For the first time ever, according to Forbes magazine, the 400 richest Americans have more than $2 trillion in combined wealth. And, a fifth of that amount is held by just 10 individuals. Of those top 10 richest Americans, six hail from two families—the Kochs and the Waltons—who are destroying our economy and corrupting our politics. We all should be outraged.

Arguably, the two most urgent tasks in this country are to transform our economy and to clean up our politics, and these two families stand in the way of both.

Our economy is addicted to fossil fuels and Charles and David Koch’s company, Koch Industries, is a key driver with investments in pipelines and refineries across the United States. These two Koch brothers rank four and five on the billionaire list.

The problem is, of course, not just economics. It’s the way that economics interacts with politics.

In addition, our economy is marked by stagnating wages, which have sunk to poverty levels for millions of workers. The key driver of our low-wage economy is Walmart, with its 11,000 stores worldwide that pay so little that many of its workers get by on food stamps. The four main heirs to Walmart’s founder, Sam Walton, rank numbers six, seven, eight, and nine on the billionaires list. Three sit on the Walmart board, including Rob Walton, the board chair. (Other U.S. billionaires have made their fortunes in destructive Wall Street financial firms and through the generous government handouts of what President Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex.”)

The problem is, of course, not just economics. It’s the way that economics interacts with politics. The Koch brothers have poured some of their combined $72 billion in wealth into conservative and tea party politicians at the governor and state legislature levels.

And, they’ve financed a number of ultra-conservative state ballot initiatives. Scott Walker, for example, the Republican governor of Wisconsin, who gutted the state’s labor laws, is a major Koch client. And, the Kochs are big backers of the Keystone pipeline and stand to gain financially from its construction.

The Waltons—experts at tax avoidance—exercise a subtler, but equally corrosive, influence of our politics through their continued role in the world’s largest global corporation, Walmart.

Here is an example of how they operate. A year ago, Walmart announced it wanted to build six stores in Washington, D.C. This past summer, after a spirited community campaign, the D.C. City Council passed a resolution that would have required giant big box stores to pay a living wage. The day before the vote, Walmart very publicly announced that it would not build three of the stores if the resolution became law. The threat worked. The D.C. mayor vetoed the living wage bill.

By the way, the Kochs and Waltons aren’t the only top billionaires who are corrupting our politics. Number eleven on the list is Sheldon Adelson, who used his casino profits to shovel millions to Newt Gingrich and other conservatives in the 2012 elections. Numbers fifteen, sixteen and seventeen on the list are heirs to, and on the board of, Mars—the world’s largest candy maker. Mars has poured millions into lobbying the U.S. Congress to create an even more regressive, less fair tax system.

The day before the vote, Walmart very publicly announced that it would not build three of the stores if the resolution became law.

What about liberal billionaires among the U.S. top 20? Yes, there are at least three among the top 20 who don’t share the Walmart take on the world. Notable here are the top two on the U.S. billionaires list for the past decade: Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

Both Gates and Buffett have steered tens of billions of dollars into philanthropy over recent years. Some of Gates’ dollars have funded wrong-headed policy initiatives on education, agriculture, and elsewhere.

However—and this is a big difference from the Kochs—neither has pumped large sums of money to intervene directly in U.S. politics or ballot initiatives. Lower down on the list at number 19 is George Soros, who has used his money to support liberal candidates and progressive nonprofits, but his $20 billion in wealth is dwarfed by the four Waltons’ collective $136 billion and the Koch brothers’ collective $72 billion.

Unfortunately, the concentration of wealth in this country that these billionaires exemplify is increasingly mirrored in other countries. We examined the world’s 1,426 billionaires recently and chronicled the rapid rise of billionaires and inequality in China, Russia, India, Brazil, Hong Kong, Turkey, and elsewhere. Yet, the United States—with less than 5 percent of the world’s people, still hosts the most billionaires with 31 percent of the global total, and 12 of the top 20 (including the Kochs, the Waltons, and Adelson).

The primal scream of Occupy Wall Street in 2011 and 2012 was to end the ability of the 1 percent and giant corporations to crash our economy and corrupt our politics. Groups of the 99 percent like National People’s Action and the New Economy Working Group are among those leading the way toward a new economy rooted in shared prosperity, deeper democracy, and ecological balance. So too are groups like Public Citizen and Public Campaign leading the fight to separate corporation and state by getting big money out of politics.

These efforts deserve your outrage and your energy.

“An engine of growth and prosperity,” announces the deep blue OceanaGold sign that greets us as we enter a small town in the northern Philippines. We’ve come a long and windy 12-hour drive through seven provinces from the Philippines’ capital city into the clouds of the majestic Sierra Madre Mountains. We stand at the base of what remains of a hill that Australian mining executives call “dinkidi,” Australian slang for “the real thing.” Just years ago, this was a green hill dotted with trees and farmers’ modest homes.

It may be hard for mining executives at OceanaGold and elsewhere to believe, but these farmers tell us that their dream is simply to end the mining.

Today, after the homes have been demolished and successive layers of land blasted away by high-powered explosives, it is a giant pile of rocks, with the valuable gold and copper—”the real thing”—being extracted for the profits of the OceanaGold corporation, headquartered far away in Australia.

We sit with community members of the Didipio Earth-Savers Multipurpose Association Inc. (DESAMA), with a bird’s eye view of the plundered site that’s just outside the window.

To you readers, and especially those who think of gold as something of value, we invite you into the room. Some of you have followed us in our journeys to gold-mining country in El Salvador where OceanaGold has joined forces with Canadian company Pacific Rim. We invite you to ponder OcenaGold’s claim: prosperity for whom?

Listen to the weary and distraught mother as she tells us that her family lives so close to the enormous conveyor belt that carries rock to be crushed that she and her four school-age children cannot study or sleep. They hear the loud droning noise 24 hours a day. When the mining company blasts rock, it feels like an earthquake. But it is her house and her land, and what is she to do?

Listen to the cracking voice of Lorenzo Polido, a farmer who moved to this fertile land decades ago, as he recounts the demolitions of homes several years ago. He tells us of a neighbor who suffered a heart attack watching his home demolished to make way for the mine. During the demolitions, many in the community set up barricades to try to stop OceanaGold. Allies from the national Alyansa Tigil Mina (the Network Against Mining), the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement, and other groups lent support.

Carmen Ananayo, her voice breaking and eyes tearing, talks about the 2012 murder of her daughter, herself the mother of two very young children, along with another DESAMA member. No one suggests that the mining company shot the two, but OceanaGold’s presence has brought conflict and death to this previously peaceful municipality.

As to the economic benefits from the gold mine, Carmen tells us that many of the mine’s workers—often hired as irregulars to avoid minimum wage and benefits—work a grueling 12-hour shift while earning less than a meager 50 cents an hour. It would take these workers many lifetimes to approach the $1.3 million compensation package of OceanaGold CEO Michael Wilkes in 2012.

The government’s Human Rights Commission has recommended the revocation of the mining license of OceanaGold.

Moreover, any economic benefits from this mine’s projected 16-year life will be more than outweighed by the environmental devastation. We hear of “dirty water” downstream from the mine and of dead fish washing up on the shore. What is the cause? What is in the four massive vats that can be seen amidst the mine’s machinery beside the piles of rocks? Is OceanaGold, like other global mining firms, using cyanide to separate the gold and copper from the surrounding rock? Are there sulfides in the rock now exposed by the mining—sulfides that are transformed into sulfuric acid every time it rains, creating “acid rock drainage” of toxins—as there are at roughly half the mine sites around the world? And why don’t the affected people in this area have access to this information?

“An engine of growth and prosperity,” bragged that OceanaGold sign. But what we witness is the scorched earth of mining and the broken dreams of a community.

Governments of the world should be listening to the voices of these people as they set national and international mining laws. It may be hard for mining executives at OceanaGold and elsewhere to believe, but these farmers tell us that their dream is simply to end the mining, to have their community and clean rivers back, to be able to farm in peace and to build a better tomorrow for their children. They are proud to be the producers in a province called one of the Philippines’ “fruit and vegetable bowls,” and they want to keep it that way.

Mining executives seem not to hear these voices. For mining executives and for too many governments, the bottom line seems to be the yearly 100,000 ounces of gold (valued at $130 million) that OceanaGold projects to extract from this once verdant mountainside, most of which will be shipped overseas. OceanaGold’s mine here will leave behind just pennies on each dollar extracted, a trivial sum that does not nearly compensate for the social, environmental, or economic chaos.

Back in the capital city, Philippine Human Rights Commissioner Loretta Ann Rosales tells us of the motion that the Commission filed against OceanaGold in 2011. A former Marcos-era political prisoner who was raped in jail, Rosales stands as a beacon of hope. Citing the forcible and illegal demolitions, the harassment of residents by the police, and the indigenous community’s right to culture, the Human Rights Commission recommended the revocation of the mining license of OceanaGold. Rosales is now discussing with her counterparts from other countries a stronger framework to protect the rights of people and their environment from the plunder of mining firms.

OceanaGold is but one of dozens of mining companies now in the Philippines that have celebrated the skyrocketing gold, copper, and other mineral prices since 2000. Collectively, these companies are blasting up and down the Philippine archipelago and opening mines all over the world.

But in the Philippines, as in El Salvador, a broad set of groups has come together to protect land, water, and life in the face of this mining onslaught, and they have proposed alternative mining bills that would protect these basic rights. These bills, like the voices of the people of we visit in this remote community, deserve a broad hearing across the globe.

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I was invited recently to sit in on animal science class at a college that has a strong agriculture program, about 10 miles away from my house. This week, the class was discussing the farm bill, and the students were supposed to be exploring what it meant to them.

Anyone who shops at a conventional grocery store for factory farmed meat or processed foods is taking a government handout.

The discussion was led by my friend Paula, who recently made the choice to return to school and get an agricultural degree. She talked about some of the major points of the farm bill, about how the direct commodity subsidies feed agribusiness, but how small farms such as Sap Bush Hollow derive very little (if any) direct benefit from them. She talked about how, because the Farm Bill didn’t pass in 2012, there was a temporary extension on it as part of the fiscal cliff package. The subsidies that aid corn syrup processors and ethanol blenders stayed in place. The programs that benefited small producers—such as new farmers, minority farmers, healthy food markets, renewable energy, and sustainable farming efforts—were suspended. The classroom remained quiet. Passive. Disinterested.

Paula attempted to shake them up. “Guys! This is about you! About us! About what we’re here for!” The room stayed quiet.

She moved on to the next controversial part of the Farm Bill—Food and Nutrition Assistance, which encompasses the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps. Several students began to shift in their seats. Paula put forward some numbers about the amount of money allocated to SNAP. The classroom began to writhe. Tongues clucked. I heard hissing. Paula then mentioned how many people were dependent on SNAP (in 2011, one out of every seven people in this country was getting some form of food and nutrition assistance). And with that, save for a few quiet exceptions, the classroom sprung to life:

“Welfare mothers!”

“They’re using food stamps to buy cigarettes!”

“I’m not paying for lazy people!”

“Users!”

“They just waste that money!”

Wow. So many golden educational opportunities….where to begin?

Let’s start with …

1. The meaning of hypocrisy: From the dictionary: The semblance of having desirable or publicly approved attitudes, beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually possess. It seems increasingly popular, in these hard economic times, to toss around accusations about who is draining the public resources. And the people who get public funds most directly under the umbrella term of “welfare” are the first ones to get pelted with stones.

Yet anyone who has driven by the farmers market on their way to buy pork chops for $1.99 a pound at the grocery store, when the local farmer can’t produce them for less than $11.00, is dipping from the same pot that holds the food stamps. The farm bill encourages factory farming by making sure feed can be purchased for less than the price of growing it, giving factory farms billions of dollars in cost discounts every year.

A portion of this savings gets passed along to the American grocery-shopping public in the form of artificially cheap food that real farmers (those of us who have to pay for the true costs of production) simply cannot compete with. Anyone who shops at a conventional grocery store for factory farmed meat or processed foods is taking a government handout, not just the “welfare mothers.”

2. The meaning of irony: From the dictionary: A figure of speech in which the words express a meaning that is often the direct opposite of the intended meaning. The first farm bill was enacted on the heels of the Great Depression, with the goal of supporting America’s farmers and ranchers. That’s still the intent. Yet today, farm bill commodity subsidy payments have contributed to such an unequal distribution of market share between corporate and family-scale agriculture, that the only way many small farmers could benefit from the farm bill is through the very nutritional assistance programs that these young agriculturists were spurning. There’s no shortage of small farmers who qualify for “welfare” programs.

3. The meaning of self-defeating behavior: From the dictionary: behavior serving to frustrate, thwart, etc., one’s own intention. Here was a group of students training to be farmers and food processors. Many of them will likely want to open their own farming-related businesses some day; or they will return to family farms to pick up where their parents and grandparents left off. Some of them, unable to sustain themselves financially among the land and livestock that nourish their spirits, will have to go and work for agribusiness. If the current economy is any indication, many of them will find themselves with college debt, low wage jobs, and in need of food.

Any way you slice the pie, the Farm Bill affects these students, either because:

• it sponsors (or fails to sponsor) programs that might help them get started on the land or in a food-related enterprise;
• or because the policies of the bill greatly benefit agribusiness, thus making it tougher and tougher for family-scale farms to compete;
• or because it results in a proliferation of processed, crappy foods that pollute our bodies as well as our soil and water;
• or because it provides a food benefit that a number of them will likely need in the near future.

These kids need to understand the Farm Bill. It can help them and it can hurt them. But the only reaction they could muster was venom toward any human being who might have need of food assistance, thus the only action many of them might take would be to cheer if the food and nutrition assistance programs were cut. They’re hurting themselves with their apathy and venom.

As we seek to create a workable Farm Bill, we cannot forget that the uncertainty of our neighbors will affect our own well-being.

For that matter, apathy and venom hurt all of us. The food problems, the farm problems, and the poverty issues, effect all of us. Propaganda infuses our daily lives, encouraging us to hate those in need, to judge them as irresponsible leeches on society. This hatred has become a cancer in our culture, poisoning us from the inside, making students like the ones in this classroom, who should be concerned about our nation’s food policy, content to see it fail rather than reformed, and to see more people go hungry.

By fixating on the notion that a fellow human in need is threatening to their well-being, these students are playing an active role in promoting the very social inequality that impairs their own futures. As social epidemiologists Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson have shown, no matter whether we are rich or poor, the more inequality there is in our culture, the greater our rates of anxiety, depression, and countless other social problems from crime to illness—for everyone.

(For those of you interested in learning more about how inequality contributes to widespread social problems across the classes, I recommend Kate Pickett and Richard G. Wilkinson’s book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.)

…Which leads me to the final, and most important, educational opportunity…

4. The meaning of compassion: From the dictionary: A feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another’s suffering or misfortune, accompanied by a desire to alleviate the pain or remove its cause. In truth, I suspect that the venom that came forth from these young people’s mouths wasn’t truly their own. They probably learned it from someone else. Most of them were too young to have come by such opinions honestly. And I can only assume that it came from people in their lives who are truly fearful, who worry that the resources they need  will be commandeered for someone else’s benefit.

A Farm Bill Only Monsanto Could Love
Three provisions in the bill would make it more difficult to regulate the safety of genetically modified crops. Consumers fight back with a flurry of organizing.

We are living in times when the worry about resources, financial or ecological, is very real. And the Farm Bill, for all its inconsistencies and controversies, represents our nation’s policy on these fears. As we seek to create a workable Farm Bill and a workable life, we cannot forget that the uncertainty of our neighbors will affect our own well-being. If we are going to be truly resilient, then we must be compassionate about the suffering of those around us, and we must seek ways, both through policy and through our daily individual actions, that will help to rectify this suffering.

That is simply part of being a community. And if we lose that, then we agree to a life of depredation for all and happiness for none, where only a few will survive, and no one truly thrives.

But if we can embrace compassion, then it becomes the foundation for true community resilience; where being a caring citizen and neighbor fuel a way of life where everyone has good, clean healthy food; where they come by it honestly; and where young agricultural students are able to plan a future where they can produce it freely and joyfully.

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Interested?

• “We have a lovely home, we eat well, we have lots of fun, we’re warm, and we don’t worry about how we’ll keep the lights on.” Shannon Hayes on how she has managed to live a fulfilled and happy life without going broke.
• Sometimes Shannon Hayes finds herself missing the days before she was a mother. But the circle of familial give-and-take love makes the trade-off worth it.
• Breaking our families into nuclear units has an ecological and emotional cost. Could the multigenerational farm remind us where to turn for a viable future?

While the Earth didn’t end on December 21, 2012, the year’s end was marked by a new awareness of the urgency of the climate crisis. Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the preciousness and fragility of life on Earth. That and other cultural shifts are setting the stage for significant change in the year ahead.

Nine key trends tell the story:

1. Climate Crisis: Alarm Translates Into Action

The climate crisis is the top story of 2012, with record-breaking heat, severe drought that led to the declaration of more than half of U.S. counties as disaster zones, wildfires that burned more than 9 million acres, and superstorm Sandy, with costs reaching into the billions. Four out of five Americans now believe that the climate problem is serious, according to an AP-Gfk poll.

The Obama administration has done little to address this problem—in part because of congressional resistance—but did set higher fuel emissions standards for automobiles, an important step in curtailing greenhouse gases.

The real action, though, is at the grassroots. Bill McKibben and 350.org launched a national movement in the fall of 2012 to press colleges and universities to divest their holdings in big energy companies. Texas and Nebraska landowners, Canadian tribes, and environmentalists everywhere are taking action to block the construction of a tar sands pipeline to ocean ports. Thousands turned out at hearings in Washington state to oppose the transport of millions of tons of Powder Basin coal through the region for export to China. And resistance to natural gas fracking is spreading throughout the Northeast.

Meanwhile, coal plants across the U.S. are closing, and a West Virginia coal company is giving up mountaintop removal as a result of pressure from environmental groups and falling demand in the wake of low prices for natural gas.

With widespread alarm at the extreme weather events, conditions are now ripe for a strong popular movement to take on the fossil fuel industry and its threat to human civilization.

2. U.S. Politics Get More Colorful

2012 saw the number of babies born to families of color exceed the number for white families. But the clout of non-whites is growing for other reasons. African Americans, Asians, and Latinos, along with women of all races, overcame discriminatory voter suppression tactics to hand President Obama the majority he needed to win a second term. The growing clout of communities of color has consequences, putting immigration reform firmly on the national agenda.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s radical platform has alienated large majorities of women and people of color, and more than half of Americans call Republican policies “extreme.”

The failure of policies unfriendly to women, people of color, and many others in the 99 percent has the Republican Party in disarray. There is now space for a progressive and inclusive agenda to emerge aimed at raising everyone up (including white men, but not privileging them).

3. Tolerance for Gun Violence Runs Thin

The school shooting in Newtown, Conn., may be the event that finally turns public opinion firmly against tolerance of gun violence. The Sandy Hook tragedy came on top of mass shootings in an Aurora, Col., movie theater, in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisc., in a shopping mall in Clackamas, Ore., and elsewhere, for a total of 151 killed and injured, according to Mother Jones. This continues a trend of more than 2,000 children and teens killed by guns each year, according to a 2012 study by the Children’s Defense Fund.

The good news is that a majority of Americans now supports bans on assault weapons, and, in spite of spikes in gun sales, the number of American households that own guns is actually down from the last few decades. Research shows that having a gun in the house increases the risk of homicide and suicide in that household.

4. U.S. Global Military Posture in Question

Pursuing the most globally aggressive military posture on the planet is causing a level of blowback little discussed in mainstream media. U.S. drone attacks are killing and terrorizing civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It remains unclear how the United States will extract itself from Afghanistan and wrap up the longest war in U.S. history. And American men and women in the armed services are now killing themselves at a higher rate than they are dying from any other cause, including combat. The year ended with the apparent suicide of Job W. Price, a Navy Seal.

The long-term costs to service members and their families coupled with the financial costs of carrying out wars, responding to the inevitable blowback, preparing for hypothetical wars, maintaining hundreds of foreign military bases, and paying top dollar to military contractors may be doing to the U.S. what Al Qaeda couldn’t do. Other empires fell after exhausting their people’s morale and treasure through protracted warfare. The United States is in danger of falling into a similar trap, while neglecting to invest in sources of real security, like the well-being and productive employment of citizens, and the abundance and resilience of the natural systems that supply food, water, livelihoods, and a stable climate.

In 2013, look for a reassessment of our policies of international violence. We will see efforts to rebuild our national self-worth, not based on our capacity to project death and mayhem, but on our contributions to health and well-being, climate stability, and life-enhancing technology.

5. The 99 Percent Got Inventive (and Got Some Respect)

By early 2012, as the Occupy camps were disbanded, many thought the Occupy Movement had died out. But this fall, Strike Debt arose and the Rolling Jubilee raised thousands of dollars to dissolve millions of dollars of medical debt of individuals. Both actions raised questions about why we allow the banking system to transfer so much wealth from the 99 percent to the 1 percent.

