Luke O. @loppear@social.coop

Just read #ParadiseLot an inspiring account of home-scale #permaculture successes and failures over a decade growing perennial vegetables and fruits in new England. Lots to plan from, although it is largely memoir.

The bipinnate leaves of this pecan fan out from directly underneath in a mesmerizing echo of rippling circles of rain water.

This summer of road trips I intend to visit a number of community/cooperative inspirations from years of reading:

The Nearings / Good Life Center
Greenbelt, MD
Twin Oaks Intentional Community
Truth or Consequences, NM

But I'm also headed through lots of the midwest and west, so what similarly broadly construed inspirations should I read and see (that aren't Pacific Coastal)?

#fec #ic #cooperative #homestead #community

#Reading Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich (1970), and The Weight Of Light: A collection of solar futures (2018)

Anarchy Cat Dumpster

Austin TX

Attended an interesting Solarize regional pitch tonight. They basically do 12mo campaigns targeted at a city or region to RFP a solar installer, recruit residential and commercial installs, and tier pricing based on total kWh for the campaign. Was surprised to learn 25yr equip guarantees (85% output) are norm. Esp here with no other incentives or funding backstops beyond the expiring federal tax, it seems like a smart "market-based crowdsourcing" way to localize interest and installer staffing.

HaymarketBooks.org is doing one of those $1-or-so ebook sales through tonight. Too many good possibilities, I've nearly finished the ones I got a year ago in Verso's sale so let's see..

White #fungus on persimmon logs, orange on elm. Did they live in the trees before they were cut down? Before they started dying?

WH press conferences seem like a fine place for automated robots to replace humans, like bomb disposal bots or your boss leaning over your cubicle wall telepresence or roombas.

Excited to start #Reading Belinda Barnet's "Memory Machines" history of pre-web hypertext.

I'm 6 books behind again on author gender parity for my #Reading this year, every Male author I read from here to NYE likely makes the goal impossible.

Went to a well-attended rally for our hopeful black woman governor candidate afterwards. It'll be a stretch, but one step complete.

Every trip to the grocery store I'm shocked by the overwhelming majority of breakfast cereals that are coated in a extra layers of sugar (and usually neon), as a parent who never had such things at home growing up. And yet I think we can cut ourselves off fossil fuels in my lifetime, what insanities we accept each day. #smallstories

Niiice.

Made the faux pas of attempting to buy wine at the grocery store 20 minutes before the Sunday hour at which such purchases are permitted in this Bible Belt state.

Compounded my error by replying "Under His Eye" to the hourly checkout worker tasked with enforcing my morals today.

#smallsins #smallstories

I'd forgotten about #TTBOOK for a couple years. Passing thru WI reminded me how excellent it can be, like Radio Open Source, in uncovering a topic.

This week's episode on work - on the failure of most jobs to support a balanced life (w A. Quart), on BS jobs (w D. Graeber), on the work ethic as historical anomaly (w J. Livingston), on worker cooperatives (w N. Okuk), all woven together with Studs Terkel clips, ticks so many boxes for me.

Bravo #WisconsinPublicRadio

https://www.ttbook.org/show/whats-wrong-work

Maybe after these it'll be a good time to read Gilbert's Planning Democracy on agrarian localizing in the US about the same period.