Financial Permaculture

Two aspects of the growing alternative culture in the world that I love are alternative economy and Permaculture. I rarely just copy a long piece from another blog, but recently I have discovered Catherine Fitts of solari.com and she is an amazing woman with deep experience in the system who had put herself on the line to create alternatives. Here is her amazing post on Financial Permaculture.

Financial Permaculture

Catherine and Daily Musings,

July 12, 2008 at 8:07 pm

If we look at a community as a financial ecosystem with financial sustainability as one of our goals in achieving overall sustainability, one of the questions we should ask as we reduce waste is “who gets the benefit of that waste reduction?”

In classic market language, if we improve efficiency, whose expenses go down or time is saved or risk is reduced and whose equity increases as a result? In every community, we have financial capital - whether investment dollars or philanthropic dollars - leaving the community for investment elsewhere or for investment in large enterprises that use it to come and buy up our communities.

Who and what will attract that capital back locally and do so in a manner that ensures the successful safety and performance on those dollars? And if it comes back to be invested locally, who gets what as a result? The more we can make our waste reduction attractive to existing local capital, the easier it will be to sequence progressively more waste reduction. The more we can make our local purchases interested in supporting the enterprises funded with our local capital, the easier it will be to generate the performance we need to affirm our local capital and to retain and attract the human capital that could make this all go.

So one measure of the success of a community-wide permaculture development should be an improvement in local investment performance as a result of progressive shifts in a portion of locally controlled and managed capital out of investment in large corporations (such as the financial stocks where they have been losing a great deal of money) back into the local investment system.

Creating this positive loop of attracting local investment capital and eventually regional investment capital is critical to the overall development. The usual alternative is to use government funding and some foundation and philanthropic grant making. These sources depend on borrowing (or capital gains which may be sourced from companies dependent on government contracts, purchases and subsidies which are dependent on borrowing) which is dependent on military force to sustain. Such funding brings those energetics and central controls to bear on a local development.

Sustainability calls for financial sustainability that is not dependent on centrally engineered funds but rather generates from tangible, value-added flows grounded in peaceful, free economies.

If you have time, check out her many free articles about what is really going on in our financial and governmental cultures. Happy reading. Just one more thing. If you want to watch a wonderful video about our connection to all of creation go to http://newparadigmdigest.com/
You may want to turn the hooky music off, but it's an amazing story. Jude

Time for Retreat

I don't even like the word, but find myself here silent and away from all my family and friends listening to who Rumi call The Friend. It's been a while since I left the sound of the world and
took a trip inside. Not going to write too much, just want to stay in touch, repeat that the beauty of the earth is deeply abundant right now. Tiny tomatoes, zucchini threaten their abundance that has people locking their cars in our small town. Lettuce, spinach, huge blue potato plants put out blue blossoms and who knows what will show it's stuff soon from the corn which has begun to tassel and the beans putting out flowers. I am grateful. That is mostly what I know this gorgeous day in July.
JJ

Guns and Roses

It turns out, guns are for Killing Yourself!
Now that's truth in advertising, which of course would kill the gun business instead of the gun buyers. According to Salon.com: "Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation's nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." One of my youngest son's best friends shot himself with a gun. What a horror that he had the gun available during a time when he was so young and in a deep depression.



Now for the good news. Humm, well let's see. The garden is growing by leaps and bounds. Tiny new re-plantings are coming up and there are blossoms on the jalapenos. We are swamped with beautiful greens of all sorts, and the cilantro has already created a batch of salsa. Say nothing of those amazing garlic spates from which we created the most amazing pesto. Got some rhubarb at this week's farmer's market and plan on making some strawberry rhubarb custard pie, something I haven't had for years.

More good news is that my novel is breaking through again enough that I think it will be finished by the end of the summer at least. I'm thrilled and anxious to get it out into the world and start on my next project.

Love in time of globally warmed summer. JJ

Gift Economy and Global Warming

It's amazing how fast the summer flies. Spent yesterday on a long steep mountain hike, only my second of the season. It's such refreshment to the soul and to relationship. We had so much snow this winter, everything is abundant right now. Babies of all sorts, wild flowers, insects all really born of the rushing creeks and rivers that feed and wash us away. A record four people have died in the river that runs through town and countless others have been rescued.