Then, when Superstorm Sandy hit, a movement that had become expert at leaderless mobilization rose up to help those harmed by the storm. Occupy volunteers hiked up stairwells to supply elderly tenants of high-rise housing projects with food and water. Distribution centers were set up throughout neighborhoods that had been flooded and lost power. Police, who had once arrested occupiers, were themselves aided by Occupy Sandy volunteers when their neighborhoods were flooded. Even the big disaster relief agencies began referring volunteers and those in need to Occupy Sandy.

The Occupy movement is inventing new forms of action and grassroots power, reinventing social movements, and building the solidarity and ethics of a new society. Watch for more powerful and creative interventions ahead in 2013.

6. Low-wage Workers Stood Up

This was a year of new labor militancy, with Walmart workers picketing for basic rights, Hot and Crusty bakery workers winning a union contract, and the original Republic Windows and Doors workers founding a worker-owned enterprise in Chicago. Still, there remains powerful pushback against labor rights. A so-called right to work bill passed in Michigan—one of many similar bills promoted by the corporate lobby group, ALEC. And the new “free trade” deal, the TransPacific Partnership, looks likely to prevail and to further benefit large transnational corporations at the expense of workers.

Look for labor organizing to continue taking creative and original forms in 2013, mobilizing unorganized workers, confronting low-wage poverty, drawing in formerly middle-class workers who are now confronting the reality of surviving in a low-wage economy, and challenging the power of the 1 percent.

7. Election 2012 Spending Spurs Backlash

What does it mean to hold an election costing nearly $6 billion? Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, 2012 was the year we learned just how many annoying advertisements billions of dollars can buy. The fundraising arms race boosted the power of those in the 1%, since their contributions became more essential than ever to both parties’ victory strategies.

Eleven states have now passed resolutions recommending a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling. More than 300 town councils have done likewise, and  President Obama has endorsed the movement. The election of Elizabeth Warren to the U.S. Senate showed you can take on Wall Street and win. Look for more efforts to confront the power of corporations in 2013.

8. Love Won

In an otherwise bitter political sphere, love showed up. The image of Michelle and Barack Obama embracing became the most tweeted and Facebook “liked” image of all time. Our hearts broke when we learned of the loss of the children and the brave teachers and staff who gave their own lives to protect their students in Newtown, Conn. The president encouraged a response to the Sandy Hook shootings built on the love of our children rather than on vengeance, on the complexity of the issue rather than on simplistic solutions. He led the national mourning with his tears.

An archetypically feminine approach (to respond to a crisis with “tend and befriend” responses that look out for the best interests of all) could come to balance out the “fight or flight” responses that frequently dominate political discourse. Having record numbers of women elected to Congress in 2012 can’t hurt.

9. More Love: An Outbreak of Marriage

Here’s another place love stepped in. In an election that saw the defeat of candidates promoting an anti-gay/anti-women platform, gay marriage initiatives passed in Maine, Maryland, and Washington. The Seattle City Hall opened at midnight on the first day such marriages were legal to accommodate the flood of weddings; judges and city staff volunteered their time, and well-wishers, both straight and gay, lined the entrance to throw petals and rice, and to cheer on the newlyweds. The festivities were an eruption of unexpected joy on a cold December day.

2012 was the year when the word “love” made a comeback. This valuing of each and every life could undercut partisan bickering, a culture of violence, and political attacks, and set the tone for a new radically inclusive agenda for change.

2013’s Big Story?

The year 2013 may offer our last chance to take on the climate crisis. If we fail to take action that is up to the challenge, we may be like the passengers of the Titanic, arguing over entertainment choices while the real threat looms. With climate disasters mounting, 2013 must be the year we commit ourselves to action at the scale needed to—literally—save our world.

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Interested?

• Following the heartbreak in Newtown, many Americans find themselves wondering—are people just horrible? Jeremy Adam Smith on why compassion, forgiveness, and resilience are everywhere, even in tragedy.
• Religion is the means by which many imagine and work for a world more just than this one. Last year, Wall Street’s Trinity Church refused to shelter the movement; this year, churches and Occupiers are sharing a very different kind of Advent season.
• 
  How a few courageous workers in small-town Louisiana sparked nationwide actions demanding better wages and working conditions for those who pick, pack, stock, and sell the mega-retailer’s products.
  

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John Cavanagh and Robin Broad wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.

Robin is a Professor of International Development at American University in Washington, D.C. and has worked as an international economist in the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Congress. John is director of the Institute for Policy Studies, and is co-chair (with David Korten) of the New Economy Working Group. They are co-authors of three books and numerous articles on the global economy, and have been traveling the country and the world for their project Local Dreams: Finding Rootedness in the Age of Vulnerability.

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Paying taxes, as tens of millions of us in the United States do every April, evokes many emotions—from gratitude for government programs that feed the hungry to disgust over paying for fossil fuel subsidies and unjust wars. But among a growing number of people, it is also evoking anger over an unequal tax system that favors the 1 percent over the 99 percent.  More and more of us are saying that corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy should pay their fair share.

The good news is that rising numbers of organizations and people are involved in struggles for a more just tax system.  Below we share the contours of three such campaigns, all of them winnable before the next U.S. president is elected.

Corporations: Daily newspaper headlines remind us that corporations are making record profits while their workers’ paychecks have been frozen for decades.  These same corporations complain that the corporate tax rate, pegged at a mere 35 percent, is one of the highest in the world.  And, corporations are lobbying furiously to cut that rate.

Among the things that these corporations don’t tell you is that, thanks to the thousands of loopholes their lobbyists have peppered throughout the tax code, large numbers of them actually pay little or no taxes at all.  Last fall, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) pointed out that 25 of the largest U.S. corporations paid their CEOs more than they paid Uncle Sam.  As a result, the corporate share of overall U.S. tax revenue has fallen to near its lowest share in over half a century.

Perhaps the biggest tax advantage that giant globe-girdling corporations enjoy is that the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and several other offshore “tax havens” charge little or no corporate taxes.  Thanks to clever accountants, such corporations can declare large portions of their profits in these countries with low tax rates and thereby minimize corporate tax payments to Uncle Sam.  In fact, U.S. corporations avoid paying an astounding $90 billion in U.S. taxes a year by taking advantage of these tax havens.  Needless to say, this also puts at a relative disadvantage locally rooted small businesses that have no such tax loophole.

The good news: A coalition of groups called the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Network is rallying support behind the Cut Unjustified Tax Loopholes Act. The bill, introduced by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), would significantly close these loopholes.

Wall Street: Occupy Wall Street was right on the money as it lambasted the casino-like financial activities of Wall Street firms, activities that helped crash the economy in 2008.  Indeed, a huge share of trades of stocks and derivatives in the United States are handled by so-called “high speed” trading firms whose sole purpose is to make money for corporate and individual clients via purely speculative activity that has nothing to do with a productive Main Street economy.

The good news: A set of groups in the United States has joined allies in Europe and around the world to call for financial speculation taxes to curb speculation while raising hundreds of billions of dollars to fund jobs, climate-saving innovations, public health, and the like. In the United States, groups as far-ranging as National Nurses United, HIV/AIDS activists, and climate justice groups have come together behind such a tax, often called a Robin Hood tax.  In early April, activists dressed as polar bears joined others clad in the Robin Hood green to protest a meeting of financial officials in Washington. This is hardly a pipe dream.  Citizen pressure has compelled eleven European Union nations to agree to initiate such a tax as early as 2014.

Individuals: The top tax rate on individuals was lowered from 91 percent under President Eisenhower to a mere 35 percent under George W. Bush.  With pressure from unions and other groups, the U.S. Congress pushed it back up to 39.6 percent for the top 1 percent in early January 2013.  Yet, among the richest U.S. citizens who still make out like bandits are the CEOs of the largest firms.  Thanks to yet another outrageous and gaping tax loophole, corporations can deduct CEO pay over $1 million as long as they can claim it is performance-based—something that it turns out is quite easy to do.  Hence, there is no real check on today’s staggering pay packages that offer CEOs, on average, more than 380 times their average worker’s pay.

The good news: A number of unions and social justice groups are rallying together to close this tax loophole on CEO pay.  Even Senator John McCain favors reducing this perverse ratio.  And, there is an important recent precedent for such action: In Obama’s first term, both the bank bailout and the health care reform legislation included a $500,000 cap on pay deductibility with no performance pay exemptions.

Bottom line: Each of these three fights is winnable as public outrage grows, and as other revenue-hungry governments point the way to sensible tax reform.  To create decent jobs and thriving Main Streets, our local, state and federal governments need revenue.  A fair tax system can deliver that with no cuts in vital government programs.  The United States is not broke; its rules and tax system are simply unfair.

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Robin is a Professor of International Development at in Washington, D.C. and has worked as an international economist in the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Congress. John is director of the , and is co-chair (with David Korten) of the . They are co-authors of three books and numerous articles on the global economy, and have been traveling the country and the world for their project Local Dreams: Finding Rootedness in the Age of Vulnerability.

Interested?

• Eleven countries in Europe hope to raise billions of Euros through a tiny tax on financial speculation.
• Before there was Occupy, thousands of nurses were already taking on Wall Street to demand a financial transaction tax.
• The latest from a growing international movement to make corporate tax dodgers pay … so public services don’t have to.

Would a government of a poorer country ever choose to say “no” to short-term economic profits because of concern for long-term environmental impacts?

Surprise: that is precisely the case with at least two national governments that have said no to certain kinds of mining.

Thus far, El Salvador has been viewed as an “outlier” – an exception to the rule – on mining policy.

One is the tiny nation of El Salvador, where the government stopped issuing gold mining permits half a decade ago. The Salvadoran government did so despite sky-high gold prices and the argument that exporting gold was one of the country’s few chances to boost aggregate economic growth (in the short-term, at least).

They did so largely because the majority of Salvadorans get water from one large river system, and gold mining invariably pollutes nearby rivers and watersheds. Hence, this decision to say no to gold mining has widespread support in El Salvador, even in the local communities that might have gotten some mining jobs.

Thus far, El Salvador has been viewed as an outlier—an exception to the rule—on mining policy in an era where many governments have embraced global mining corporations and gone down a path of extractive-based economic growth.

Witness Honduras, Guatemala, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia, where governments have opened their doors even further to plunder by mining. Other governments, like that of the Philippines, have revised their mining policies. But, unlike El Salvador, they are not intended to deal with the devastating environmental and social costs of mining, but rather to try to ensure that more of the gold mining profits stay in-country.

Opposition to open-pit mining surged after an environmental “accident” that lead to closure of a Canadian-owned mine.

Yet, it turns out that El Salvador is not alone in its policies. The government of Costa Rica has said no to open-pit mining. (While open-pit mining is only one method of mining, it is among the most environmentally destructive.)

This revised national mining policy began in 2002 with a Presidential moratorium on new open-pit mining. (While the moratorium was cancelled during the administration of President Oscar Arias, it was reinstated by his successor, Laura Chinchilla, who is of the same political party as Arias.)

Costa Rica’s Congress subsequently voted for a no-new-open-pit-mining law—unanimously. That no was upheld by Costa Rica’s Supreme Court.

Popular opposition to any open-pit mining in Costa Rica surged in the wake of an environmental “accident” that led to the closure of the Canadian-owned Bellavista open-pit mine. The efforts of another Canadian mining company, Infinito Gold, to start an open-pit mine at Crucitas also provoked outrage. Indeed, both the executive branch and the Supreme Court have said no to Infinito for its proposed mine.

As in El Salvador, this “no new mining” policy reflected the majority wishes of constituents both in affected communities and on a broader national level. In El Salvador, more than 60 percent of the population has indicated opposition to mining; a 2010 poll showed more than 85 percent of Costa Ricans were against Infinito’s proposed mine.

These two governments should restore our faith that governments can indeed do good. Governments can say no to a false notion of development that would do little besides line the pockets of elite corporate interests, while leaving devastated ecosystems in its wake. We should applaud these two small countries that could say no—and bravely, did.

But global mining companies are trying to ensure that no government is allowed to say no.

These corporations are making their cases based on a controversial Central America “free trade” agreement with the United States, and on El Salvador’s former investment law (written with the help of the World Bank), which opened the door for mining firms to sue governments for policies that impeded future profits.

Canadian-Australian gold mining corporation Pacific Rim/OceanaGold claims its so-called “investor rights” are being trampled by the ban, and that El Salvador must give it a license to mine (or compensate it for what it claims is $301 million in expenditures and in profits foregone).

But the Salvadoran government is serious that no means no—and it has already spent $5 million (an amount likely to more than double or triple) to defend itself against this suit at the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

So too the Costa Rican government, which is finding itself having to defend its right to say no. In February 2014, Infinito announced that, rather than accept the Supreme Court rejection of its appeal, it was also initiating an investor-state case against the Costa Rican government at the World Bank’s ICSID. Infinito is suing Costa Rica for the $94 million it claims to have invested so far.

But, to the government of Costa Rica, no means no and it, like El Salvador, has proclaimed its intent to follow through on its mining-ban policy, even at ICSID where Infinito’s “investor rights” suit is projected to cost each side $2 million a year.

So, ladies and gentlemen, now is the time to support the right of governments to say no to rapacious mining. Let us celebrate the fact that the governments of El Salvador and Costa Rica are forging new paths that begin by saying no to old destructive paths. And let us hope that these citizens and these governments are not outliers, but will prove to be trailblazers of positive paths to the future. Repeat with us: no means no.

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For people, generally, their story of the universe and the human role in the universe is their primary source of intelligibility and value. … The deepest crises experienced by any society are those moments of change when the story becomes inadequate for meeting the survival demands of a present situation.
—Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth

According to evolutionary biologists, the first living organisms appeared on Earth some 3.6 billion years ago. As the organisms increased in number and diversity, they organized themselves into a planetary-scale living system. Trillions upon trillions of individual organisms were constantly experimenting, testing, and learning. In the process, the living system evolved toward ever-greater complexity, beauty, awareness, and possibility. In the course of this grand evolutionary journey, these organisms filtered excess carbon and a vast variety of toxins from Earth’s air, waters, and soils and sequestered them deep underground—thus creating environmental conditions suited to the needs of species with ever-greater capacities for conscious self-reflective choice.

We humans live by stories and have a particularly passionate need for stories that give our lives meaning and direction.

We humans pride ourselves on being the most intelligent of the species made possible by the supposedly lesser, mostly microscopic organisms that transformed Earth from a toxic dead rock into a living jewel. Now, in an insane fit of arrogance, we devote our best minds and most advanced technologies to accelerating the extraction and release of those sequestered carbons and toxins back into Earth’s atmosphere, waters, and soils. We do so in a foolhardy attempt to dominate and suppress the natural processes that maintain the conditions essential to our existence.

Our current life-destructive and climate-disruptive—but financially profitable—expansion of tar sands oil extraction, deep-sea oil drilling, hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, and mountaintop removal for coal is a particularly visible current example.

It seems that despite all of our extraordinary scientific and economic advances, we humans are a species out of touch with reality.

Millions of people now ask, “Why do we get it so terribly wrong?”

I believe it’s a story problem.

Story awareness

We humans live by stories and have a particularly passionate need for stories that give our lives meaning and direction—sacred stories that serve as our guide to what is important and worthy of our respect and care. These are familiar examples:

1. The story of a Distant Patriarch who by his will created all that is and rules it from afar. In this story, God is sacred and it is an article of faith that God is all-knowing and all-powerful.
2. The story of a Grand Machine universe that mechanistically plays out its destiny as its spring unwinds. In this story, objective knowledge and the scientific method are sacred and it is an article of faith that a combination of mechanism and chance explain the dynamic processes of creation and that any form of intelligent agency is an illusion.
3. The less public story of an Integral Spirit engaged in a sacred journey to discover and actualize its possibilities as it manifests in and through all the expressions of creation. In this story, the unifying spiritual field of love, life, and the living Earth that births and nurtures us are sacred. It is an article of faith that we achieve happiness and spiritual fulfillment through our service to the health and vibrancy of the community of life.

The Distant Patriarch and Grand Machine stories have a highly visible public presence and powerful institutional sponsorship. The Integral Spirit story, in its many variations, generally lacks institutional sponsorship and public presence.

I explore all three in greater depth in an essay, “Religion, Science, and Spirit: A Sacred Story for Our Time,” and suggest the need for public conversations about their quite different implications for how we live. A foundational purpose of these conversations is to raise what Rev. Stephen Phelps, senior minister of New York’s historic Riverside Church, calls our “Story Awareness.”

The essay has generated significant interest and discussion. Some readers suggest, correctly in my view, that many adherents to the Abrahamic religions identify more with a universal spirit than with the Distant Patriarch story and many scientists, perhaps even a majority, privately reject the narrow Grand Machine story. Most agree on the need for a conversation that transcends traditional cultural boundaries.

It seems that virtually everyone with whom I’ve discussed the essay holds in his or her heart some version of the story of a universal, unifying spirit. Only a few, however, probe the deeper questions at the core of the Integral Spirit story, specifically:

• “What is the purpose of the illusion of separation?”
• “How does the illusion relate to the expression of agency throughout creation?”
• “In what ways might individuality and diversity be essential to creation’s extraordinary capacity for self-organization toward ever greater complexity, beauty, awareness, and possibility?”

I share my thoughts on the answers in the aforementioned essay, so we need not repeat that discussion here.

A story adequate to the needs of our time

The peoples of earlier times survived and often even prospered with the guidance of simple stories that offered easily understood answers to the deepest questions and simple prescriptive rules for personal behavior. Humans were sufficiently few in number and limited enough in their material expectations and technology that, although their actions sometimes wounded their Earth mother, she absorbed and recovered from the assaults and insults with relatively modest and localized distress.

Within human ranks, those who engaged in intentional brutality against their neighbor were few relative to the total human numbers, and the technological sophistication of the available instruments of violence were limited. Therefore, the self-inflicted losses were readily offset in most instances through rapid reproduction.

Our time of innocence has passed. We are too many. Our material appetites are too great. Our technologies are too powerful. Our demands on our living Earth mother grow, even as we deplete the living systems on which we depend to meet those demands.

Our future depends on our readiness to take a step toward species maturity. We must recognize and embrace our own agency and accept responsibility for our numbers, technologies, and material expectations. To save ourselves from ourselves, we must make full use of our gifts of intelligence and capacity for self-reflective choice to construct a shared story adequate to the needs of our time. As we learn to live as responsible contributing members of a Sacred Earth Community, we will bring ourselves into balance with the generative systems of a living Earth.

We are a self-reflective, storytelling, choice-making species gone astray for want of a sacred story adequate to the needs of our time.

To guide our path, we need a sacred story that is true to the totality of our human experience and understanding and to our nature as living beings that survive and thrive only as responsible members of a Sacred Earth Community.

Each of the prevailing sacred stories contains essential insights into a larger reality and contributes to the new story called for by our time. The Integral Spirit story, as described in “Religion, Science, and Spirit: A Sacred Story for Our Time,” brings together the contributions of many wisdom traditions. These include the contributions of indigenous peoples who honor Earth as sacred mother, mystics who honor the oneness of creation, religious traditions that honor divine agency, and sciences that honor the complexity of creation and its extraordinary ability to self-organize.

In combining these contributions into an inclusive, multi-layered story of an Integral Spirit, we can recognize our role as creative beings in the ever-unfolding journey of a creative, evolving cosmos in which intelligent agency is pervasive. This story lends profound meaning to our lives, calls us to accept our responsibility to and for the whole, affirms the reality of Earth as a sacred living being entitled to reverence and respect, and provides a narrative system frame for a life-serving Sacred Earth economy that organizes in service to a Sacred Earth Community.

Such a story also compels us to acknowledge and accept the implications of what we do not know.

A time for humility

Perhaps the greatest threat to our common future is a combination of extreme individualism and extreme arrogance. It is time for a generous dose of humility as we deal with proposals to expand—through the genetic engineering of species and the geo-engineering of Earth’s climate—our domination of forces of nature of which we have only the most superficial understanding.

The most important findings at the current frontiers of science are those that expose the great gaps in our knowledge of the cosmos and most particularly of the living Earth Community to which we belong.

Be Part of the Solution; Engage the Conversation

Invite a few friends to read “Religion, Science, and Spirit: A Sacred Story for Our Time.” You might also suggest they read “The Personal Story Behind the Essay, ‘Religion, Science, and Spirit: A Sacred Story for Our Time'” and this blog to provide context.

Then meet and share your thoughts, perhaps using our suggested questions as a guide. If they find it a positive experience, urge them to in turn do the same with a circle of their friends.

For example, we now know that the observable cosmos contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars, which in their totality account for as little as 4 percent of what scientists calculate to be the mass of the universe. Beyond vague and untested theories, we have no idea what constitutes the other 96 percent—assuming the calculations based on our current limited understanding are correct.

With regard to the living Earth Community, science is discovering the extent of our human dependence on countless microorganisms essential to the fertility of our soils and the function of the digestive systems of our own bodies. We are only beginning to identify and develop the barest understanding of these organisms, their varied functions, and the methods of their self-organization and contribution to our well-being.

Until recently, scientists dismissed 90 percent of human DNA as junk. Now they are suggesting that the “extra” DNA may have essential functions that we have yet to discover—possibly including the preservation of ancestral memories.

