES!, taking advantage of a special introductory offer of 5 quarterly issues (one year’s subscription plus one bonus issue) for only $15. Who wants to be my YES! reading partner in 2012?

Change your mindset from one of rugged independence to mutual interdependence.

This is the big action item, and it’s not concrete at all but very conceptual. Greider says: “[T]he paradox of American life [is that] collective action is required to achieve individual self-realization. People open paths for each one’s individual pursuit of potential only by working together to liberate life’s possibilities for all.”

Here’s to “Going Sustainable Together” in 2012! Please leave a comment and share your New Year’s Resolution.

A Progressive Dinner & Other Progress

Posted by Shelly on Dec 19, 2011 in My EcoChallenge, Neighbors | 1 comment

Last Monday night I enjoyed a delectable four-course meal, but only had to prepare the salad.

It was thanks to three of our closest neighbors that my family ate abundantly well and inexpensively that night, in a lingering meal spiced with much socializing. Have you guessed how? Yes, we held a “progressive dinner.”

This was the fulfillment of a pledge I made to myself—and all Leader readers!—when I told a reporter in early September that one of the ways I intended to “go sustainable together” was to organize a progressive dinner “as a way of becoming better acquainted with [my] neighbors.”

“It’s a small thing to have a supper with your neighbors, but it’s money in the bank when you need to borrow a tool or ask them to water your garden or call upon them in an emergency—or they need to call upon you,” I was quoted as saying. (Read the article.)

If you’ve only heard about progressive dinners but never attended one, the concept is simple. Get a few neighbors together (four couples is a good number, easily accommodated around the average dining room table), each household cooks up one course, and the neighbors “progress” from one house to another, in turn sampling each neighbor’s food and hospitality.

Start with appetizers, end with dessert. In between, get to know each other!

Beyond the front door

There’s something about getting beyond the front-door threshold that engenders trust. I’m chagrined to say that two of the three progressive-dinner couples had never before stepped inside our home. But now they have—and they know the story of how we came to Port Townsend, and I know their stories.

At my suggestion, the hosts at each house shared their story of how they came to this town and this neighborhood. We found that we all valued its walkability. “Cars are good, but not for going to get a loaf of bread,” as Mike put it. We uncovered other commonalities, too, from shared southern roots to Volkswagen vans in our pasts.

It was clear by the end of the evening—after consuming the local cheese plate, my signature caramelized nut salad, eggplant moussaka, and blackberry pie, plus drinks with three of the four courses (!)—that everyone had had a wonderful time.

“Let’s do this again!” was the rallying cry. I’d like to see the concept spread, fanning outward down our streets until all our neighbors know each other better than they do now.

Progress update

In addition to the “progress”-ive dinner, I want to tell you about some of the other progress I’ve been making toward my own eco-challenge of diving into my community’s sustainability movement in the three months since I launched Sustainable Together.

VIDEO: Energy (Presentation to Chamber of Commerce, 11/14/11)

Posted by Shelly on Dec 3, 2011 in Education, Renewable Energy | 0 comments

Do you know where your energy comes from? Proportionally, more Jefferson County residents can proudly say, “From the sun!” than can residents of any other county in the state.

This 5-minute video excerpt on “Energy” references the sponsor of my Chamber talk (and, not entirely coincidentally, my husband’s employer), Power Trip Energy Corp.

It describes Jefferson County’s leading role in creating energy from the sun.

The Puget Sound Energy graph referenced in my talk can be seen below. Data provided by PSE, current as of Oct. 2011.

Port Townsend was named Washington Solar City of the Year in 2009 and our county currently has the highest per-capita number of grid-tied solar installations in the state—perhaps in the nation. Nearly 1% of electric utility customers have grid-tied solar panels that feed excess electricity into the grid for other customers to use. I would love to know if there is another county with similar per-capita stats.

Also discussed is the forthcoming “community solar project” to be located at the county airport. Public land and investors are already lined up and the installation of a 16-KW ground-mounted solar array was awaiting FAA approval at the time of my talk. As of this writing, the installer (Power Trip Energy) tells me the system should be up and running around the first of the year. (Update: This project is the topic of a 12/5/11 Peninsula Daily News article.)

The solar electricity produced will be sold to the landowner (the Port of Port Townsend) and each individual investor receives a state production incentive and a federal tax credit. The national model for community solar is right here in Washington, in the City of Ellensburg. (Read more.)

I close this segment with the reminder that we will soon have a greater say in where our energy comes from once our electrical utility comes under local control. Our Public Utility District is in the process of purchasing Puget Sound Energy’s holdings in Jefferson County, a move authorized by a county-wide vote in 2008 and promoted by a group called Citizens for Local Power that spun off of Local 20/20. Two other counties tried similar votes that same year and were out-lobbied by PSE. We won!

So how about “no electricity generated from coal-fired power plants”?  We have to envision the future we want and demand it!

Click on graph to view in a separate window.