Relationship is the essence of life and we humans often forget our small place in the whole world and then even smaller place in a gorgeous Universe. Which brings me back to my constant harping on the Gift Economy and Permaculture. I read a great blogger http://simonreeves.blogspot.com/
on Gift Economy and relationships.

I've been struggling lately with my relationship to a community I returned to. Many of my attempts at giving gifts of time, energy, events, etc. have been ignored or rejected. After a year of that, I came to the conclusion that I should stop giving. Maybe I'm just in the process of learning something new. It's really new not to have what I'm offering the community, see: www.neighborhooduniversecity.com
not be received. In permaculture fashion, I have been watching the earth, my garden, etc. and one thing I'm observing is that during stressful times, e.g. global warming, etc. plants produce in great abundance. There are hundreds of small elm trees growing as tiny seedlings in my garden.
So, maybe instead of doing less, I'll do more.

That's all for today. Thanks for you comments. Love to hear from you.
JJ

Musings on Gift, Permaculture, Work

I just read an enlightening article on Gift Economy from a woman in France. Her take on the whole idea is fresh and helpful. Check it out by clicking below and then put in Gift Economy.
http://www.wisemandarine.com/ Opps, Mandarine wrote that she is a he. My bad.

A poet friend of mine and her husband bought and live at an orchard in western Colorado. She speaks of the struggle to get the crop that society requires. From a freeze of blossoms that did not stop the fruit, their apricots are now deemed seconds. I sent her this poem in response.

Naming Ceremony For

Survivors

i rename those miraculous

persistent wonders i call

them love bundles or

sweet dreams or

mama's delight

maybe wine makers

or apricot of my eye

or cherry's cherry

a chance to listen

to these other voices

of our world, listen

as in permaculture

as in let's make a

date and go out

under the stars and

talk all night as in

Meister Eckart's

conclusion that we

are all birthers of god.

Even in the fruit we eat, there is judgement, a requirement for a perfection that is an illusion and a missing of the real beauty of life. A gift economy could change all that. Gratitude, giving and receiving might take some of that out of the equation.

Sweet gift giving to you this gorgeous Sunday.
JJ

More on the "Gift Economy"

Wow, did I find a great treasure related to the "Gift Economy" today. There is a magazine devoted to it and one that functions within it! Click to find an amazing story, one that really personifies what it means. I'm really blown away. Hope you check it out!
Click on A Man Impossible to Classify. What an amazing story. http://conversations.org/pics/none/laurie.jpg
JJ

Revolution a Long-Term Already Happening Phenomnon

Rebecca Solnit, writing for Orion magazine did a great article on the fact that we are already in a revolution entitled, "Revolutions per Minute, Radical transformation is all around us." Going back to the 60's when many of us were just waiting for the revolutionary event, she takes us through many of the changes by showing how nonplussed we are by many things today that in the 60's would have excited and startled us. Examples are gays out in the open, women in politics, awareness of global warming, the environment and our food system. It's worth a read, but no matter how hard I tried I could not get the link to work here. Try going to Orion Magazine and go to the article on June 14th. It's the best I can offer.

Wikipedia defines revolution as:A revolution (from the Latin revolutio, "a turnaround") is a significant change that usually takes place in a long period of time. In light of this definition, we might take heart. Things are not the same as they were twenty years ago. Movie making is getting into the hands of regular people. Farmer's Markets are back in vogue. Hybrid cars are becoming common. Yes, there is a lot that needs changing, but I THINK if I really honestly look back without rose colored glasses, there are things to cheer and places to look for hope.

That's not to look away from the mess we are in, but to say that we are capable of change and actually things are moving at a fairly fast pace sometimes in a better direction. Other countries are showing improvements that very few U.S. citizens even dream of. Some ways of our European neighbors, which have much older cultures than any of our save our indigenous ones, are much more advanced. Health care, prison reform, drug treatment, environmental care, child care, and good work are some areas where we already have great examples of better proven ways close by. South America is leading us toward more rights for a greater number of people and away from the domination of Multi-national corporations. Even the fact that we have an eloquent African American man running for president is a sign improvement.

I say, let's not give up on REVOLUTION, but let's also not expect it to happen over night. Our culture is impatient and expects instant coffee, which tastes terrible if you are accustomed to slow brewed, carefully grown and roasted luscious cups of coffee. I'm all for fairly traded, carefully tended REVOLUTION. JJ