I believe every human is born with a deep sense in his or her heart of the basic elements of the Integral Spirit story. Perhaps carrying that memory may be part of the function of the 90 percent of “junk” DNA.

One likely reason the Integral Spirit story lacks a coherent public presence and institutional sponsorship is that in its full expression it provides the framing narrative for a radically democratic society. It thus challenges the authority of imperial institutions that invoke variants of the Distant Patriarch and Grand Machine stories to affirm their legitimacy. The Integral Spirit story also has profound implications for how we think about the overall structure of the economy, individual economic institutions, and the distribution of economic power.

A life-serving sacred Earth economy

Once we acknowledge that we belong to a complex, evolving, self-organizing Earth Community within an evolving, self-organizing cosmos, we realize that we properly look to nature as our partner and teacher in life’s collective struggle to prevail over the dissipative physical forces of entropy. Rather than working in opposition to nature, we will transform our economic culture and institutions to align with the values, structure, and dynamics of a life-serving economy that aligns, integrates, and collaborates with the structure and dynamics of the biosphere.

Just as nature organizes by bioregions, so too will our planetary system of bioregional economies. The people of each bioregion will strive to live within the generative capacity of their bioregion’s self-organizing generative systems. They will allocate their resources with awareness that their well-being depends on the continuing health and natural generative vitality of the living system in their care. They will recognize that all beings have a right to contribute to and benefit from the bounty of the whole that they create and maintain together.

Creating a “new story economics” may be one of our defining intellectual challenges.

Self-reliant bioregions will exchange their surpluses in fair and balanced trade and they will freely share information, culture, knowledge, and beneficial technology. As each bioregional community comes into balance with its generative system, the human species will come into overall system balance with the generative capacity of Earth’s biosphere.

This new living economy will need a new economics. The current discipline of economics embraces and promotes its own sacred story in which money and markets are sacred; life is but a commodity freely exploited in whatever way yields the greatest financial return.

The sacred story of contemporary economics is a perverse and destructive one lacking legitimate intellectual and moral foundation—yet enjoys fawning support from the powers that be. We must put it behind us in favor of a true new story/new paradigm economics that embraces life as its defining value and the logic of living systems as its organizing principle. The new economics will draw from disciplines ranging from physics, biology, and ecology to psychology, anthropology, and theology. It will be trans-disciplinary, meaning that it will transcend the isolated old paradigm frames of the academy’s established disciplines.

The old story economics asks, “What will generate the greatest financial return?” The new story economics will ask, “What would nature do?”

Creating a “new story economics” may be one of the defining intellectual challenges of our time.

We face a similar challenge with respect to our old story legal system. By the reckoning of this system, corporations (legally protected pools of money) are the most sacred of institutions and corporate rights are the most sacred of rights. Nature is mere property to be freely exploited at the will of its owners.

By contrast, a Sacred Earth legal system will recognize that nature is the foundation of our human existence and that we survive and prosper only as members of a vibrant, living Earth Community. Therefore, life is sacred. Our Earth mother is sacred. The rights of sacred Earth Community— the rights of nature—are therefore the most sacred of rights. The corporation is simply a legal instrument useful for some limited functions.

We are a self-reflective, storytelling, choice-making species gone astray for want of a sacred story adequate to the needs of our time. The essential story lives in the human heart, but remains private and unacknowledged for want of a public conversation that weaves together the seemingly disparate narratives of indigenous wisdom, the teachings of the great spiritual teachers, the findings of science, and the lessons of history and daily experience.

The needed conversation is underway. As it expands and deepens, the possibilities it reveals offer hope that together we can and will take the step to species maturity and accept our responsibilities as members of a Sacred Earth Community before the economic, social, environmental, and political system failure wrought by inadequate stories becomes irreversible.

This article originally appeared in the author’s book, How to Design Our World for Happiness.

Mark Lakeman is an architect fired up by the belief that our neighborhoods can become more than places where we hang our hats and park our cars.

As social activity began to move out into the street, drivers and pedestrians instinctively learned to share the space.

Taking a break from his practice a few years back, he traveled through Central America and Italy, falling in love with the piazzas, plazas, and zocalos where everyone gathers to talk, play, and hang out together. Although most of these people are poor by our standards, he notes, they enjoy a richness of life missing in most North American communities.

Lakeman came home to Portland with the idea of creating a similar commons in his own neighborhood. He discovered that several neighbors were thinking along the same lines, so they rolled up their sleeves and transformed an intersection on Sherritt Street into a Pacific Northwest version of a piazza, painting a colorful mural on the pavement that sent a clear message to passing motorists this was not your ordinary corner. Next, they constructed a tea cart to lure folks out into the street for some convivial fun. As social activity began to move out into the street, drivers and pedestrians instinctively learned to share the space, thus its name Share-It Square.

They called their work “intersection repair.”

But what did the neighbors think? Challenging the dominance of automobiles on American streets is a brazen act, especially to older people who came of age in the car-crazy 1950s. Lakeman worried about angry opposition arising to quash the experiment, until talking to Brian Shaw, who lived right at the corner.

“Brian said that his father had fought in Italy during World War II, and would tell stories about how when they liberated a village, everyone would automatically gather in the piazzas to celebrate,” Lakeman recalls. “He said his dad always used to sing an Italian song with lyrics saying, ‘If you don’t hear voices in the piazza when you wake up in the morning, then you know something is wrong.’”

This article is adapted from Jay Walljasper’s book, How to Design Our World for Happiness. Download the full pdf for free!

“Something is wrong with too many places in America today,” Lakeman adds.

The project elevated the sense of community in the area. Even on the quiet Monday morning when I visited, the square was a lively hive of activity with people chatting on the sidewalk and relaxing in the benches.

People in other neighborhoods wanted to do something similar and a loosely structured organization, City Repair, sprang up to help them. Their motto: Every Neighborhood Needs a Piazza. Every year City Repair sponsors a Village Building Convergence, in which crews of volunteers transform lowly intersections, sidewalks, schoolyards, and other public spaces into lively commons where the community can gather.

This experience not only transformed Lakeman’s neighborhood, but also his life. Drawing on his experience with Share-It Square and City Repair, he now speaks around the country about how to create neighborhood commons and founded the architectural and planning firm Communitecture to “design beautiful and sustainable places that bring people together in community.” And people around the U.S. have used intersection repair to enliven their communities.

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If there’s a romantic image that tugs at our heart strings as much as the thought of homegrown tomatoes, it’s that of the multi-generational family farm.

In a culture that has spurned the union of the generations—that frowns upon the thirtysomething living in his parents’ basement, mocks the new family who moves in with Grandma, offers condolence to the empty-nesters who take in an aging parent, builds television sitcoms about the interpersonal conflicts between married couples and the in-laws, and peddles financial products to discourage elders from ever being a “burden”—the family farm has been America’s great exception to the now-expected independent nuclear unit.

Farms proudly advertise the number of generations who have lived on the same land; signs are hung on the side of barns to commemorate the 100^th continuous year of business within the same family; awards are handed out, stories written, legends passed down within rural communities celebrating the differences from father to son, mother to daughter.

And in an era when the rest of the country is discovering that breaking ourselves into nuclear units is coming at an ecological, financial, and emotional cost, the multigenerational family farm feels like the last cultural example we can turn to as a reminder of what might make for a viable future, whether the multiple generations are in the city, the suburbs, or on the land.

But this week I heard three painful stories about the tensions among the agrarian generations. One young family, now indebted more than $500,000 from an effort to take over the family farm, is being crippled from making sustainable changes on the land by both excessive financial burdens, and a lack of physical and emotional support from the older generation. Another family with children, who’d invested several years in building an organic enterprise on the family farm and buying out the parents, is finally abandoning its dreams and is trying to find land elsewhere, because the intergenerational conflicts were insurmountable. And a third couple, who moved back to take over the family farm a few years ago, has just moved out again, their efforts at reviving the land having met too much resistance. Their marriage is on the cusp of breaking up, too.

When Mom and Dad made a choice to buy a farm, they weren’t buying a retirement asset. They were securing a resource for the family and its subsequent generations.

I know my generation can be a nuisance. We want everything instantly. We grew up with little to no training in financial literacy. We learned that controlling expenses wasn’t as critical as earning a big paycheck. And when the big paycheck never showed up, we were sold a bill of goods that we could afford more debt than was realistic. At the same time, we’re questioning how hard we want to work. We don’t ubiquitously buy into the idea that logging 80-100 hours of labor in a week is the best way to take care of family. And to add to matters, we’re expressing a lot of annoyance at the detritus bequeathed to us by our parents and grandparents: depleted fossil fuel reserves, excess carbon in the atmosphere, polluted water, environmental toxins, lost topsoil, nutrient-deficient foods, and the chronic illnesses that ensue from these things.

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At the same time, the older generations have their burdens, too. The 401ks that seemed so cushy a few years back aren’t quite so robust. The vision of “golden years” spent golfing and playing tennis in sunny Florida have been replaced by fears over medical expenses and the humiliating prospect of lost independence. It’s hard to be generous with grown children when you feel insecure yourself … Especially when those kids enter the scene with crazy ideas about changing how the farm is managed and questioning the lifetime decisions of the elders; or they contrive newfangled ventures that seem risky.

We have arguments, we storm off, we hang up on each other. But after nearly 20 years, we’re still here.

I moved back to my family’s farm in 1996, at the age of 22. While I spent a few years in graduate school, I came home every weekend and summer, and have been an active part of the business since that time. In the 17 years I’ve been involved with Sap Bush Hollow, I fell in love with a man, convinced him to move here to start a life together, began a family, and bit by bit have grown more deeply into the family business. Bob and I realized early on that my parents were too young and vibrant for us to simply “step in and take over,” and our different skill sets and personalities have required that we find unusual ways to blend with the family business. Some of our livelihood from the farm comes from actual labor, some of it comes from our own entrepreneurial ventures. We don’t live in the same house as my parents, which has its benefits and drawbacks.

He pointed to Saoirse and Ula, then about 5 and 2, who were tumbling across the front field. “The land’s not mine. It’s theirs.”

It isn’t all butterflies and rainbows here, that’s for certain. We have arguments, we storm off, hang up on each other, and occasionally sit down and have some good cries. But after nearly 20 years, we’re still here, still working together on this business; still in agreement that this family farm offers the best possible life for all of us. Along the way, there have been a few lessons and practices that have really made a big difference in the viability of our intergenerational cooperation:

1. The stated goal of the business. Posted on the wall of the farm office is a piece of paper, typed up maybe 25 years ago. Mom and Dad wrote it to express their goals and dreams. And the number one goal at the top of the page reads: We want to create a business that one or both of our children would want to run. It’s not saying that the kids have to take it over. It’s just saying that the quality of the venture needs to reflect the needs and desires of the next generation. Thus, every decision they make on that farm gets tested against this top goal. As the next generation, I have a sense of security that my thoughts and ideas matter, that Bob’s and my quality of life is critical to the success of Sap Bush Hollow.
2. No one “owns” the land. I remember the day a neighboring farmer drove into the barnyard to talk to Mom and Dad about the financial potential of signing a lease to allow hydro-fracking on our land. Dad shrugged his shoulders and said he couldn’t help him. “It’s not my land,” he said.

   “Isn’t your name on the deed?”

   “Doesn’t matter.” He pointed to Saoirse and Ula, then about 5 and 2, who were tumbling across the front field. “It’s not mine. It’s theirs.”

   And that’s the tone around here. None of us owns it. It is forever owned by the next generation. Whoever has their name on the deed is a temporary steward. Thus, while Mom and Dad are counting on the farm to sustain them as part of their retirement, the land is not a source of retirement income. It is a resource for each successive generation. When Mom and Dad made a choice to buy a farm, they weren’t buying a retirement asset. They were securing a resource for the family and its subsequent generations.

   For Bob and me, this means we’ll never “own” the land, either. We derive benefit from the resources it offers, and it is our job to bridge to the next generation, and to help make sure Mom and Dad will be able to be comfortable in their retirement, without having to sell that land.

3. Avoid debt. Keeping the farm in the family is a lot easier when the bank doesn’t have a lien on the property. At Sap Bush Hollow, we’ve been masters at diversifying our income with small ventures that are not capital-intensive, which keeps us in control of the money and out of debt. And all of us are pretty skilled at living on the cheap. One of the many benefits is that there is a lot less stress between the generations. Interestingly, since thrift and frugality is a defining quality of our family culture, we find it easy to be generous and trusting with each other. No one worries about someone else wasting money.
4. The most important “product” is the next generation. There is an agreement across the family that Saoirse and Ula are number one. This means that homeschool is not squeezed into the interstices between loading cattle and chasing pigs. The teaching space and time is sacred. Family meals are of paramount importance. Adequate rest to allow for a calm, happy family life is critical. And their safety matters above all else. As the parents, this makes Bob’s and my job a lot easier. We don’t feel as though our fidelity to the family business is questioned when we need to honor our commitments to our children. The person who leaves farm work to prepare the daily meal, teach the kids, or maintain the home is as valuable as the one making hay.

Click here for more from Shannon and others from the Families Issue of YES! Magazine.

We didn’t start out in our family venture knowing all these rules for success. Over the years, we’ve grown into them, and a lot of the lessons were learned the hard way, through emotionally trying experience.

I’d be a fool to suggest that these were the only keys to success, and I’d be even more of a fool to argue that, because of these attributes, our farm will be “sustainable.” No one ever really knows the answer to that question. All I can say is that for 17 years, life has been good. So good, in fact, that I can say I am happy where I am, and that everyone in the Sap Bush Hollow family seems to share the daily intentions to continue the quality of life we have.

Certainly, these words cannot salve the pain of those three farm families I mentioned earlier. What’s done is done. We’ve entered an era that asks us to un-learn the last 60 years of cultural conditioning, and to reclaim wisdom from generations that are nearly gone. It isn’t easy, and our lessons are hard-won. But hopefully we will hold onto the rediscovered wisdom this time, pass it along to our children, and enable each successive generation to grow up comfortable in walking sustainably on this earth.

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Interested?

• It’s a good time to be in farming if you like to grow corn. It’s a tough time if you see yourself as a steward of the land. Shannon Hayes on why growers pressured by corn-heavy markets should hold out for crops that nourish the Earth.
• “We have a lovely home, we eat well, we have lots of fun, we’re warm, and we don’t worry about how we’ll keep the lights on.” Shannon Hayes on how she has managed to live a fulfilled and happy life without going broke.
• Two recent studies concluded that organic food is no more nutritious than non-organic food. But the value of organics involves health on multiple levels, from that of farmers to eaters to the planet itself.

This article originally appeared in the author’s book, How to Design Our World for Happiness.

The neighborhood is the basic building block of human society, and successful efforts to make the world a better place usually start right there.

Neighborhoods offer hope that we can still make a difference.

Neighborhoods—whether in cities, suburbs, or small towns—are the level of social organization at which people interact most regularly and naturally, providing a ready-made forum for tackling serious issues together. Even if the neighbors abhor our political views or artistic tastes, we nonetheless share a bond. When a crisis occurs (a rash of burglaries) or opportunities arise (plans to revitalize the park), these are the people who stand beside us to make improvements for the future.

This article is adapted from Jay Walljasper’s book, How to Design Our World for Happiness. Download the full pdf for free!

In an era when what’s wrong in the world can seem complicated and daunting, neighborhoods offer hope that we can still make a difference. What’s overwhelming at the international, national, or even municipal level often can be fixed closer to home, without large sums of money or political connections. And in an era of instantaneous global communications, no great idea stays in one place for long.

The Dudley Street neighborhood in Boston was once dogged by all the usual urban ills: poverty, crime, drugs, unemployment, racial discrimination, inadequate public services, deteriorating housing, and poor schools. These problems—inextricably linked with global economics and national policies—felt insurmountable.

But the residents of Dudley Street, assisted by a small grant from a local foundation, forged a vision for their future and went to work. Organized under the banner of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, they created a town common, built a community center, started youth programs, launched a farmers market, and promoted locally owned businesses.

These efforts sparked a new sense of possibility for the community and brought genuine improvements to the lives of Dudley Street residents.

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Joe didn’t come to our farmers’ market booth last year because he wanted meat. He needed Bob to weave him a pack basket for trapping. In the course of our conversation, we learned he and his wife grew up in rural Pennsylvania, but he had been making a living as an auto mechanic in the New York metropolitan area. He and his wife had saved up to buy a fixer-upper in the Catskills, where he was able to hunt for their meat, and where she could keep a garden. They were in the process of exiting from the city to make a life up here. They weren’t typical New York City weekend visitors.

It’s no secret that the definition of “newcomer” in a rural community is pretty expansive.

A year later, Joe stopped by our booth and announced that they were one step closer to their goal. They had fixed up the house enough to live in it, and his wife and daughter are now here full time. We congratulated him, and told him we’d be looking forward to seeing the whole family at the market.

“She won’t come here,” he said, slightly embarrassed.

“Is something wrong?” I asked. “Well, she came to talk to your manager about joining the market with her homemade herbal teas, and she got told ‘no.'”

“That shouldn’t discourage her,” I said. “No one is allowed to join the market mid-season. Our manager runs a tight ship.”

“I know. I’ve heard that. But, well, it’s more than that. It’s like, well, we were treated like city people… Since we aren’t from here, it’s as if we don’t have a right to be selling here at the market.”

“That’s because the market is limited to locally produced products. If your teas are still made in the city, then they aren’t local.”

“I know, I get it, and my wife will be making the stuff here. It’s just that, you know, it’s hard. It feels like we’re not one of the locals, that we’re just newcomers, and that kinda hurts, ya know?”

It’s no secret that the definition of “newcomer” in a rural community is pretty expansive. I’ve heard folks observe that they lived in these Catskill mountains for ten or twenty years before they were accepted as being “from here.” Having lived in the same county since I was four months old, I’ve nearly always stood on the “from here” side of the equation, and have felt taken aback when newcomers mocked our rural ways by commenting on our slow acceptance of new neighbors. The inference seems to be that we have our own backward elitism, or that we lack trust, or that we’re just plain slow in all that we do.

I used to fight these stereotypes. I didn’t want to seem cold or closed-minded to new people. But as I am pushing forty, I am starting to see things differently. In the last three years, our family has grown close to five different “newcomer” families. Our children have played with their children; we have helped each other out in times of crisis; sat and cried together; hugged, laughed, and shared meals. And as each of those families has decided to leave our community, we are left staying put, a little more brokenhearted each time, waving goodbye with promises of phone calls and visits that become too difficult to fulfill as they all move on to “something better.”

There is no blame to throw around. The truth is, in a rural area like this, it is hard to make a go of it. Jobs aren’t that plentiful, they aren’t very remunerative, and they aren’t particularly secure. Some towns are able to support a bit of tourism, some have small colleges, some have hospitals, and there are a few occasional strip developments littered with big-box chain stores. But the fabric of the local economy is woven by family farmers, family businesses, and scrappy rural characters who figure out how to hold their lives together with baling twine and blue tarps. Lots of people fall in love with the landscape, with the slower pace of life, with the bounty of local, fresh food. But more often than not, those things aren’t enough to hold them here.

It hurts to know your community can’t meet someone’s needs.

In this neck of the woods, to earn the distinction of being “from here” takes a long time. It is a commitment as deep as a marriage: to love, honor, and obey this place, until death do you part. For some of us, there was never a choice. It is a matrimony in bondage and misery. For others, it is a marriage based on love and deep commitment. Lots of people move through. They think they are in love; they begin the courtship. But they don’t stay. They would never be able to make a marriage work over the long haul.

And for us who are “from here,” that can hurt. It hurts to know your community can’t meet someone’s needs. It hurts to fall in love with people who will only move away. It hurts to start to depend on a neighbor who suddenly doesn’t exist.

Certainly, it is wonderful to make new friends, to have them touch our lives as they move through. But a “from here” is a different relationship. You can call a friend who is far away to talk about your troubles, but the “from here” is the one who will watch your kids while you take a family member to the emergency room. The “from here” plows you out when the snow is too deep to shovel. The “from here” shows up to help put your life together after flood waters have ruined your home. The “from here” feeds your cat when you go on vacation. The “from here” cooks your meals when your family is coping with tragedy and chaos.

The “from here” may rebuild muscle cars, collect old washing machines on their front lawn, be a yoga instructor, a civil rights activist, a junk food addict, a conservative old farmer, or a teacher. There is no one type. “From here” isn’t about what you do for a living or what you do for fun. “From here” isn’t just about your past. It is about your plans for the future. It is great if a person can perform the role of a “from here” for a few years before moving on someplace else. But a true one will be in the same place, playing their part to the end of their days.

“From here” is a big commitment. And all of us need to make it to some place. Understandably, some people need to cover a lot of geography before they find the place where they can truly be a “from here.“ And out here in the country, we know that more people will go away than will come to stay. So before we award anyone that badge and lay our hearts on the line, we’re going to watch for a while and see how things unfold.

I have no doubt that Joe and his family, if they truly desire a space at our farmers’ market, will be allowed to enter next year. I have no doubt about their ability to make friends quickly in this place. Heck, I already like them. But for now—and for the next few years—they will just need to accept that they are the newcomers.

