Never mind ongoing murderous atrocities in the Mideast — Palestine, Syria, Iraq, where else? — and in Ukraine, Afghanistan, no doubt other places that we’re never told about but our military and mercenary “special forces” regularly hide into and destabilize — and always for the benefit of corporate plunder. No, never mind. Let’s just look at Earth, how She seems to be, as one blogger puts it, turning into a teenager, squeezing her zits. Via Shodo:

Is This the Compost Bomb’s Smoking Gun: Second Mysterious Hole Found in Yamal Russia

And, I’m very glad to say, David Swanson, as usual, excavates the bottom line on the subject of war. Simply, there is no “good war.” None. Zilch. Here’s the transcription of his latest speech that parses the many ways we don’t realize that we still think we can distinguish between good and bad wars, and how we must change that attitude, pronto, and that once we do, we will ignite a flourishing the likes of which we have never known. Yes! Let us re-imagine, let us re-signify the nuclear firestorm of the “mushroom cloud” as an astonishing, miraculous burst of collective human creativity.

War in Our Collective Imagination

In the midst of our ongoing collective maelstrom, I’m in one of my own. Last night neighbor Georgia and I returned from our whirlwind trip to Cincinnati to attend an all-day workshop on Creating Community with Diana Leafe Christian —

— in which we got our heads stuffed with all sorts of stories from intentional communities from around the world about what works and what does not (90% fail), including an overview of legal and governance issues, and a “mind-game” — that involved all the steps, in what order?

Unfortunately, from our perspective, not too much of the workshop was devoted to “retrofit urban ecovillages,” which is what we’re working towards here. However, you might want to check out Los Angeles Ecovillage and N Street Cohousing, Davis California.

But the most exciting urban retrofit ecovillage that I’m familiar with is the one where we were invited to stay the night prior to the workshop by genial and deeply charismatic long time earth activist and scholar Jim Schenk —

who, with his wonderful wife Eileen, in 2004, declared the street where they had lived for 30 years an ecovillage, the Enright Ridge Ecovillage, a single 3/4 mile long block in downtown Cincinnati surrounded by forest. It includes about fifty 100-year old two story houses, friendly, relaxed neighbors, no through-access, a giant duck that walks the street, deep backyards that feature permaculture,

shaggy goats,

and a CSA that both gathers produce from neighbors and is run out of this old greenhouse and its grounds —

features impressively organized tools,

and a neighborhood brewery!

Whew!

Back around 8 p.m. last night, after white-knuckling it all three hours back due to a mysterious drip of water into the car! — that started running faster and faster, pooling under Georgia’s feet!

Whew again! We made it home, and just now Rebecca in her car escorted me in my car to World Wide Auto, and popped the keys in the drop box.

So. Today I decided to finally tackle the rest of the room that I’m moving into, both my bed and my office, in order to make room in my house for two other people to live here. After putting a solar array on the DeKist house to serve both these houses late last year, this my next personal campaign: to get my energy footprint DOWN. I will start that by sharing what energy I do use with others.

It’s like this: if we’re heading into a time of decrease, of descent from our prodigiously wasteful “lifestyles” as Americans, what can each of us do to joggle our own “comfort level” to the point where our individual life makes even a slight difference? Or at least, serves as an example? This is my current campaign, to discomfortize myself, if you will, and in the process, enrich the number and quality of my interactions with others.

Today: organize books —

— and place on shelves in prep for moving bed in here and shoving table (my “desk”) over closer to the windows . . .

If I’m very very lucky, there will be room for me to do tai chi, chi kung, and yoga as well.