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If any of my peers growing up did handcrafts, they never admitted it in public. It seemed that the socially acceptable way to establish a sense of self worth was through traveling soccer teams, prom courts, and AP coursework. To pursue a vocation that involved making something with one’s hands—whether in a shop class, a home economics class, or simply by way of personal pursuit—in my hyper socially aware teenage mind, could potentially brand a young scholar as a loser.

When I skulked up to the next farm and asked Ruth, the matron, to show me how to crochet, I hid the yarn and hook away in my room as though they were pornography. I never learned how to do more than the chain stitch.

Children and grown-ups alike stop to put their hands on the wool, to sink their fingers between the strands.

I was thirty before I worked up the courage to walk into a yarn shop and purchase a set of rosewood needles and a skein of wool. Still unable to admit the appeal of fiber, I ostensibly bought them for Bob, who had once confessed to me that he thought knitting was pretty cool and that he’d like to know how to do it.

Bob promptly and repeatedly found himself tangled up in the yarn. In an effort to assist him, I looked over the instructions and attempted to follow them myself. I wound up staying up past midnight, thrilling in the victory that came with mastering the garter stitch, realizing that I suddenly had power to do amazing things—to make toys and clothing. That newfound confidence led me to rediscover our family’s flock of sheep, to realize that there was more value to these woolly creatures than the yield grade in the butcher shop.

Thus, in spite of the stigma I associated with handcrafts in my early years, Saoirse and Ula have grown up beside a knitting basket. I take it on car trips, keep it under the table at the farmers market for when business is slow, dash off a couple of rows while I share a morning cup of coffee with Bob, and use it in place of a cocktail to unwind in the evenings.

A few years ago, Saoirse came to me and asked me to teach her. After she had spent a few months mastering finger knitting, I put her in my lap, wrapped my arms around her, and showed her how to cast on with needles. For a brief period she would take to picking up her knitting whenever she saw me doing it. She grew bored of it within a month or so, but resumed with fervor last year when she realized that she had the power in her hands to complete some pretty neat projects.

And while Saoirse had begun learning to knit and weave, Ula figured out how to use scissors. Her little toddler’s fingers would be unable to resist her big sister’s wool, and, not knowing what else to do with string, she did the only thing she could: cut it. As soon as any of us were distracted with something else, that clever girl would chop Saoirse’s knitting yarn into 6-inch segments, snip unfinished weaving projects off the loom, slice through a square of Saoirse’s carefully formed garter stitches. There is a reason she has earned the nickname “Little Shiva” among our neighbors.

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Ula started first grade this year. And in planning out our school year, I asked my Little Shiva if she would like to learn how to knit. She gazed at me as though I had produced the world’s biggest lollipop for her personal delight.

“Yes!” she exclaimed, hopping up and down.

We started last Sunday, when I gave each girl her new schoolbooks and materials. Saoirse got a stack of books, a beading kit, a pair of new moccasins, and some walnut ink. Ula got a small library of “I-Can-Read” books, a pair of purple moccasins, and then I presented her with the rosewood needles I had first learned to knit on, along with a large basket filled with yarn, from which she could choose her very own skein. Bursting with excitement, she held it in her hands, squeezed it with her little fingers, touched it to her cheek.

I showed her how to open the skein and instructed Saoirse to hold out her hands so that she could keep the yarn from getting tangled while Ula wound it into a ball. I promised Ula that we would start later that week, once she wound her yarn.

Something strange happened as she worked. The ball dropped a few times, unwinding as it rolled away. Ula grew increasingly emotional.

“I can’t do it!” she finally cried out, tears in the corners of her eyes.

“Of course you can,” I said, sitting down to help her. As we worked together to wind the rest, Ula grew more distressed. Her breathing started to get shallow, tears poured from her eyes.

“Sweetheart,” I said, “we don’t have to do this now.”

“No, I want to.” But now the tears were coming in a steady stream.

“I think we’ve done enough for today. Let’s put this away.”

“No!” But then, a few minutes later, she threw the yarn on the floor and wailed. “I don’t want to learn how to knit anymore!”

I wound the last few strands around her ball and tried to think fast. Ula had said she wanted this. Just the day before, she had been bubbling to Grammie that she was going to learn to knit in homeschool this year. Was it possible that simply winding the wool was too much for her? Was I wrong to let her try this?

I realized we were in dangerous territory. If Ula walked away in tears at this moment, she was going to conclude that she couldn’t knit, that she would never be able to do it. She might see herself only as Little Shiva, unable to balance her destructive force with the ability to create.

Watching her new enthusiasm, I think about all the things we consider most urgent in our education system.

Now, knitting is not necessary for survival in this world. But it is a valued activity in our home. Furthermore, I understand the tactile attraction of a skein of wool. I watch customers walk by at the farmers’ market, where my yarn is displayed. Children and grown-ups alike stop to put their hands on the wool, to sink their fingers between the strands. Most of them admit that they haven’t the first clue about how to knit or crochet. Their fingers crave contact with the lush softness, but they feel powerless to transform the raw material into something beautiful and useful.

Ula didn’t need to become a full-fledged knitter. But she did need to know that, when her fingers were drawn to something as pleasing as a skein of wool, she was empowered to engage with it. It was fine if she decided that she didn’t like to knit. But if we stopped at this moment, she was going to conclude that she couldn’t knit. If I postponed lessons to another day, she would carry a memory of failure with her, and would be even more resistant to trying again.

This was a knitting emergency. She needed to walk away successful. I could not let her tears stop her progress. I cancelled every activity I had planned for the morning. The garden didn’t need weeding or watering. Lunch could come late. Phone calls didn’t need to be returned.

I pulled her into my lap and held her, not saying anything. When she had calmed down, I asked her if she would let me show her how I cast on.

“You don’t need to do it today,” I lied, “It’s just that this ball of yarn is so beautiful, I really want to do it. So I might as well show you.” She placidly let me pry the ball from her fingers and drop it into a basket. I held out my hand, wrapped the wool around my thumb, and slid the needle through. I did it a few more times.

“Can I try?”

We cast on 15 stitches that morning. Upon finishing, she asked, “Can you show me how to knit now? Today? Please?” I showed her how to slide one needle under the other, to wrap the yarn around, to pull it through the stitch, to slide it off the needle. “Under, around, through, and off,” we began chanting together. We knit a row together.

What matters most to me right now is that she learns that she can make something beautiful, whether that is a simple song or a row of knitting.

“OK, that’s enough for today.” I said, satisfied that we were through the emergency.

“Please? Can we do just one more row?” So we did one more. Then we did another. And another.

Finally, I persuaded her it was time to put the knitting down. She ran and found her sister. “Saoirse! I can knit!” She ran and found her father. Flinging her arms around his waist, she cried out “Daddy! I can knit!”

She announced it to the neighbors, to her best friend, to her grandparents. She took to carrying her knitting basket around the house. She took it to bed with her. What a huge shift from my own childhood experience of hiding away my attempts to crochet.

Watching her new enthusiasm, I think about all the things we consider most urgent in our education system. Children are now supposed to be reading and doing arithmetic before the end of kindergarten. They are supposed to be able to tell time and read calendars before they develop a sense of the passing hours or observe changes in the phases of the moon. They are supposed to be able to navigate the Internet before they understand their cardinal directions.

I won’t argue that these skills don’t have value. But not today. Not for Ula. Not in the first grade. What matters most to me right now is that she learns that she can make something beautiful, whether that is a simple song, a crayon drawing, or a row of knitting. And from the pride that emanates from her body as she sits in my lap with her knitting, I am certain that is what matters most to her, too.

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Every year, my favorite gift to give (and to get) is a good book.

But I’m fussy. A holiday read must be something truly special. It becomes an intellectual companion when the days are darkest, so I ask that they fill me with inspiration, feed my imagination and propensity to dream, present me with good ideas for deep thinking, and best of all, challenge me to change my life in new and interesting ways.

I suppose that’s a pretty tall order for a book. But over the course of this past year, I have found three that meet my criteria, and I want to share them with you.

If I could, I would present a copy of each of them to all of you (because if you are following this blog, I guarantee that these titles will resonate with you). Since I can’t afford to do that, I’ll just tell you about them and you can either get them from the library, request them from loved ones, or maybe even go out and buy a copy for someone special (make sure you read it first, though!).

Happy holidays, and happy reading!

1. Saved: How I Quit Worrying About Money and Became the Richest Guy in the World. By Ben Hewitt. Rodale.

Ben lives up in Vermont, and follows a life similar to my own—he’s got a comparable income and enjoys a creative existence with his family on the fringe of mainstream culture.

Then he meets Erik, a twenty-something who is living on less than $10,000 per year. Erik is filled with ideals, smarts, and genuine talents and skills, and he uses them to live a life in line with his values and to play a generous role in his surrounding community.

Ben seeks to better understand Erik’s life path, and in the process, begins examining his own beliefs and assumptions about money, savings, investing, and spending. He unravels the U.S. monetary system, shows us the myths, and ponders what a sustainable economic future may look like in a way that would make the editors of the Wall Street Journal cringe.

Do not read this book looking for ways to be more frugal, develop an investment strategy, or find a financial recipe for success. Read it to be free of the thinking that paralyzes us and keeps us from making life choices with our hearts at the fore. Read it to lift your heart, open your mind, and let go of your fears.

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2. Eating on the Wild Side. By Jo Robinson. Little, Brown, and Company.

Jo Robinson, in my mind, is the grande dame of the grassfed meat movement. Long before Michael Pollan wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma, long before anyone knew there was a difference between factory-farmed meat and local, grassfed products, this woman was uncovering the hidden research and putting it out in self-published volumes for all of us to read. She quietly worked her way across the country teaching small farmers about the environmental and health benefits of what they were doing, giving us the facts that enabled us to make our voices heard.

Now, Jo has made another monumental contribution to the world of sustainable cuisine. As best I can figure, she has spent the last ten years investigating thousands of scientific articles and exploring volumes of arcane culinary and agricultural and medicinal history, in addition to conducting experiments in her own home garden.

The result is an amazing guide to produce. Jo conducts a historical, nutritional, and medicinal analysis of the most common fruits and vegetables in the American diet, and identifies which varieties offer us the most healing and nourishment. She also advises the best way to prepare and store them in order to benefit from their magical properties. This is far deeper than an exposition on “why homegrown and heritage varieties are best” (indeed, as Jo points out, that may not necessarily be the case).

This is an essential reference guide to home and market gardeners, as well as for anyone who does the grocery shopping and family cooking. Her clear, well-researched writing explains how to make the best produce choices, whether you’re selecting seeds for the coming growing season, meandering through a farmers market, or standing in a conventional grocery store.

The book is put together in a way that will enable readers to use it as a quick reference without reading it cover to cover. At the same time, the text is enthralling. You may find yourself pulling it off the shelf to look something up before you head to the market, and then postponing your trip so that you can sit down to read more as you become engrossed with the content.

3. The Resilient Farm and Homestead: An Innovative Permaculture and Whole Systems Design Approach. By Ben Falk. Chelsea Green.

When I first sat down to read this book, I was struck with a sense of joy. Here is a young mind, open to the wisdom of our elders as well as to the possibilities that veteran agrarians long ago dismissed.

Falk challenges readers with new ways of thinking about our domestic habitats. The Resilient Farm and Homestead deserves a special mention for its beautiful design alone, which pulls the reader in with delicious photography, but doesn’t quit with glossy fantasies.

Like many of you, Ben works on a small plot of land (his homestead is 10 acres of marginal land in Vermont), and makes it work to support his life. Like many of us in the Radical Homemaking movement, Ben is thinking deeper than cash crops and income opportunities. He is interacting with his landscape to cultivate a permanent system that supports his life, where cash income needs can be minimized with sound home planning (although the book certainly contains ideas that can be emphasized for generating cash).

This book is both inspiring and practical, and will motivate householders and farmers alike to examine their resources for making permanent, sustainable, life-sustaining change. In addition to covering the big dreamy ideas, Falk gets nitty-gritty, with discussions on the best ways to split wood and compost hot water heating systems, explanations of how to make biochar in your home woodstove, and much more.

There is a lot to take in with this volume. It is a perfect book for someone just starting out on their first homesteading or small-scale farming adventure, but also serves as a good, inspirational kick in the pants for those of us who’ve been on the path for a while—and who mistakenly think we know it all.

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I woke in the middle of Sunday night under the oppressive heat of two hot and sweaty bodies piled on top of me. Mom and Dad are gone on vacation, so Bob is sleeping down at the farm all week. Knowing I am quick to pass out in bed at the end of each day, Saoirse and Ula took full advantage of his absence and my oblivion, and invaded my space without my knowledge after the lights were out.

But just before midnight, I was fully aware. And I wanted my own bed. We all had to be up and running extra early in the morning so that Ula could attend her first day of camp, an experience she has been pleading for since last the winter before last. We all needed our sleep. And these two fast-growing girls are no longer small enough to let that happen comfortably in one big family bed.

To wear a cape because you like it is innocent pleasure; to wear a cape despite knowing others do not is an act of bravery.

I tried nudging them gently. They didn’t stir. I tried lifting them. They’ve grown too heavy. I whispered sweetly, “Girls, c’mon. You need to go to your own beds.” No reaction. I grew annoyed. These girls are too old for this. I am too old for this.

I shouted. “SAOIRSE AND ULA! I CAN’T SLEEP BECAUSE YOU ARE ON TOP OF ME. GET UP AND GO TO YOUR OWN BEDS!” They rolled over.

“NOW!” They grumbled that I didn’t need to be so harsh, then stumbled off, leaving me to my space.

And only a few hours later, I was waking them again so that Ula wouldn’t be late for her first day of camp. Over breakfast, I informed them that they were old enough to stay in their own beds, that I needed my sleep as much as they did. Then we loaded up the car and took off for Ula’s big adventure.

Later that day, I picked up little Ula, who was slightly confused. As a homeschooler, she had never been in an organized group of kids before. Her impression was that they spent a lot of their time waiting on line and raising their hands to speak. We talked about it, and I explained that this is how things work when large numbers of people are trying to learn or experience something new.

The next day, she got up easily, ready to play the part of the anthropological participant-observer and experience standing on line and raising her hand. She dressed for the event. After donning shorts and a t-shirt, she found a piece of sparkly pink diaphanous fabric to wear as a cape. She added bling to her sunhat by inserting a feather and pinning a silk scarf to the back. I rejoiced in her flare and snapped a photo before we headed out the door.

When we pulled in, at the last minute, she chose to leave her cape in the car. But she proudly took her sunhat and wore it as she waved to me while I pulled away. When I picked her up, the hat had been shoved into the bottom of her bag. I said nothing.

On the third day, she came home particularly tired and cranky, prone to spurts of crying, all unusual behaviors for my spirited little wonder. I cancelled all afternoon activities. I left Saoirse with Bob down at the farm, and brought Ula home. We cuddled together on the screen porch with mugs of mint tea and read a book. I didn’t get up to cook supper, I didn’t put away any laundry, I didn’t water the flowers, I didn’t walk the dogs, until my Ula re-emerged from her dark cloud.

She came back to me. She found her smiles and giggles once more, she found ways to annoy me by climbing all over the furniture. She played with the dogs, she put on music.

Bob and Saoirse came home for supper. And as we sat down at the table, Ula admitted that she hadn’t eaten the lunch I’d packed for her.

“But you asked me to make you deviled eggs for this week,” I said. “I packed what you wanted.”

“Yes, but the other kids were staring at my food. They thought it was weird. So I just put it away.”

“What were they eating?” asked Bob.

“Sandwiches with juice boxes.”

“We don’t eat sandwiches and we don’t drink juice, honey.” I reminded her.

“I know. But they think I’m weird.”

Bob and I looked at each other. This awareness was coming sooner in Ula’s development than we had anticipated.

“Sweetie,” I said, “we are weird. And it isn’t because we can’t have the same things. It is because we’ve chosen something different as a family.”

Somehow, in my own choice to walk away, I have taken it for granted that my children wouldn’t have to wage the same battle in their souls.

Bob explained about how we avoid things like bread and juice because it makes blood sugar swing, which makes kids at first energetic, then overly hungry and cranky. Saoirse reminded her that juice boxes were extremely wasteful. Ula nodded in blank-faced agreement. Then I asked her about her cape and sunhat.

“I decided they would think the cape was weird, so I left it in the car. I thought the sunhat was okay, but then the kids told me that was weird, too, so I took it off.”

My heart broke. It isn’t that I didn’t know that this was coming. But I thought it would happen later. Ula is only six. Saoirse, who will be 10 this summer, is the one I expect to be more self-conscious.

But they are different. Saoirse, while she is shy, prefers to dress her own way and do her own thing. She doesn’t make friends quickly, and she doesn’t care. So she dresses and eats as she likes. But Ula loves people. She loves making friends. Until now, she has always made them easily, just by being herself. Suddenly, being in this group, she seemed to believe she would only make them if she didn’t stand out. To me, it felt like a fall from innocence.

But I keenly remembered my own experiences growing up. I was embarrassed that my mother made me homemade cookies and that I had homemade bread for my sandwiches at school lunches. I was so afraid of being different in kindergarten, I opted for absolute silence. The teacher requested a special conference with my parents because I refused to speak at all. Following a few years in the system, I grew tired of seeking invisibility. I began to wear a flat cap to school every day, along with bright colored shirts, yellow suspenders, and hightop sneakers with big, fat mismatched laces. I said what was on my mind, and chose to celebrate the fact that I was different.

There were days I was fearful about my choices, but something inside railed against the pressure of conforming, and I had two parents at home cheering me on. That helped a lot.

I told this to Ula and Saoirse over dinner. I told them how I came to realize that anyone who was comfortable with me looking a little different in school usually turned out to be someone fun to be around. I told them how some of the other girls started getting hightop sneakers, too.

They laughed, then ran upstairs in excitement, wanting to decorate their clothes and Ula’s lunchbox.

But I went into the other side of the house and began to cry. I know we all go through this. We hippie, crunchy, live-in-harmony-with-the-earth-and-just-be-yourself parents have already emerged from our struggles with mainstream society. We found our souls and we walked away. And somehow, in my own choice to walk away, I have taken it for granted that my children wouldn’t have to wage the same battle in their souls.

But they do. They cannot follow in my footsteps. They have to experience the same struggles, ask themselves the same questions, make their own choices.

And I don’t want my little baby to have to ask those questions yet. I want her to be my sparkling Ula, with her slightly crooked eye and her purple glasses and her brilliant costumes and her made-up songs and her world-famous dance routines performed in front of the wood stove.

I can encourage and cheer her on, but I cannot choose for her that she will stay this way. Changes are coming.

To wear a cape and sunhat with a feather and a silk scarf because you like it is innocent pleasure. To wear a cape and a sunhat with a feather and a silk scarf because you like it, and you are fully aware that others do not, is an act of bravery. But it must be a chosen act. It cannot be done because Mommy tells you to do it, and it may take years to work up that courage. And so, aside from assuring her that she is beautiful and celebrating her uniqueness, I must respect her choices, tell her I love her no matter what, and watch to see what unfolds.

I came to this resolution last night, dried my tears, then went upstairs to read bedtime stories. The girls dutifully went to their own beds, we turned out the light, and we all went to sleep. A few hours later, Ula called out in the darkness.

“Mommy?”

“Yes sweetheart?”

“Can I come cuddle?”

“Of course.”

I pulled the covers aside and made room for her, then snuggled close, taking in her scent, feeling her baby-soft skin as we wrapped our arms around each other, just grateful for every lingering moment I can have with my baby before any further changes hit.

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Bob and I vividly remember the first winter we bought our house here on the edge of this 5,000-acre state forest, high in the hills of Schoharie County. We were newly engaged; shortly thereafter, newly unemployed; and immediately following, newly broke.

But the mortgage payments were manageable with a few odd jobs and business ventures, and the land surrounding us was captivating. We’d spend our mornings drinking coffee while I held a calculator and punched numbers, imagining different ways we could make a living.

When the winter sun rose high enough in the sky, we’d head out into the cold snowy landscape, blithely unaware of the passage of time as we skied along the nearby snowmobile trails, hiked untraveled roads, snow-shoed through the woods exploring the hills, ravines, and streams. If we remembered to bring food, maybe it was some wine in a bola, or some cheese in my pocket.

We’d do our best to return home by sunset, but it was never a worry. No one waited for us. If we wanted to eat, we would. If we wanted to skip a meal, we would. If we felt like coming home early, taking a small glass of sherry, then lying down together as the afternoon sunlight poured into our sleeping loft, that was fine, too. We’d listen to the radio, read by the woodstove, stay up as late as we chose, wake when it suited us. No one depended on us. We were on our own time, our bodies were our own, our minds free to wander wherever they were inclined.

Two years later, we were still too broke to afford our scheduled summer wedding, so before the deposits for my wedding gown, the tent rental, and the outdoor furniture came due in January, we eloped on New Year’s Eve, then enjoyed our January honeymoon, happily free of one more financial obligation, with plenty of beautiful snow, sparkling sunrises, and vivid sunsets to round out the celebration of our union.

And so it goes, round and round, that sweet rigidity that defines parenthood, that serves as a perpetual reminder that our bodies are somehow no longer our own.

By the next winter, I was pregnant with Saoirse. Our winter hikes were to be shortened by bouts of nausea and our morning coffee replaced with hot milk or herbal tea, whatever my tender stomach would allow. The wine and the sherry collected dust in the basement.

Within the next few years we had two beautiful daughters, with growing bodies that require regular meals and little legs not quite suited for hours of meandering through the deep snows in our wintery landscape. Our morning coffee is not about imagining; it is about settling arguments among the kids. Our time outside in the woods must fit into the rigid schedules of our work and homeschooling demands. Lunch must be served promptly in order to make way for afternoon schedules; dinner must be served early to allow for ample story time and early bedtimes. And so it goes, round and round, that sweet rigidity that defines parenthood, that serves as a perpetual reminder that our bodies are somehow no longer our own.

It probably comes as no surprise, then, that when Bob’s and my anniversary rolls around, our ideal celebration isn’t to steal away to a cozy B&B, or even to head out for a special celebratory dinner. Instead, we wait until the holidays are finished, take that first quiet weekend in January, pack the kids up, send them down to the farm with my parents, and spend the weekend on “staycation.” The car stays parked in the driveway, and we do what we want, re-living those glorious memories from our early days together.

After dropping the girls down at the farm this past weekend, we stoked up the fire and did all those things we never get to do: watched a movie, stayed up late talking, slept late, drank coffee in bed, ate spicy food for breakfast, hiked along the snowmobile trails, spent the bulk of the day amusing ourselves with needle-felting projects, skipped lunch, went for a sunset snowshoe expedition through the woods, and came back to enjoy our supper by the fire while we listened to the radio. I knitted, and Bob played his mandolin along with the music we were hearing. Our bodies were our own again. We were responsible for no one but ourselves. Our conversation stretched no farther than what we might do together the next day.

And then the phone rang. Ula had a tummy ache.

And so there we were, driving down to the farm at nine o’clock that night. I felt like crying.

“We had a good day,” Bob tried to reassure me as we wound along the dark and snowy roads. “At least we got that. It’s not the kids’ fault.”

Ula kept her face brave when we got to the farm. “I’m okay, Mommy, really I am. I don’t want to ruin your vacation.” She was in her pajamas.

“She’s okay,” Saoirse assured me, “and I’m with her.”

I drifted between light sleep and alertness between bouts of cleaning up puke, thinking “right now, I really hate my job.

Just then, Ula smiled at me. She’d lost her front tooth earlier in the day. And as she looked up at me, I couldn’t help noticing her glassy eyes. She said she was okay. But something wasn’t right.

And so we bundled the girls into the car, drove them home and put them to bed, our day of splendid honeymoon renewal suddenly a distant memory. A few hours later, Ula called me to her side. And there I sat, rubbing her back until she was able to release the contents of her stomach into a stainless steel bowl. The rest of my night was spent perched on the edge of her bed, psychosomatic waves of paranoid nausea sweeping through my own body as I lay beside a vomit bowl and a little girl with notoriously bad aim. I drifted between light sleep and alertness between bouts of cleaning up puke, thinking “right now, I really hate my job.”

And I reached out and took her hand, and we lay there in the dark, connected.

We made it to the pre-dawn hours when Ula began moaning and whimpering once more. “Mommy?” she whispered out into the dark.

“Here’s the bowl sweetie,” I jumped-to, and lifted her into position, instantly ready to catch the next one.

“I don’t need to barf!” she exclaimed with exasperation.

I shifted her back to her bed. “Sorry. What do you need?”

“I’m seeing shapes in the shadows. Can you just hold my hand?”

And I reached out and took her hand, and we lay there in the dark, connected. I felt my own body grow calm.

It is true. My body is not my own. It is my husband’s, and my children’s, and theirs is mine. We are a family. And maybe that Saturday was the only day Bob and I will get alone together this year. But in exchange, there is always someone’s hand to hold in the dark.

It’s a fair trade.

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Saoirse was no more than a few weeks old when one of our farm customers approached me about attending a protest in Albany to call legislators’ attention to the problems with genetically modified foods. The organizers were specifically recruiting mothers to attend with children. They wanted moms to put kids and babies in shopping carts and wheel them from office to office to make their point. I wholeheartedly agreed with my customer about the importance of the issue. But I immediately refused.

Saoirse and Ula needed to do this for themselves. They needed to know that they took a stand on something that was important to them.

“I’m not using my child as a decoration for a cause she hasn’t chosen,” was the only thing I could think to say.

Later on, upon recounting the experience with Bob, he agreed. Our refusal to use our children for our causes became a household rule for many reasons. But Saoirse and Ula recently informed us that they’ve outgrown that rule.

First, to explain Bob’s and my thinking: We believe that to raise a child who will be a good steward of the earth, she must be allowed to fall in love with it. We felt it was problematic to bombard our kids with information about our causes—how the earth is being poisoned and abused—before they are empowered to take action to protect it. If the natural world were forever depicted to them as fragile, in danger, and in need of protection, they might simply detach from it, since they were powerless to do anything about it.

We wanted our children to grow to trust the earth, to feel nurtured by her, before they were asked to defend her. Rather than barraging them with stories about what others are doing wrong to this planet, we tried to make them aware of the things that must be done to treat her right, whether it is picking up trash on the side of the road, being careful with our water and streams on the farm, choosing local foods in season, assiduously composting and recycling, or minimizing our use of our car. Furthermore, there was the simple matter of our daughters being too young to have opinions on issues. How does an infant or young child have an opinion about GMOs? Organic food policy? The 99 percent? New York State environmental law? Over the course of our family life, Bob and/or I would leave home to speak out for our causes, and the kids would stay home. They never challenged that rule, until last week.

Fracking comes up at our local parties and potlucks. My kids hear about it at the firehouse, when we go to the post office, when we go to vote

As the threat of hydraulic fracturing circles about New York State, an unprecedented number of the residents of our town from all backgrounds and across the political spectrum have decided to organize to get a law in place to protect our land. And while it would appear that no one on our town board is truly “pro-fracking,” the speed with which the citizens want to enact the law is deeply troubling for the board members, who are accustomed to taking 6 to 12 months to discuss something as minor as a single dog control incident.

A new law on the books would preferably be a multi-year process in their view. This is one of those towns where nothing is supposed to happen, where the greatest controversy is over tax assessments. But the citizens feel it is imperative to have something in place before the state makes its determination on whether to allow fracking in the coming weeks or months, as home rule is our best chance for protecting ourselves in the future. Thus, while it would seem most folks are in agreement on the issues, there is still controversy.

And Saoirse and Ula hear it. It comes up at our local parties and potlucks. They hear about it at the firehouse, when we go to the post office, when we go to vote, when neighbors drop their kids off for play dates, or when folks come by to purchase meat.

On the day of our public hearing for the new law last week, Saoirse and Ula sat down at lunch while Bob and I were reviewing our talking points. They waited for a lapse in our conversation, then Saoirse spoke up.

“I’d like to talk tonight.”

“Me, too,” chimed in Ula.

I stammered. Saoirse? Speak? This is a kid who can go weeks without seeing any of her buddies and be perfectly happy in her seclusion. She is friendly to everyone she meets, but she’s an introvert to the core. And Ula? She’s usually playing in her fantasy world. What does she know about the issues?

“This isn’t your problem,” I assured them. “Mommy and Daddy will deal with it.”

Saoirse emitted a perfectly excuted pre-adolecent gasp of exasperation (she’s been practicing them a lot lately).

“It is so our problem! We want to be able to live here! We want to be able to drink the water!”

Bob and I stared at each other. What to do?

“I don’t think it’s allowed,” I muttered.

“You’re not of voting age,” he added, then quickly changed the subject. “Ula, make sure you eat your vegetables.”

“Saoirse, can you pass me the butter?” I aided the change of direction.

The afternoon passed with nothing more said on the subject. The girls went about finishing their lessons and playing, and we assumed it was forgotten…until just before supper, when they marched in to where we were having tea.

“You need to help us prepare what we’re going to say,” Saoirse informed us.

Bob and I studdered and stammered some more.

“You’re serious?” I finally asked. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I have to say something,” Saoirse informed me. “I just have to.”

So we booted up the computer, and Saoirse drafted a simple statement in her own words. Ula dictated what she wanted to say. We encouraged her to keep it short, since she wouldn’t be able to read any notes.

When we arrived at the town meeting, their names were added to the list of speakers. They shared slot number 17.

I was sitting behind them when their names were called in that packed room. They stood up. Saoirse held her paper in front of her. Her hands didn’t even shake. Ula stood beside her, staring over her spectacles at each board member at the head of the room, daring them to avert her gaze.

“My name is Saoirse Hayes Hooper,” Saoirse began, “and this is my sister, Ula. We live on Rossman Valley Road, and we work on Sap Bush Hollow Farm with our grandparents. The reason we don’t want fracking is because we have a very happy and healthy family, and we want it to stay that way. We want for our family to be able to drink a glass of water without having to worry about getting sick. So my sister and I are asking you to please ban tracking.”

And then, Ula added her one line “We don’t want Mother Earth to be in pain all the time.”

“Thank you,” they managed to say in unison.

They both collapsed into my lap afterward.

I don’t know what the board members thought. Did they believe that I’d brought my children out as decorations for the cause? Did they feel I had manipulated them to say something to bring more drama to the scene? Just then, Saoirse leaned in and whispered in my ear, “I’m so happy to finally get that off my chest.”

And I realized that my concerns were pointless. It didn’t matter what the board, or any of my neighbors thought about a nine-year-old and a six-year-old standing up and speaking at a public hearing. Or whether or not anyone suspected that I was some kind of manipulative over-bearing mother pushing these girls to do my bidding. Saoirse and Ula needed to do this for themselves. They needed to know that they took a stand on something that was important to them.

I realize now how Bob’s and my job as parents is shifting. It is not necessarily our task any longer to shield our daughters from our grown-up causes and concerns. We still don’t feel it is appropriate to ask them to stand up for issues that don’t resonate with them, nor should they have their joy in this earth stripped away by incessant harping about all the problems we must battle.

But at the same time, we can’t silence them, either. They have grown to love their world, and even at their young age, they have every right to defend it. Our job now is to help them make their voices heard.

How do we build resilient communities? Is there a way to organize around preparing for “short term emergencies” to build neighborly relations and also strengthens us for other systemic economic and ecological challenges ahead?

This summer, our local “transition town,” the Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition, is experimenting with “preparedness pie parties.” It may be a way to bridge some of the race, class, and political differences in our neighborhood.

Neighbors meet each other, share information, and identify elderly and disabled neighbors to check in with. Neighbors take a few minutes to look at an “emergency preparedness checklist,” like the one FEMA puts out. Maybe one subgroup volunteers to coordinate the bulk purchase of flashlights and supplies. Another puts together a simple contact list with everyone’s name and basic information.

If neighbors are motivated, they could look at the “Map Your Neighborhood” process, piloted in Washington State and now adopted in other states. They have a nine-step process for neighbors responding to disasters, including urging neighbors to put “OK” signs in their windows—and visiting neighbors who haven’t put up a sign.

Some people might dismiss such organizing as fear mongering, a local version of the National Geographic series “Doomsday Preppers.” This is why the tone of such organizing matters: respectful, informed, friendly and hopeful. The message is “our individual security is linked to the well-being of our neighbors.”

The history of recent northeast ice storms and hurricanes such as Sandy and Irene underscores that neighbors are our true “first responders,” and that a modest amount of networking and preparation makes a huge difference. Many of my neighbors view this as common sense.

Rebecca Solnit, in her remarkable book, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, reminds us that adversity unleashes extraordinary community spirit and generosity among neighbors. The fearful images of looting and selfishness are well publicized, but they are not the norm.

Saoirse gaped at me in horror this past fall when she submitted her first written report, and I returned it to her with penciled-in notes scratched about the pages, along with instructions to re-write it.

I assured her that the work was good, but the next step in the writing process was to make it great. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish as she tried to think what to say, staring at those marks that marred her work.

Then she picked up an eraser, and began erasing her errors, along with my comments, then writing in her corrections.

She needs to understand writing intimately as a union between her mind and her hands, before she lets a computer interfere with her process.

“No,” I told her firmly. “You need to re-write.”

This brought on tears of frustration and shame for her. It brought on a serious case of self-doubt for me.

The hardest subject for me to teach my kids is writing. I thought it would be the easiest, owing to the fact that such a large part of my livelihood is derived from this particular craft. It turns out the opposite is true. I care so much about the subject, I feel as though I have no gauge on what constitutes good work for a fourth grader. And I want so dearly for her to love and feel empowered by writing, that I find myself blinded with fear at the thought that she’ll hate it on account of my instruction.

And here I was, criticizing her work, and assigning her something that seemed like busy-work–the arduous, unfulfilling task of writing a second draft of a perfectly adequate report.

In my own work, I have the luxury of a word processing program. Edits are easy. Highlight, delete, re-type only those parts that don’t work. Spell-check handles a lot of the type-errors. The printer spits out a new draft instantly.

But I won’t let Saoirse use the computer yet. I feel that she needs to develop a grasp of good, efficient penmanship before she learns keyboard skills. I feel like she needs to understand writing intimately as a union between her mind and her hands, before she lets a computer interfere with her process.

But what of her idea to simply use the eraser and squeeze in her corrections? I will admit that it seemed reasonable, but I wouldn’t cave in. I didn’t have solid reasons at that time, only a gut instinct that somehow, in my own learning process, re-drafting by hand was critical to my development as a writer. I wouldn’t give in, although I had serious self-doubts.

I want so dearly for her to love and feel empowered by writing…I fear the thought that she’ll hate it on account of my instruction.

I didn’t abandon her completely to the labor. I stayed in the room with her as she worked, hoping my presence would calm her and enable her to focus. I picked up my knitting. It was a new project. Late last fall I decided to teach myself Fair Isle knitting, and my newest endeavor at that time was to knit an over-sized sweater for Saoirse, using colors she’d chosen.

That sweater accompanied me through a lot of Saoirse’s re-write projects this fall and winter. She continued to fight my insistence on the process, but the arguments got progressively shorter as she realized that I wasn’t changing my position. She also seemed glad to see me chipping away at the sweater that she was eager to have. As I worked, she’d periodically walk over and pet the wool, running her hands over the knit patterns with a smile on her face. It did seem to work as a salve for us both.

Incidentally, as her arguments about re-drafting grew shorter and shorter, the sleeves on Saoirse’s sweater grew longer and longer.

I finished knitting it two weeks ago, and proudly placed it in her lap one morning when she came down for breakfast. She beamed at me, and quickly pulled it on over her pajamas. The sleeves were, indeed, a bit of a problem, falling well below her thumbs. I grabbed the sweater and quickly folded back the cuffs. The arms still fell below her thumbs. I folded them again. And again. There. Now the length was right … although she now had two inches of extra wool circling in a wad at the top of her hands.

“The sweater was supposed to be oversized,” I reminded her.

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Saoirse is an infinitely thoughtful girl. She struggles to say anything that would ever hurt my feelings. This time was no exception. She just nodded and smiled at me weakly. In spite of the smile, she was unable to hide the disappointment. The sweater had been something she’d been dreaming about for some time … and she hadn’t visioned it quite like … this.

“You’re growing so fast, you’ll be glad to have those extra-long sleeves in a couple years,” I tried again. She nodded. Then she became enthusiastic.

“You’re right, Mom. I can just put it away until then!”

Oh, crap. I could read the subtext in that one. I stared at her.

“Turn around.” I grabbed my pincushion, unrolled the sleeves and began experimenting with ways to shorten it. Perhaps I could sew along the seams where the sleeves joined the body, taking off a few inches and hiding them beneath the sweater, only to be let-out later? I thought about the big bulky cuff that would rub her arm. No. That wouldn’t work. I stared at her.

And then I thought about all that knitting I’d done while she was re-writing her papers for me. What was I teaching if I didn’t show the same commitment to re-doing my own work, when I expected it of her?

“I know what to do,” I finally concluded.

“You can fix it?” Her eyes brightened.

“Yup. I’m going to take the sweater apart, unravel all the extra length on the sleeves, then put it back together again.”

“No!” Saoirse began to cry. “I can’t let you do that! Not after all the work you put in!”

I took her in my arms, and we snuggled down into a chair together.

“Sweetie,” I said, kissing the top of her head, “If I don’t re-do my work, then all of it will be wasted, because the sweater will be useless to you.”

“I’ll wear it! I promise! Just like it is! Don’t undo all that work! The sweater is beautiful!”

And here, in this pile of knitting, was my chance to give a good writing lesson. “But it’s not right. It can be better. And I know how to fix it, and so I will. It’s just a little more time. Give me back the sweater.”

What matters is that [kids] are confident enough in their skills, their ability to continuously learn, to know that they can always re-do and make it better.

She hugged herself and kept the sweater away, crying at the thought that she would reject something I’d made for her, that she’d send me back for a re-do.

“Saoirse. Look at me.” Her wet eyes met mine.

“Do I make you rewrite your essays and reports?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can remake your sweater.”

She thought about it for a moment, then took the sweater off. Two days later, she had a new sweater, with sleeves that were a perfect length.

A few days later, while I was giving a knitting lesson to a friend, Saoirse joined us in the living room and began a new project of her own, a knitted headband. Still awkward with her needles, she dropped a stitch here, picked it up a little later, and had a piece of knitting at the end of two hours that was 80 percent glorious.

“What do you think?” She asked me.

“Well,” I examined over her work. “Can you see what happened over here?”

“I dropped a stitch,” she admitted. “But I fixed it later, see?”

“But that makes it wobbly. Is that what you want?”

“Are you telling me I have to pull it out?”

“Absolutely not. This is your project. If it were mine, I’d pull it out, because I’d want my headband to be just right. But this is your headband, and if you like it the way it is, then that’s your choice. All that matters is that you like it.”

She stared at her work for a few moments, then yanked out her needle and began to unravel the wool. At the end of the day, she came to me, beaming, with a perfectly knit headband.

A simple re-do. And there’s the greater lesson, bigger than writing, bigger than knitting.

I feel very strongly that my children’s happy future is not tied to how well they behave, or whether or not they are able to hold a job. It is tied to their ability to create with their minds and their hands. They might be making something that they need for themselves, they might be making something that they will gift, sell, or trade. The key to taking pleasure from such a life is that their work will meet their own expectations, that they can have a vision in their imagination, then bring it to fruition. And if that doesn’t happen the first time, what matters even more is that they are confident enough in their skills, in their ability to continuously learn, and familiar enough with the process of creation, to know that they can always re-do it, and make it even better.

And so, in the teaching of this lesson, I am forced to learn it myself.

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I was 16 when my mom figured out one of her friends was being abused by her husband. Mom did what she could. She tried to talk to her friend. She gave her phone numbers for shelters and domestic violence hotlines. She proposed escape plans.

“Half your audience is from the Green Party and the other half is from the Tea Party.”

One night we received a phone call from a women’s shelter. Our friend had escaped. We rejoiced for her safety.

Two days later, she went back to her husband.

As a teenager, this choice bewildered me. How could she be living a nightmare, make her escape, and then choose to return?

In time, I have grown to understand. The new world our friend faced in leaving behind her life was scary. In the end, she chose to live her nightmare as a codependent rather than face the unknown.

This story has been popping into my mind a lot these past few weeks as I listen to the media, neighbors, and friends discuss the Affordable Care Act. In spite of the approximately 50 million Americans who are uninsured, I am hearing folks express a lot of fear of the unknown. Some who are uninsured are defiantly choosing to pay the tax penalties rather than purchase a policy. Some are seething with anger that their tax dollars will be paying for someone else’s health care. Others are petrified that if they move forward and enroll in the exchange, they will suddenly be without  coverage.

As a nation, we are being asked to take the first steps to leaving a cruel relationship. We are collectively confronting a big unknown. Suddenly, all the homelessness, suffering, and bankruptcy offered by our current system seems preferable to confronting something new and different. It is as if we’ve become codependents to our abusive health care system.

As I write this, I am keenly aware that roughly half of my readers will agree with me. The other half will be disappointed that I should take this stance. I once spoke at a large sustainability conference where the director observed to me that, “Half your audience is from the Green Party and the other half is from the Tea Party.”

In truth, if I may be so bold, I’d say that most of you are more accurately members of what I prefer to call the “Green Tea Party.” You honor the earth and sincerely feel that the surest route to securing a good life in harmony with the planet involves personal accountability and a degree of self-reliance, as well as a commitment to neighbors and community. Some of you will be keen on the Affordable Care Act; others probably detest it.

For all of us “Green Tea” folks, there are certainly elements of the Act that are detestable. Many of us resent that we will be compelled by law to give our money to corporations whose profits seem to be determined, in large part, by their success at failing to deliver a needed service. We don’t like being compelled to pay into a system that does not honor our belief that health care starts with nourishing the body and spirit; one that fails to acknowledge the proven successes of less expensive, less invasive alternative care services.

I agree with both points. We are faced with an imperfect plan to escape the current situation. But we have to start someplace. Remember: The U.S. Constitution has had 27 ratified amendments. Perhaps we need to think of the Affordable Care Act as a first draft.

Meanwhile, it offers three important protections for self-reliant “Green Tea Party” types:

1. Protecting your center of production.

Maybe it is true that you don’t use the conventional health care system. If your back goes out, you use a chiropractor. If your kids have a cold, you use herbs and homeopathic remedies. But the conventional health care system is still responsible for broken bones, third degree burns, torn tendons, inguinal hernias, and bleeding wounds; all of which can happen easily to anyone who derives their livelihood from doing physical work (which describes most of you who read my writing).

If you’re trying to be self-reliant, you stand to lose more than your home in the event of a medical catastrophe.

However, many farmers and radical homemakers typically invest to make their homes a sustainable center of production. Bob and I started our life in a cheap little cabin assessed at $56,000. Over the years we fixed up the floor, got solar panels, built a passive solar addition, laid a brick floor for thermal mass, and got ourselves a workhorse of a kitchen that would let me can vegetables, make soap, and fix lunch while at the same time homeschooling my kids. We did everything slowly, paying cash along the way. And then, suddenly, we got a letter and a big fat bill from our homeowners’ insurance company.

It doesn’t matter if you did it on the cheap, using salvaged scraps and your own sweat. Suddenly, that inexpensive little slice of heaven takes on astronomical value, and it exceeds the threshold of protection offered by homesteading laws (state laws that provide certain protections for homes during financial difficulties).

Thus, in the event of a medical catastrophe, you stand to lose more than your home. You stand to lose your center of production and the foundation of your livelihood. The Affordable Care Act will eliminate that risk that by allowing self-sufficient homemakers to afford insurance.

2. Freeing up income for true health care.

It was following this revelation in home ownership risks that Bob and I decided to purchase catastrophic health insurance. On our income, however, the cost was a tremendous burden. Our family grossed around $30,000 last year, with $13,000 in medical expenses. Out of that $13,000, $8,000 paid for the catastrophic policy and the deductible (which we would have to spend for insulin). The other $5,000 was stretched as far as possible to pay for dentists, eye doctors, and the alternative care that truly helped us to stay healthy.

Paying for insurance meant that we had to greatly reduce our use of alternative care. But the Affordable Care Act will change that. Next year, we will be able to greatly reduce the cost of conventional health insurance, which means we will finally be able to spend our health care dollars where we think they are most efficacious: on alternative health care.

3. Creating Room for Sustainable Economic Development.

I think if you asked most would-be members of any Green Tea Party to articulate the best way to restore the economy and heal the planet, they would agree that locally owned farms and businesses are at the heart of the solution.

Like an abusive husband, the existing health care system is familiar. That does not mean that it is safe.

In my opinion, the very best small business incubator we could possibly have is a national health plan (preferably single-payer…but that’s not in the cards yet). I simply cannot count the number of stories I’ve heard about people who hate their jobs, who are being made sick by their work, but who continue to toil away in their cubicles, for fear of losing their health insurance.

My prediction is that, once we work out the kinks in this new plan, America will experience an entrepreneurial renaissance. People will have the security to strike out on their own. This is, after all, in our blood. Our country was not founded on corporate employment and steady paychecks. Our melting pot was built by entrepreneurs, risk takers, and independent and resourceful farmers. The Affordable Care Act gives us a chance to revisit that heritage.

I know change is frightening. There will be problems and glitches along the way, and as citizens, it will be our duty to fight for improvements. But the system we currently have is far worse. It is a true nightmare.

It is destructive to our homes, our families, our happiness. Like an abusive husband, just because it is familiar does not mean that it is safe. We must leave it behind, and face the unknown. This is the only way we can begin to heal and make a better life for ourselves.

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This past weekend I made a trek out to central Wisconsin to speak at the state’s annual grazing conference, which typically draws farmers from all over the Midwest. This was the second time I’d been invited to join these folks, and I remembered it fondly from back in 2009, when the conference center was packed, the trade show was hopping with farmers talking about livestock genetics, raw milk, grazing plans, and fencing systems, and the sessions were filled with optimistic faces, eager to bring sustainable changes to their land and good food to their communities.

Did that mean that all those farmers, eager to make sustainable changes on their farms in 2009, had abandoned ship and opted to grow corn to feed the export market, America’s junk food habit, feedlots, and the ethanol craze?

Thus, I was surprised when I arrived at the conference center and saw that the number of attendees seemed to have dropped by almost half.

“Where is everyone?”

I asked the question repeatedly among the folks I met.

The answer was consistent: “Corn is over $7 a bushel.”

Did that mean that all those farmers, eager to make sustainable changes on their farms in 2009, had abandoned ship and opted to grow corn to feed the export market, America’s junk food habit, feedlots, and the ethanol craze?

Hard to say. That may have been the case for some of them. But when I called home to check in and tell my family what I was observing, Dad grabbed the latest issue of The Stockman Grass Farmer, the trade journal for grass-based farming, and read aloud to me that farmland prices were at an all-time high.

I did some poking around, and learned that in Iowa the average 2012 price of renting cropland was $235 per acre, and in some parts of Wisconsin the 2012 prices were as high as $300 per acre. The average price to buy farmland in Illinois last year was $6,800 per acre; in Wisconsin, it was well over $4,000 per acre.

A modest-sized farm could sell for more than a million dollars for the land alone, before even figuring in the value of any buildings on the property. A farm comparable in size to Sap Bush Hollow could rent for nearly $50,000 per year. That’s more than our annual net farm income raising out, processing, and direct marketing 1,000 chickens, 100 turkeys, 25-50 pigs, 100-150 lambs, and 10-12 head of cattle, plus all the value-added products we produce. And that’s spread out over four adults who share the labor.

The drought this past year has been extreme all over the country, and grass-based farmers everywhere have been in need of extra farmland to cut hay to carry their livestock through the winter months. At those rental prices, I seriously doubt a lot of the Midwest graziers could justify the expenditure.

In a time when most of us are still doing rain dances and hoping for a wetter 2013 growing season, the fact that it takes over 1,000 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol doesn’t sit well.

“They’re plowing up everything,” one guy who worked for the Natural Resources Conservation Service told me, “fields that you wouldn’t dream of taking a plow to are getting turned under.”

And when every piece of land is seeded to monoculture crops, drought conditions get more severe. Water splashing onto the ground of monoculture crops might provide refreshment for a day, but it quickly evaporates into the air or is lost to run-off, carrying the pesticides and chemicals used on the corn along with it, in addition to valuable topsoil. By contrast, well-managed pastures rich in organic matter and deep roots draw water into the soil, where it can re-enter the water table as it nourishes the fields.

In a time when most of us are still doing rain dances and hoping for a wetter 2013 growing season, the fact that it takes over 1,000 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol doesn’t sit well. For that matter, back east, farmers are cursing the blending of ethanol with petroleum, as it gunks up fuel tanks, reduces our mileage, and shortens the life span of our machinery.

It’s a good time to be in farming if you like to grow corn. It’s a tough time to be in farming if you see yourself as a steward of the land.

As I sit here and ponder what these Midwestern farmers are going through, it is easy to temporarily forget the pressures in my own state, where many farmers are being presented with contracts to lease their land to the hydro-fracking industry. Everywhere in the nation, it feels as though farmers are being pushed up against a wall and told they must make a choice: will you grow food or fuel?

And here I am, attending these grazing and organic farming conferences, joining the chorus of voices asking farmers to choose food. I ask them to choose it for the sake of their land, for the health of their soils, for the benefit of their local communities. I am asking them to forgo a higher income in an economy based on extraction, and instead to allow their spirits and their land resources to be the foundation upon which a life-serving economy can be built.

And to do it, I repeatedly explain, is really simple:

And all the while, you need to tell yourself over and over and over again that what you do is valuable, because it is so damn easy to forget, especially when the price of corn is over $7 a bushel.

You need to figure out how to live on less. You need to not just raise out your livestock, but you must contract with butchers and processors and state agencies so you can legally sell value-added products. And then you need to forget everything you learned about farming for the last 60 years, where your responsibility for the food stopped at your farm gate.

You need to get yourself up before dawn, find some clothes that don’t stink like pig shit, and haul this stuff to a farmers market; or you need to run around and pick up your kids’ toys, scrub your toilet, and dust your furniture and open your home and allow the market to come to you; or you need to open a shop and find a way to staff it; or you need to get on the phone and start calling stores and restaurants to sell your product. You need to squelch your inner introvert and smile, make small talk and be friendly at all times.

You need to tell people how to cook. You need to learn how to do an artful display. You need to learn to hold your head up and pretend you don’t hear when someone tch-tches your prices. You need to figure out how to give your kids a good education when you’ll never be able to afford college. If you’re taking over a family farm, you need to convince your parents or in-laws that you can do things differently and still succeed. You should probably separate your farm from your household, so it can’t be taken away if medical expenses force you into bankruptcy.

You can be in the black, but the process is slow. It takes years to build good markets. Then you must figure out how to sustain them. And all the while, you need to tell yourself over and over and over again that what you do is valuable, because it is so damn easy to forget, especially when the price of corn is over $7 a bushel.

“Oh, Bob,” I called home, on the brink of tears, “I feel like I’m just selling hope.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and then asks me “Do you believe in the product?”

At that point, Saoirse interrupts on the line, “Mommy! Mommy! I’m dressed up like a butterfly! We cut wings out of cardboard, and I’ve got two peacock feathers for antennae!” Her excitement breaks through my sorrow, and I find myself smiling.

“Well?” Bob prompts me for an answer to his question.

“I do.”

My final event for the day is a book signing. I go to the table, sit down, and pick up my knitting, an effort to still my nerves and calm my thoughts. The farmers begin to cue up, and one by one, books are passed in front of me. One farmer kneels down in front of me to capture my full attention.

“I liked your keynote this morning,” he says. I thank him. “I liked what you said. But there were pictures that I wanted to ask you about.”

“Yes?” I expect a question about our grazing rotations, or about our meat processing facility.

“In your house, you have a very big kitchen table.”

“I do.”

“And another one in your parent’s house.”

“Sure.”

“And there were many pictures around that table. There were so many people sitting around them. More than just your family. Who were those people?”

I thought back over the images. “Well, friends, people who have come to work with us for the day, neighbors, extended family.”

“And you always have big tables set up?”

“Well, sure, we need them.”

“And you share meals with that many people?”

“Of course. Not every day, but most days during the growing season.”

“That’s what I want.”

He didn’t want $300 an acre for rent. He didn’t want $5,000 an acre to sell. He wanted a big kitchen table with good food, and people with whom he could enjoy it.

I looked around at the gathering crowd as the final session of the day ended. People stood holding drinks, talking and laughing as they made their way toward the dining room. Suddenly, their numbers seemed huge. With the price of corn over $7 per bushel, this many people still cared about the land. This many people still not pushed out. This many people still willing to do what it takes to have not a million-dollar land sale, not a lucrative land lease, but a place at a big kitchen table, with others to sit beside them.

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Ginny and Vic bought the farm next to Sap Bush Hollow and moved up from Long Island about fifteen years ago, and quickly became a part of our daily life, teaming up with haying, sharing barn space, co-grazing our livestock together. When their daughter, Heather, decided to leave the rat race of her own Long Island life and come to these hills to be with her parents, both families were certain we would be friends. Heather and I were both in our mid-twenties, and if all went well, we’d have each other for the rest of our West Fulton days.

Both families arranged to have dinner at a local restaurant, where we could meet. Heather had a thick Long Island accent, was freshly made-up, wore designer boots, and would periodically get up from the table to have a cigarette. My hair was in the same braid I’d slept in for the past two nights but I was relatively dressed up too, in my opinion, since I’d worn my cleanest Carhartts.

Heather and I were like oil and water. We made polite conversation but couldn’t find a single thing in common. At the end of the dinner, to be polite, I invited her out to a contra dance that was taking place in our local grange hall that evening.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a social dance, with a caller and a band.”

“Like, square dancing shit?”

We became experts at exchanging neighborly pleasantries without coming into contact.

“Kind of, but with more people.”

“If I go to that, I’m likely to punch someone in the face.”

I didn’t push the issue. But, to her credit, she tried to reciprocate my hospitality with an alternative social option.

“Let’s go down to Cobleskill and do a trifecta.”

“What’s that?”

“Three bars. We go drink in all three of them.”

“I think I’d rather put a pointy stick in my eye.”

We’d found one thing we had in common: we were equally blunt.

Time wore on, and out of mutual courtesy, we generally avoided each other’s company. Recognizing our clash, our families didn’t push it. But one day, while helping her dad make hay, she met my long-time bachelor neighbor, Frank. They fell in love. They had a baby boy, Frank John.

I knitted him a pair of booties, bagged up some of my salves and soaps and hung them on the door of their house when no one was home. They reciprocated with a bottle of wine at Christmas, dropped off when we weren’t there. We became experts at exchanging neighborly pleasantries without coming into contact.

But raising kids in a mountain town that has been steadily losing population for the last 40 years is a lonely business. There are only a few families with children up here. Folks from the villages in the valley don’t want to bring their kids up the mountain. Birthday party invitations get ignored. Play dates are few and far between, and require major scheduling efforts if village families are to agree to them. For the valley families, us mountain folks simply aren’t convenient.

Slowly, I began to pay more attention to the comings and goings of Heather and Frank. I wondered how they were faring with the baby. I knew that raising an infant isn’t too bad up here, as long as you’ve got family support, which they did. But I began to wonder how they’d cope as their son grew older and needed to play with other kids.

Sometimes the kindred spirit votes differently, dresses differently, eats differently.

I screwed up my courage one early summer day last year and made a phone call, inviting them over for drinks. They drove from next door. We sat outside, because Bob was afraid to show them our dirty house (even though we’d frantically cleaned for almost an hour before they came).

And, believe it or not, we sat and talked. And talked. I watched Heather with Frank John. She was the kind of mom I liked—one who didn’t panic if his hands got dirty or if he took a spill. She didn’t blindly follow doctor’s orders, took the time to cook a good meal for her family each night, and insisted on “please” and “thank you” from the get-go.

Another four weeks went by. Heather made another move. She called and asked if Saoirse and Ula would help her around the house by playing with Frank John, so she could catch up on laundry and dishwashing.

From there, a friendship slowly began to grow, to the point where the girls and I now meander over to her house one afternoon each week. It would seem that none of the ordinary friendship conditions of common interests are in place. She wears high heels to work every day; I go barefoot. She collects designer handbags; I collect dust bunnies. She watches TiVo; I prefer to knit. She drinks vodka. I usually bring my own herbal tea.

But underneath, there are fundamental commonalities that steer our friendship. She may like high heels and lipstick, but she honors her parent’s love of farming, and she helps them make it happen. She is here for her family. She is committed to this place, with all its imperfections. She doesn’t abandon ship and move away because she doesn’t like the school, or because there aren’t enough activities, or because the region lacks sophistication. She watches the sun come up over the mountain ridge each morning and snaps a photo. Like me, she wants the soil to remain fertile, the air to stay fresh, the water to stay clean.

In my writing and speaking about sustainable living, I often hear stories of migration: people seeking to leave behind families and imperfect friendships for the sake of finding the model neighborhood with the proper balance of cultural diversity, the quintessential Waldorf school, progressive politics, ethnic restaurants to expand their children’s culinary horizons, ample enrichment opportunities for young minds, and a bountiful crop of intelligent parents and sophisticated children living just around the block from which to pluck one’s friends.

We don’t all get to have that. Sometimes we just have to pick a place and stay put. We can usually make it better for our being there, but maybe not in all the ways we’d like.

And when it comes to making friendships, we can’t always spend our time with like-minded individuals. Sometimes the kindred spirit votes differently, dresses differently, eats differently. But they live next door, and they are as committed to that gritty, imperfect place as you are.

Maybe it will take fifteen years for a friendship to grow out of those conditions. But if both parties are committed to staying put, there’s plenty of time to make it happen.

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The rain was slapping down on the windshield with an uncharacteristically heavy splat as we pulled out of the farm driveway on the way to Saturday morning’s farmers’ market. The edges of each drop on the glass were beginning to gel and freeze, an ominous sign about the day ahead.

Bob and I had left Mom, Dad and the girls back at Sap Bush Hollow. They confronted the labor of herding the flocks into the barn so the shorn sheep could escape the unnatural weather, and so they could begin administering treatment to a suddenly growing number of hypothermic lambs.

If I can’t celebrate my fortieth for another three to five years, well heck. That just means I get to stay younger longer.

We hoped the losses wouldn’t be too great, but as we piled winter parkas, blanket-lined work pants, extra hats and gloves into the car, our pity for that day’s on-farm drama was mitigated by our own heavy hearts as we faced the coming six hours. The girls would be able to stay in by the wood fire. Mom and Dad would be able to take breaks to come in and warm up. But Bob and I would get to remain out in our market booth, trying to sell meat to what would likely be a nonexistent crowd of market-goers.

It was Memorial Day weekend, the second Saturday the Pakatakan Farmers’ Market has been open this season, and one of the most important days for all of us vendors. Our farmers’ market runs for 22 weeks each growing season, and a full 30 percent of our annual sales happen on four holiday weekends: Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Columbus Day. With the opening weekend of summer ornamented by nonstop near-freezing rain and temperatures hovering below 40 degrees, all of us were going to take a financial hit.

I put the Eagles’ song “Peaceful Easy Feeling“ on the car stereo and stare out the windshield. I hear the words “I wanna sleep with you in the desert tonight,” and silently reach out to take Bob’s hand as he drives. I turn 40 next year. I’ve been hoping to celebrate my landmark birthday by hiking in the Moab desert with him. Even though the trip is still a long way off, Bob and I have already priced out the cost of train tickets and a cabin rental. Money has been supremely tight lately, and we know the only way we’d afford the adventure is if we have an unusually good year at the market, or some other windfall.

As we head down the road facing the sleet and rain, I wonder if I’m torturing myself even thinking about such a trip. These days, we seem to run faster and faster just to stay in place economically. Forty percent of our income is required just to pay for the health insurance, the dentist, the chiropractor, the insulin, the eye doctor. Each year, the cost of those fees goes up. Meanwhile, our prices for our products reflects our costs of production. They don’t reflect our cost of living.

One couple comes by carrying their groceries in a basket Bob wove for them, praising how well it works.

Our ability to pay our bills is tied to whether everyone else can afford our lamb chops and steaks, so we need to be careful with what we charge. And today, it will be dependent on whether folks want to leave the warmth of their houses, bypass the comfort of the grocery store, pull on rubber boots, dress in layers, and come stand in the freezing rain to buy their groceries from the farmers.

The Eagles song finishes. I play it again. At least the desert is dry and sunny. I’d prefer to think about that, instead of the rushing waters flowing through the creek beds as we make the drive.

As we pull in and begin to unload, our mood is lifted by the camaraderie that comes from joining all the other vendors who face the same grim odds. We all know it will be bad. We all know it will be cold. But we show up anyway. Ours is one of the longest-running farmers’ markets in New York state, and experience has taught us that you never, never bow to the weather.

We’ve had opening days in the snow, we’ve shown up after hurricanes and floods have destroyed the surrounding villages, when rains and washouts have closed all major routes. If a vendor fails to make this commitment and has too many absences, perhaps deciding that bad weather will render his or her day too unprofitable, he or she is asked to leave the market. Our policy is that, if we want our community to commit to us, then we need to commit to them. We are open every Saturday for 22 weeks straight, no matter what.

And so Bob and I set out our roasts and sausages, arrange our yarn in the cubbies, open up boxes to display our handmade soaps, salves, and candles, straighten up our jars of honey, and set the wool blankets from our sheep out on a table. I pull on snow pants, squeeze a down parka over my winter vest and several wool sweaters, find a chair out of the wind and rain, and settle in with a novel—ready to make the most of a day that is likely to be a wash.

And the first customer comes. It is our friend, Axel. He comes every week to buy a dozen eggs. He sasses and teases us, we return the favor, and by the time he has left, my glum mood has lifted. Slowly, a few more folks trickle in. One man comes to find us, led by his young daughter, who has been pestering him nonstop for our lamb.

A few more weekly regulars pop by to pick up their pre-orders. One couple comes by carrying their groceries in a basket Bob wove for them, praising how well it works. Several families show up for the first time this year. They greet Bob and me with hugs and news about their winter. Some people don’t need to buy anything this week, but they come visit the booth just to put their arms around us and say “hi” before heading home. I lose my place in my book. We get so busy, I forget to eat lunch. I forget the cold. I forget to look at my watch.

And suddenly the day is finished, and it is time to pack up and head home to our wood stove. We are pleasantly surprised by the sales figures. It isn’t our best day ever, but we’ve brought in what we needed to keep the business on track.

We listen to different music on the way home. I still keep thinking about that trip to the desert, but as we steer through the nonstop rain and talk about different ways to improve upon our family business, keep afloat during hard financial times and ponder how we can keep the farm resilient through all these climate fluctuations, I’m reminded that my life has been a series of choices.

Perhaps I could have had work someplace where I’d have easily afforded a trip to the desert to celebrate my fortieth birthday. But I chose to work here with my family, surrounded by daily pleasures. And every Saturday for 22 weeks, Bob and I get to show up at a farmers’ market where we are greeted by customers who want us to be there, who want us to be doing what we are doing. I reckon it’ll take us a few more years before we’ll have the funds together to celebrate my fortieth the way I’m hoping. But if I can’t celebrate my fortieth for another three to five years, well heck. That just means I get to stay younger longer. And doing what we do for a living, encouraged by the folks who support us, that’s pretty easy.

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• Mono crops
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I woke up this morning and came down to my office. I should have done yoga. I should have meditated. Instead, I fixed my attention on the wood stove. It’s late May, for Pete’s sake, I shouldn’t need a fire. But I couldn’t stop shivering. I stumbled through the dark outside until I had some kindling and firewood. Without even realizing I was doing it, I came back inside, and fabricated an excuse to wake up Bob and ask for his help.

I remember realizing how all the pressures I faced in school  would fall away as I walked the mile up the road to their farm on Saturdays and Sundays.

He came downstairs bleary-eyed and dutiful, tripping over the dog bones and scraps of kid projects littering the floor. I groped my way through the curtain of laundry that was hung to dry from the tie rods on the ceiling and met him halfway. And there I fell into his arms, clung to his waist, and burst into tears.

“I had a bad dream,” I whimpered. “You left me.”

“Where’d I go?”

“Back to grad school.”

“I think that would be my idea of a bad dream. You forget how bad grad school was for me.”

“No,” I giggled, still crying, “you got tired of all this. All the mess and all the chaos, and all the busy-ness. So you just slipped away, rented a room someplace, and that was that. And I was so busy, you were gone a month before I realized it.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

And then he held me and I cried and cried and cried some more. Some days, I need the cry more than the yoga.

It’s spring. In the past six weeks, the longest stretch of time I’ve had alone with my husband has been the 45-minute drive to our farmers’ market, which opened this past weekend. He’s gone every morning to help at the farm, while I remain behind to see to homeschool lessons, weeding, yard work, planting, kids’ activities, bookkeeping, appointments, errands, customer correspondence, and fixing lunches, in between work sessions to make sausage, pâté, soap, salve, and candles for the market.

The grass has grown halfway up my shins, the kitchen cabinets seem permanently sticky from slap-dash efforts to clean up from last week’s honey bottling disaster, the dishes are piling up, soap batter has spilled and hardened to my kitchen counters, I’m riddled with guilt over explaining to Ula that she is NOT helping me out by dumping all of her plush toys in the center of the living room so that she can help me relax by performing a puppet show, and I’m beginning to wonder if Saoirse will understand long division before she turns 21. Oh, and my oldest dog is now incontinent, needs medication twice a day, refuses to take it, and confronts me at the beginning and end of each day with a locked jaw that requires a level of mutual coercion and bullying that she and I have never encountered in our 13-year friendship.

As I write all this, I think back to my life with Ruth and Sanford, elderly subsistence farmers who lived up the road from us who took me on as a granddaughter-of-choice when I was younger. Any time that I wasn’t in school I could be found up in their pastures, out in their barn, mowing their grass, or sitting at their kitchen table.

Even if I’m crying in my husband’s arms in the dark hours of an early morning, I know this is still what we want.

Ruth and Sanford were very influential in this life I’ve chosen. I remember vividly realizing how all the pressures I faced in school life would fall away as I walked the mile up the road to their farm on Saturdays and Sundays. When there, time seemed to stand still. I was able to breathe, be a part of my ecosystem, and feel entirely free. Nothing ever felt hurried. My worries vanished.

But here I am, trying to model my life after their path, and I feel breathless as I try to make my way through each day. What’s different?

Ruth and Sanford were subsistence farmers living on just a few thousand dollars per year. We’re small scale production farmers. When I knew them, there were no longer children living in their home. And when kids did live on the farm, they left on a school bus every day. I’ve chosen to homeschool mine, and have accepted the time commitment that entails. I’ve also chosen to accept the creative challenge of being a writer. But the biggest difference, I suspect, has to do with the fact that every spring, while they confronted the majority of the repairs, the tilling, the chores, the planting, and the calving, I was tucked away at school, completely oblivious to what they faced. My only exposure was on the weekends and summers. By virtue of being a child, I was spared the difficulties that all grown-ups encounter with this way of life.

Contrary to my memory, time never stood still for Ruth and Sanford. It only stood still for me because their life represented a “vacation” of sorts from my school world. And as a result, I developed an image in my mind of what this life was supposed to be: ample time on the back porch, a rocking chair with a pile of knitting, naturally well-behaved children who clean up after themselves and dutifully study their lessons without my intervention, old dogs who sigh contentedly and don’t pee on the rug, well-crafted books and essays that seem to write themselves, gardens that weed themselves, a husband who is never too busy or too tired to light a tiny fire for his wife in the pre-dawn hours of a chilly May morning.

Even if these romantic ideals can’t be realized on a daily basis, they are still important. They are my reminders of what I desire, of why I chose this path. Even if I’m crying in my husband’s arms in the dark hours of an early morning, I know this is still what we want. He wants to be outside fixing and tinkering. I want to pull the weeds. He wants to tend the bees. I want to write and teach my kids. He wants to weave baskets and stack firewood. I want to plant a garden and cook. We want to drive to our farmers’ market every Saturday, we want to see our family thrive, we want to live in this place.

So when the sticky cabinets are finally wiped down, the garden is finally planted, the chores are done, the day’s essay is written, and the sun has warmed the earth enough to allow Bob and me a brief moment to sit quietly on the porch, the respite we’ve earned will feel all that much sweeter because we will have come by it honestly, tiring ourselves doing the things we have chosen.

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Saoirse pitched a bit of a fit a few months ago when Bob and I dropped her and Ula off down at the farm with my parents. We were going home for a date night. She had a few creative works in progress on her craft table; she knew we were having lobster for dinner; we were at a good part in the book we were reading at bedtime; and she just didn’t want to be separated from her mommy.

Her jaw dropped open and she seemed incapable of a response.

I didn’t give in. I give enough hours to my children that I tend to suffer little remorse or guilt when I hand them off in order to get some time to myself or some time with my husband. But upon seeing her weeping and acting as though I was abandoning her in the streets, I decided she was old enough for me to experiment with offering a more thorough explanation.

So the next night, after she returned home and was perched on the kitchen stool across from me as I made supper, happily chatting away, I made my move.

“Saoirse,” I said, leaning across the counter, “we need to talk about something.”

“What?”

“About my leaving you down at the farm last night.”

“What about it?”

“I wanted to go home and have sex with your father.”

Her jaw dropped open and she seemed incapable of a response. I was acting from my gut on this one, and I needed to charge forward before I lost my courage.

“Look, it’s like this. Parents who like each other have sex with each other.” She gave me the grossed-out kid look.

“Oh, quit acting surprised. You know your dad and I have sex. If we never did, you wouldn’t be here. That’s part of what makes a happy marriage.” As an afterthought I added, “And a happy marriage means that your kids get a happy family life.”

Her mouth closed and she nodded. I took that as a cue that I could fumble ahead.

“And I’m madly in love with you and your sister. I love all the time I spend with you. But other parents send their kids off to school, and in other families, the kids sleep in separate bedrooms. Your dad and I don’t make you sleep in a separate bedroom, and I don’t send you away to school every day.” We have a large loft that functions as a “family bedroom” in our house.

“And while that means your dad and I get to spend a lot of great time with you, we also need time alone once in a while to take care of our marriage.”

“It’s OK, mom, I get it,” she said. “But you made sure you won’t get pregnant, right?”

This. From a nine-year-old.

But the discussion of preventing conception is not a new topic for her. While I had never, until this moment, admitted to a time and date for the actual crime, I’d never denied that we had a sex life, either. A set of cycle beads hangs from my bedside reading lamp that Saoirse and Ula have thoroughly explored and asked questions about; they’ve seen a box of condoms on Bob’s side of the bed; we’ve talked about how pregnancy happens; when it happens; the different options for contraception; the rationale behind Bob’s and my particular choices.

I simply decided early on that I wasn’t going to shy away from the questions they asked.

I never sat down to give them any formal lectures on the topic. I simply decided early on that I wasn’t going to shy away from the questions they asked. As they get older, their questions get more sophisticated, and so do my answers. I want them to be comfortable enough with their sexuality to be able to wait until the time is right. In my deepest hopes, the right time for sexual intercourse will be once they have entered into a monogamous relationship, when a pregnancy, even if unintended, can be supported appropriately. But no matter what, I believe the best way to teach sexual education is to model a healthy, happy union.

Our daughters’ sexual education is a family matter. In our household, we resist the use of conventional drugs. We resist buying GMO foods. We resist any food that has been treated with chemical fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics, or hormones. We treat our children and ourselves with herbs, reiki, massage, chiropractic care, kinesiology, and homeopathic medicines before we will allow any form of conventional medical intervention. We hope they can make similar holistic choices about their bodies when they become sexually active.

But no matter what they choose, we want to be the first people they turn to when they have questions or concerns. And since that is the case, we need to make sure the door is open for them to ask any and all questions. Even though the tips of his ears occasionally turn red, Bob does his best to answer any questions they pose to him about penises and erections. The less abashed partner, I easily tell them anything they want to know about vaginas. And we don’t hide our affection for each other. They catch us smooching in the kitchen, sigh with mock disgust when we make eyes at each other over dinner, tease us when they find us cuddled up on the couch. Living a happy life in love is the most important sexual education we can give our kids.

Which brings me around to the start of my story, and my rationale for explaining to Saoirse why I left her at the farm that night. Our conversation was wrapping up. I was scooping kale salad out of a bowl with my hands and arranging it on the dinner plates when she leaned across the counter once more.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“One more thing.”

“What is it, sweetie?”

“Please just tell me you washed your hands afterward.”

As best I can figure, Madame and Helmuth moved up here about 15 years ago upon their retirement. They promptly sought out our farm and became regular customers. Helmuth spoke very little, and Madame spoke with deliberation. They were always polite.

And then I understood. Madame didn’t disapprove of our way of life. She simply wanted the freedom to love my children.

Unlike us, they were always neat. Their house was always impeccable. Their clothing was spotless, Madame’s long white hair always in a neat twist on the back of her head. Such behavior and appearances led us to try to curtail our own invectives, to strive to spare them from the bubbling soup of emotion in which our family farm life perpetually simmers. Soon after meeting, we began carpooling together to appointments, where they’d witness our occasional outbursts of raucous laughter or, to our embarrassment, vituperation.

And yet they weren’t frightened away. They continued to make a place for us in their lives.

From a polite distance, they watched Bob and me become parents. They watched my mom and dad become grandparents. Knowing Bob and I had little money to outfit our layette, and realizing that we were keen on minimizing our ecological impact, they organized families from downstate who were looking to pass along their toys and clothes, perused the offerings at their church rummage sales, and filled our dressers and toy closet for years to come, before my first baby was even born. (Saoirse is now nine, and to this day I’ve still never had to purchase her a single pair of snow pants.) Madame and Helmuth continued to buy meat and eggs from us, and were first-hand witnesses as I moved from conventional medicine to home birthing, to the holistic care of my family, to my choice to homeschool, to my evolution as a writer with radical ideas.

And when Saoirse was five, Madame, a former French teacher, insisted on beginning lessons with my children.

I accepted, but I was resistant to the idea. My own insecurities and Madame and Helmuth’s formal demeanor led me to suspect they did not approve of our lifestyle choices. I wondered if she saw Bob and me as poor ignoramuses, targets for charity. I wondered if she felt she needed to save Saoirse from our fringe lunatic choice to keep her out of the public school system.

At the same time, I wasn’t inclined to pass up an opportunity to enrich my daughter’s education. I let my mom drive her the three miles to their house on Wednesday afternoons, where Madame and Helmuth dedicated an entire room as a salle de classe, where a pot of tea was presented with every lesson.

But I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) make Saoirse do her homework. I hadn’t taught her to write yet, and I feared that Madame disapproved of our educational tactics. I grew defensive about French lessons, perturbed whenever Madame would call to ask me questions about my plan of education. When it was my turn to drive Saoirse over, I would often forget. At the same time, in spite of her own lack of linguistic progress, Saoirse eagerly looked forward to her visits. “She’s very fancy,” she’d tell me.

Madame and Helmuth stood together picking up their chickens one afternoon when I finally burst into a spate of apologies. “I’m sorry,” I said, ready to accept that the lessons were failing.

“I can’t even get Saoirse to tell me what you do in your lessons, let alone help her with any homework.” I was ready to quit.

They both nodded in their quiet way. After a moment of awkward silence, Madame spoke slowly, softly, and carefully. “I care about your children,” she said. “I care about them very much. I have never had any of my own. And I would like to be able to feel as though they are my own grandchildren. I hope you will continue to let me teach them.”

And then I understood. Madame didn’t disapprove of our way of life. She didn’t mistrust me as an educator. She simply wanted the freedom to love my children. And so we went forward, my heart lightened by the fact that she and Helmuth only wanted to have a role in Saoirse and Ula’s lives. Wednesday afternoons became one of the most important appointments on our weekly calendar.

As Ula grew into her own readiness to learn French, Madame and I learned to teach together. She worked individually with the girls teaching vocabulary and grammar, while I worked in a separate room helping them with conversation. Helmuth would periodically interrupt the teaching schedules with requests to teach the girls how to find chanterelles and wild ramps, or with the simple choice to join us for tea and conversation. After lessons, the girls would sit and color, and Madame and I would speak in French, both of us eager to keep our skills alive. I grew to love her decorum, and as I confronted my own life dramas—from family deaths to illnesses, work stress, and homeschooling travails, I found my soul soothed by her equanimity. In turn, she endured my tattered Carhartts, disheveled hair, and perpetually bare feet (but she kept a spare pair of slippers in a drawer, just in case).

I came to cherish our Wednesday afternoons together.

And while I fully understand that nothing could go on forever, I will admit to my perpetual quiet hopes that it would, that Madame and Helmuth would see Saoirse and Ula grow into adulthood.

But the call came early last week that Helmuth had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, that he was in a coma in the hospital. We drove to the hospital to be with Madame, to say our goodbyes to Helmuth. The space was cramped, filled with friends and neighbors who’d arrived to lend their love and support. We took turns with Madame as she kept her vigil over Helmuth, until family was able to arrive that night.

Saoirse and Ula drew pictures to hang up across from Helmuth’s bed. Neighbors brought in comforting music. Members of their church came and read passages from the Bible. All of us wept. And Madame received each of us with grace. She held Saoirse and Ula, and they hugged and cried together.

With the comfort of conjugations and vocabulaire, Saoirse and Ula will be reminded that their choice to learn is an expression of love.

My compulsion in such cases is to fixate on food. Habitual “doers” such as myself need activity, and I returned home to my kitchen and channeled my energy into boiling eggs, chopping onions, making broth, searing meat. Helmuth passed away before I could even finish the broth and peel the eggs.

It goes without saying that our Wednesday French lessons were cancelled last week. Instead, Saoirse and Ula joined me in the kitchen. They, too, needed to feel as though there was something they could do. As I put together the stew and deviled eggs for Madame and her family, they worked to make a batch of brownies. Determined that there should still be color in Madame’s world, they decorated them with purple frosting and pink, yellow, and green sprinkles.

We showed up at Madame’s house later that Wednesday afternoon, carried our food up to her refrigerator, then came down and sat with her and her family.

Madame’s formality melted away. She pulled Saoirse and Ula to her, her arms around one, the other piled into her frail lap.

At the end of our visit, in an impulse to cling to the familiar and grasp for normalcy, I asked Madame if she would like me to take some of the French books home, so there would be some continuity in Saoirse and Ula’s education while Madame worked through all that she faced. She packed up a bag of books, gave me a list of assignments to complete, and we went on our way.

I left the books on the floor of my office when we got home. I was determined to try my best and deeply saddened that I would be tackling the subject alone.

But my mom and dad were visiting with Madame yesterday afternoon. And as they left, Madame gave them a message for me. “Tell Shannon that I will see her and the girls this coming Wednesday afternoon, at three o’clock.”

“She needs this now,” my mom assured me. “It’s important to her to be with the girls, to have structure in her life.” I nodded in agreement. What I failed to mention was how much I needed this myself. But I suspect Madame was fully aware of this.

And so, in spite of our loss of Helmuth, our Wednesday afternoons will continue. And with the comfort of conjugations and vocabulaire, Saoirse and Ula will be reminded how their choice to learn is an expression of love, and Madame and I will find a way to continually strengthen our fragile souls through our surprising friendship.

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Interested?

• It’s a good time to be in farming if you like to grow corn. It’s a tough time if you see yourself as a steward of the land. Shannon Hayes on why growers pressured by corn-heavy markets should hold out for crops that nourish the Earth.
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• Two recent studies concluded that organic food is no more nutritious than non-organic food. But the value of organics involves health on multiple levels, from that of farmers to eaters to the planet itself.

This article originally appeared in the author’s book, How to Design Our World for Happiness.

The biggest problem in many communities—especially low-income ones—is caused by perception more than reality. A part of town gets the reputation for being “tough,” or “declining,” which is constantly reinforced in the media and local gossip. A negative incident happening there is widely reported as more evidence of “social breakdown,” whereas the same thing occurring in another place would be thought of as “an unfortunate event” and quickly forgotten.

Grand Boulevard’s residents were not hapless victims; they were taking matters into their own hands.

Making things worse, many well-intentioned efforts to help these afflicted areas wind up stigmatizing the community even more. The whole focus is on everything that’s wrong: bad schools, bad crime, bad housing, bad gangs, bad economic opportunities. Even the people who live there come to feel negative about where they live and helpless to do anything to change things. It’s all just bad. Yet even in the most economically and socially challenged communities, there are a lot of good things going on—shared dreams, community assets, and ways that people come together. These are the building blocks to make things better.

This article is adapted from Jay Walljasper’s book, How to Design Our World for Happiness. Download the full pdf for free!

On paper, things looked bleak for the Grand Boulevard neighborhood in Chicago in the early ’90s. Eighty percent of children there lived in poverty, and a third of adults were unemployed. Yet below the surface, not visible in government statistics or a quick drive down its rundown streets, there was reason for hope. This largely African-American community of 36,000 on the city’s South Side was home to no less than 320 citizens groups working to improve life in the neighborhood.

Grand Boulevard’s residents were not just hapless victims waiting for someone from the outside to rescue them; they were taking matters into their own hands. These community groups—which ranged from church committees to senior citizen centers to mothers’ support groups—were mostly involved in the basic caretaking such as providing support for single mothers or taking in children whose parents were in prison.

Eventually many of these groups organized themselves into the Grand Boulevard Federation, which started addressing more complex issues such as creating jobs in the neighborhood and improving social services. They formed partnerships with government agencies, non-profit organizations and businesses, such as United Parcel Service, which reserved 50 part-time jobs for Grand Boulevard residents needing to get back on their feet. This made a difference in Grand  Boulevard—both in concrete economic and social measures, but also the community’s own faith that they can solve their problems.

Drawing on the abilities and insight of local residents empowers them, Kretzmann says.

“For the last 40 or 50 years we have been looking at communities in terms of their needs,” says Jody Kretzmann, co-director of the Asset Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University. “We have run into a brick wall with that approach.”

Kretzmann and his colleague John McKnight of Northwestern pioneered a new approach to urban problems that starts with looking at the assets that exist in a community, rather than just looking at what’s wrong. This empowers people, Kretzmann says, drawing on the abilities and insight of local residents to solve a neighborhood’s own problems. This does not mean, he is careful to note, that troubled neighborhoods don’t need outside help.

Kretzmann suggests all local revitalization projects begin with an assets inventory—which can be as simple as a list of what’s good about the neighborhood. Solicit the opinions of everyone, including youngsters and senior citizens, when compiling your list.

Jim Diers, a veteran activist who has held workshops throughout Seattle to help residents improve their neighborhoods, says, “The assets a neighborhood can build on range from natural features to a school playground, great stores, networks, organizations, artists, and the whole range of human and financial resources, energy, creativity, and ideas. Whether it’s a restaurant with especially delicious food, a gigantic cedar tree, or a longtime resident, a neighborhood treasure is something that makes us glad we live where we do.”

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This article originally appeared in the author’s book, How to Design Our World for Happiness.

Politicians and activists devoted to deep slashes in government spending have an easy answer when asked what happens to people whose lives and livelihoods depend on public programs. They point to volunteerism—the tradition of people taking care of each other, which has sustained human civilization for millennia.

It’s an attractive idea, which evokes the spirit of the commons. Volunteers working largely outside the realm of government—neighborhood organizations, local fire brigades, blood banks, and other civic initiatives—are obvious examples of commons-based sharing and caring.

This article is adapted from Jay Walljasper’s book, How to Design Our World for Happiness. Download the full pdf for free!

Theoretically you could picture a society based upon strong incentives for everyday citizens to provide the services now provided by federal, state, and local governments—everything from police protection to the Public Health Service. To actually create such a society, however, would mean some sweeping changes to current economic and social policies.

To truly encourage widespread volunteerism, we’d need to make sure that everyone (not just the well-to-do) have the time to do it. Most people today are working longer hours for less pay and are frantic just to get through the day. Finding extra time in their crunched schedules to manage upkeep at the local park or take care of elderly neighbors looks impossible.

Here are four ways we could create a strong society based on America’s great tradition of volunteerism.

• Dramatically expanded vacation time and family-leave benefits, and the institution of a four-day workweek—along with stringent enforcement of overtime provisions for all people working more than 40 hours a week.
• A return to the days of the family wage—the period before the 1970s when a middle-class household could get by on one worker’s wages. And unlike those days, minorities and low-wage workers would not be excluded from this social contract. Since we live in a different era now, it’s likely that many couples today would elect to both work half time. But any way you want to do it, this would trigger a volcanic eruption of volunteers.
• A universal national health care system that goes beyond the insurance reforms of Obamacare.
• Most important of all would be a major boost in the minimum wage so that Americans at all rungs of the social ladder would not need to devote all their time and energy to paid work.

These kind of pro-volunteer, pro-commons policies also depend on government playing an important role: Enforcing vacation, family leave, work hours and minimum wage laws, as well as making sure everyone receives adequate health care coverage. Volunteers will not magically appear without positive measures to ensure that all people have time for the common good.

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You are celebrating your birthday at your favorite restaurant and you’ve just ordered a tasty, locally grown organic meal.  You savor the food, while feeling good that you are contributing to a better world.  What could be better?

Well, for starters: the conditions of the people serving and busing your table.

Most don’t make a living wage.  Indeed, most of your servers work for the same minimum wage they’ve gotten for 22 years: $2.13 an hour.  That’s right: no increase for a generation.  Therefore, most workers have no choice but to work if they’re sick because nine out of ten don’t receive paid sick leave.  Yes, if you are reading this now because you’re sick at home, you may well have caught your disease from a sick restaurant employee who had no choice but to work.

There is a new chilling-yet-ultimately-hopeful book that tells the story of the millions who toil to serve us in restaurants: Behind the Kitchen Door.   It is hopeful because its dynamo author, Saru Jayaraman, and dozens of courageous restaurant workers created a group that is fighting for their rights: the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC).

The book opens on September 11, 2001, when 73 workers were killed as the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center crashed to earth. Another 250 men and women who were employed by Windows on the World were suddenly without jobs.

ROC was birthed by Saru and several of the former Windows workers.  ROC’s other co-director, Fekkak Mamdouh, is a former waiter with a sparkle in his eye.  Fekkah was a union leader of the Windows workers. The Windows owner promised his former workers who survived 9-11 that he would hire them back, but failed to do so when he opened a new restaurant uptown.  After a creative protest by the former workers, the owner recanted and offered most of the Windows workers jobs.  A New York Times story gave publicity to the victory and countless other restaurant workers came calling at ROC’s door for help.

The demand for ROC’s services is almost endless since there are more than 10 million restaurant workers in the United States, and since this work embraces 7 of the 11 poorest paid job categories in the nation.  So with help from allies, workers began to organize to help one another.  Within a few years, ROC was spreading to other cities.  Today, there are 26 chapters in 23 states, with over 10,000 members.

Their goals are eminently winnable: increase the minimum wage overall, and increase the  minimum wage for workers who get tips.  President Obama finally endorsed an increase in the minimum wage in his State of the Union address.  Two great champions of workers’ rights, Congressman George Miller and Senator Tom Harkin, followed suit with a joint effort to raise the minimum wage to $10.10/hour, up from its current level of $7.25.  The Miller and Harkin bill would raise the tipped workers’ minimum wage to 70 percent of the overall minimum wage. In a separate bill, Congresswoman Donna Edwards, herself a former restaurant worker, has introduced a WAGES Act that would raise the minimum tipped wage.

ROC is also pressing for restaurants to grant their workers paid sick leave.  Indeed, ROC has helped win legislation for paid sick leave in several cities. They’re working against wage theft and sexual harassment on the job—both all too common in this sector. ROC is also in the middle of the fight for comprehensive immigration reform that has a real chance of being passed into law by the U.S. Congress this year.

Restaurant workers in the United States are part of a much larger chain of tens of millions of workers across the globe who plant, harvest, process, cook, and serve the food that we eat.  But most of the workers along this chain are invisible to us, the final consumers.

The invisible people start with those who grow and pick the fruits and vegetables on typically large farms.  Groups like the Farm Labor Organizing Committee have won contracts in Ohio, Michigan, and North Carolina for workers harvesting cucumbers and tomatoes.  Unions like the United Food and Commercial Workers work to bring justice to the meat and other processing plants.

Care About Your Food? Then Care About Your Farmworkers Too
It’s organic. It’s local. But did the workers who picked it have health insurance?

Up and down the food chain, the Slow Food movement has advanced notions of “just food” and admonishes eaters to “vote with their forks” in helping advance healthy food and just work conditions. ROC also works with restaurants like Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C., that are embracing higher wages and paid sick leave, and ROC regularly updates a diners’ guide to help us all make smart choices on where we eat, and how we can help their struggle.  It even gives tips on what to say to restaurant managers as you leave a particularly nice meal. ROC also encourages you to visit The Welcome Table for more creative ideas on how you can help.

Beyond the food chain, ROC is part of a larger United Workers Congress that is linking their fight to groups like Jobs with Justice and the National Domestic Workers Alliance that are working with nannies, caregivers, taxi drivers, and others who are denied basic worker rights.

We owe Saru and Fekkah and ROC members a debt of gratitude for opening the kitchen door for the rest of us, and giving us an opportunity to build solidarity with those who make our lives more joyful.

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Interested?

• Although a ballot initiative to label foods containing genetically modified organisms failed in California, the organizers behind the measure say their movement is better organized and larger than ever before.
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I’m not much of a kid person. I’m more of a dog person. You know my type…the woman who stops strangers on the street to coo over their pet; the one who almost always has a four legged copilot when driving around town; who, when invited to dinner at someone’s house, is likely to spend more time on the floor chatting with the dog than visiting with the hosts.

“Excuse me,” she said. “But I was wondering what goblins ate.”

Kids don’t enter my heart so easily. Naturally, I am enthralled with my own children, but my enthusiasm for other people’s children pales in comparison to my interest in their dogs. I don’t dislike kids outright—at least, not now that I have experienced my own. But I’m definitely not the warm, fuzzy mom who welcomes all children to her breast. I connect with grown-ups and dogs far more easily than I do with other people’s children.

So I really didn’t expect to develop a connection to Ania. She was a kid, like any other, and she showed up at the farm one day with her mom to get some meat. She and Saoirse were both four. Ania, at that particular time, was very interested in the subject of goblins. And she w­anted to know more about their diet. Saoirse assured her that, since I know a lot about what people should and shouldn’t eat, and since we had been reading a book about goblins, I was probably the most informed grown-up to consult on the subject.

Next thing I knew, there was a little girl with an intensely serious expression at my elbow, gently tapping my arm as I added up purchases for another customer. I put down the short ribs I was was working with, turned my attention to her, and met her gaze.

“Excuse me,” she said, in a most polite tone. “But I was wondering what goblins ate, and she,” Ania pointed to Saoirse, “thought you would know.”

“Compost, mostly,” was my quick reply. “But sometimes, for a special treat, raw onions and sauerkraut.” Satisfied (briefly), Ania turned her attention back to Saoirse, and they resumed their discussion. I went back to taking care of my customers, but I answered many more questions about the goblin diet before the end of the afternoon.

Saoirse and Ania became best friends. They have spent the last six years of their childhood as Harry and Hermione, Ivy and Bean, Percy and Annabeth. When her mom gave birth to triplets, we would take Ania to museums, take her out to dinner, take her into our home when one of her baby brothers was hospitalized with medical complications. We would take her dog, Nicky, too, whenever it was needed.

It was easy for me to accommodate Nicky. It surprised me how well I could accommodate Ania.

Despite my aversion to other people’s children, when she came to visit our house, Ania felt like one of my own. To be honest, she never really gave me a choice. She has been pesky that way. She would wait until Saoirse and Ula would start to bicker over a toy, or over what part one of them would play in the next fantasy game, then sneak away into the kitchen.

She’d scramble up on the stool to discuss the finer points of the present bickering match; or she would ask to help chop, stir, or mix. If she slept over at our house, she had an annoying habit of waking me up in the middle of the night, for myriad reasons. Sometimes to be sick, sometimes to chat, sometimes to ask me to read to her. When the last baby in her family was born two years ago, she would wake me up and just ask me to hold her.

I learned to surrender my own personal schedule when Ania came to visit. She eventually managed to sleep through the night, but then she would wake up at four in the morning, apparently craving conversation or private time with me. While it seemed she was coming to our house to play with Saoirse, she soon made it clear that the purpose of the visit was to lend her spirit to our entire family. She wanted to be with Saoirse. She wanted to make time to play with Ula. She expected to have conversations with Bob. She wanted alone time with me.

And then Ania’s parents called me a few weeks ago. Her dad had gotten a new job. They were all moving to California.

I know this isn’t my child. But at that moment, I felt as though someone had taken a knife to my stomach. Unable to control my emotions, I began to sob right there on the telephone. I hung up, found Saoirse, and we cried for three straight hours.

And the spontaneous outbursts of tears have continued ever since. We feel as though we are losing a member of our family.

We are trying to assure ourselves that this is not the end of Saoirse and Ania’s friendship. We try to encourage them to call each other, to chat live over the computer so that they can still feel close after the move finally happens. But their relationship has not developed that way. They are used to being side by side, shooting arrows at targets, experimenting with homemade lava lamps, building their own puppet theaters. They are not used to thinking of their friendship in terms of the exchange of electrons. I am not used to it, either. I am used to having her messing up my kitchen, rummaging through my fabric bags, waking me up in the middle of the night.

Somewhere, in spite of my aversion to children, I became a kid person. In spite of my willingness to mother only my own, I had welcomed another child from the community as an honorary member of my family. I came to love hearing her talk about her school adventures, about her wonderful big family, and the escapades of all her brothers and sisters. I would watch her and Saoirse stand side by side, growing tall and beautiful together, with pride in my heart over both of them. Maybe I chose to have only two children. But by living in this place, committing to bring my family up as part of this community, without even realizing it, I have adopted more. I have promised to care of my children’s friends as though they were my own.

Ania came to spend the night with us last week. In spite of the impending move in less than a month, she and Saoirse resumed their play as always. They battled Greek monsters, dressed up in costumes, built forts and fairy houses in the woods. I watched them, my heart fragile, from the kitchen window. When I couldn’t bear my sadness any longer, I would slip out to the raspberry patch to gather berries and allow myself a good cry.

I lose the child. But I get the dog.

When Ania woke up at four the next morning, I willingly slipped out of bed. I took her outside, and we went for a walk. When we came back in, she asked if she could help in the kitchen. I put her to work helping me make head cheese. I drank in every little moment I could get with this child. She pestered me with questions about pig noses and eyeballs. I willingly answered. I wondered if they would be good goblin food.

After a few hours, she told me she was sleepy again, and climbed the stairs to return to her bed between Saoirse and Ula.

I stayed up. In my prayers I wished her safe travels and every happiness. It is time for me to let her go, as much as I don’t want to. But she and her parents have decided that Nicky would be happier living with us than he would be in California. So I lose the child. But I get the dog.

As I write this essay and think about how much I will miss my daughter’s friend, about how I am going to help Saoirse move through this, he nudges my elbow to comfort me. He looks me in the eye, a serious expression on his face, and seems to be asking if I know anything about what goblins eat. I explain to him about compost, raw onions, and sauerkraut. He bends down to bite at a flea. Then he heads out to see what’s in my compost the goblins would be interested in. Not the response I was hoping for, but I get it.

It’s a good thing that, in the end, I’m really more of a dog person.

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Opting for a life of gainful unemployment—one directed by entrepreneurship, agriculture, and other pursuits of the heart—prompts a lot of questions from folks who are curious about it. And the one that comes most frequently is, “What are the greatest challenges?”

The greatest challenge in our family is negotiating among competing joys.

I think I know the answers they are anticipating: working long hours trying to preserve the harvest, or standing on one’s feet all day in the cutting room, or getting up early to haul products to market, or having to be tied to the kitchen table five days every week for homeschooling. But the answer I have is always the same.

The greatest challenge in our family is negotiating among competing joys.

It sounds pretty wonderful or even impossible. But competing joys are the theme of our life. If we are walking fence lines it is because we want to be keeping livestock. If we are hauling meat, it is because we want to go to the farmers market. If I am up early in the morning, it is because I want to write. If I am sitting at the kitchen table every day with my daughters, it is because I want to teach them. If we are washing a lot of big pots and pans, it is because we want to eat well. If there is dirt under our nails, it is because we want to work in the garden.

The livestock bring us joy. The meat tastes delicious. The farmers market is a source of deep pleasure. The writing feeds my soul. The homeschooling nourishes our minds and hearts. The garden fills our table and is as pleasurable to gaze upon as an ocean view.

This is a life built intentionally, where dreams manifest through choices. But the challenge to negotiate among competing joys is very real. Gardens keep growing, livestock require constant tending, kids keep learning, ideas keep flowing, people keep eating. None of it ever stops, and at any moment of the day, any of these joys may require attention. And so the day grows long. And we stretch our bodies to a breaking point. Muscles tear. Backs wrench. Eyes strain. Knees buckle. And the joyous activity transmogrifies into a task, and the day suddenly requires a to-do list. The week demands a tactical strategy.

It is August. It is the time of year when all of these joys come to a head, where the intensity of summer crashes head-on with the urgency of preparing for winter. I long to have just one more day lounging beside a water’s edge with my girls, but instead stare down the mountain of firewood that needs to be stacked; clutter my desk with pre-orders from my customers; struggle to meet my writing deadlines; try to keep up with the fat to be rendered for the production of candles, soaps, and salves; fill up my kitchen with the water bath canners and the pressure canner and a multitude of jars; perpetually rearrange my freezer to hold more winter food; and struggle to find a few quiet moments to prepare for the start of the girls’ lessons, less than three weeks away.

I maintain my energy by remembering I am doing what makes me happy.

There are two secrets to getting it all done. The first is to remember that they are joys. These are the ways I have chosen to fill my life. When I am standing before a bushel of beets or facing a mountain of peaches to scald and skin, or preparing to stack that first armload of firewood, I cannot think about completing the task. I cannot think about what must be done after. I must think about the fact that I have chosen to do it, that I am where I want to be. I maintain my energy by remembering I am doing what makes me happy, and allowing my mind to slip into a state of blissful reverie as my body enjoys the physical pleasures of the task.

The second secret is to look forward to the coming winter. The days are growing shorter. The sunlight less intense. “The rest will come then,” we constantly assure ourselves. Or mother nature will hand us a “free day” card. She will make it too hot to work or fill a day with rain that keeps me indoors beside my knitting basket and a novel, that allows Bob to weave rather than clean out chicken pens, that lets Pop Pop postpone deworming the sheep, that gives Grammie a break from the garden.

But mother nature can be a fickle field boss. The winter rest is never as long as I wish it to be. And lately she has handed us one glorious day after the next and blessed us with rains only as we slept, making each morning fresh for growing and laboring. No rest is in sight until November. And while taking pleasures in the task helps the body to work far longer and produce far more than most people typically accomplish, it can be a bit like taking a pain reliever to mask injury to enable further strain.

This life is still about competing joys. There are joyful labors, and there are joyful rests. The balance between them must be achieved.

If there is a lesson we have yet to master, it is to honor the nature within our bodies, to recognize that, just because we like what we are doing, that does not mean we can perform without rest.

It is true that we do not live this way because we have to. We live this way because we want to. But we must take that same truth and apply it to our rest and recuperation. We must choose those things now, when we want them, before they become compulsory. Otherwise, this life built by intention and choice will suddenly be dictated by requirements for medical care and rehabilitation.

This life is about competing joys. There are joyful labors, and there are joyful rests. The balance between them must be achieved. And right now, thinking all this over, I think it is time to choose in favor of the joyful rest. Today, I will choose only those tasks that enable me to breathe most deeply. Maybe I won’t wait for rain to pick up my knitting or my book. Perhaps today I will knit and read in the sunshine … as soon as I’ve made a dent in that wood pile….

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A friend of mine once described my home as “a houseful of doers.” At any moment in time, there is a pot on the stove, dishes in the sink, a knitting project next to a rocking chair, a half-woven basket on a work counter, soaps lined up and aging beside it, candle-making supplies neatly piled in the corner, canning supplies lined up on benches, fabric crated in Rubbermaid totes stacked beside a sewing table, research books and articles piled on every side table and beside the toilet.

I’m running out of wall space. I’m running out of storage space. And I face another year of creativity.

That’s just Bob’s and my stuff. Then there’s the kids. Each girl has her own craft space: tables blotted with colorful splotches of spilled paint, made sparkly by a few glitter accidents and uniquely textured with crayon wax drippings.

These tables are rarely cleared. They are littered with paintings, sculptures, unfinished embroidery samplers, beading projects, weaving projects, knitting projects, sewing projects, and mud projects. Those projects that are actually seen through to completion then find their way to my kitchen counters, the refrigerator, my bedstand, and absolutely every wall my house.

In all sincerity, while I’ve never seen it promoted in any glossy magazine, I like the “shabby homeschool” look for interior design. But I’m running out of wall space. I’m running out of storage space. And I face another year of creativity.

Bob and I stealthily began breaking down a few of the household art exhibits. The collection of capital letters decorated with macaroni and Rickrack trim went out with the trash. The best paintings and crayon drawings were salvaged, but the rest went into the fire bin, carefully hidden beneath a stack of newspapers. The cardboard city that was slowly taking over the bedroom space was broken down for recycling.

Each time I select a piece for discard, I am wracked with guilt. I think back to the first days I held newborn Saoirse in my arms. Customers would visit the farm, coo over the baby, then admonish me repeatedly with what I have come to call “the lecture”: “Hold on to this! Cherish everything! Take lots of pictures! Save all their beautiful artwork! The time flies, and pretty soon you’ll be missing all this!”

I hear these words as I remove crayon-colored pictures curling up at the edges that are taped beside the bathroom mirror. And I feel as though, somehow, by throwing out a large percentage of my children’s artwork, by going through their drawers and removing worn-through garments, by pulling out abandoned knitting efforts and rewinding the yarn for another use, I am somehow flouting the wisdom that has rained down from every parent who has gone before me.

It is good to cherish the past, but equally important to make room for enjoying the present and the future.

The truth is, as soon as I had a six-month-old baby, I no longer missed having a newborn. And as soon as I had a one-year-old baby, I no longer missed having a six-month-old. As soon as I had a walking, talking toddler, I no longer missed having a baby at all. And now that I have a ten-year-old and a six-year-old, I definitely don’t miss having toddlers.

I look back at a few of the photos now and then, and they certainly make me smile. But the more engrossed I am in my life with these children, the less I think about the past and the more I immerse myself in enjoying the present. It is this thought that pushes me forward and helps me override the guilty thought that by refusing to hold on to every artifact of my daughters’ childhood I am somehow destroying memories and flouting the divine gift of family that has so enriched my world.

I pull down the picture. With my fingernail, I begin scraping away the bit of tape that held it to the wall. I assuage my guilt by reminding myself that I am making room for this year’s projects. I am clearing space so that we can all celebrate Saoirse’s and Ula’s newest creative endeavors. It is good to cherish the past, but equally important to make room for enjoying the present and the future.

Written plainly across my aging face is my truest memory book.

But what of that past? The curled-up crayon drawing is still in my hand. I remember the day they made it. They had decided they were opening a beauty salon, and decorated the bathroom with drawings and paintings of stylish women sporting trendy haircuts. If I throw out that picture, where will that memory go?

And then, I catch a glimpse of my own image in the bathroom mirror. My face has changed dramatically since I had Saoirse ten years ago. My own youthful skin is slowly giving way to smile lines and crows’ feet, evidence of the years I’ve spent grinning, giggling and laughing with these children. And there, written plainly across my aging face, is my truest memory book. I cannot hold on to each and every slip of paper, to each and every shred of fabric, to each and every knitting project, shed tear, spill, impromptu song, music lesson, snuggle, or kiss.

All of them drift away. And I must keep physical and emotional space in my home and in my spirit to allow new ones to enter. But if I do, the lines on my face will capture all of it somehow, and when I gaze at myself and see those slowly emerging signs of age, I will know that I have lived well, and that I have enjoyed every moment.

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I turned 40 this past week. Bob knows better than to abrade my spirit with the social stress of a birthday party. My perfect jubilee is one spent cloistered away from the world, allowed to celebrate with the forest, my family, my dogs, and my thoughts.

Part of turning 40 is about being fearless enough to face my deepest, most secret dreams and to bring them out into the world.

Turning 40 has absorbed a lot of my attention in recent months. I have a history of being rather maudlin at birthdays, rueing the passage of my life (a pattern that began when I turned 10). I decided last summer that if I didn’t want to hit a landmark year and spend the day wallowing in sorrow, then I needed to make a gift to myself.

I had to choose something that would buoy my spirits, engage my mind, fuel my creative fire. It needed to frighten me with a challenge that, earlier on my path, might have seemed insurmountable.

It needed to be something I had secretly wanted my whole life.

Thus, to celebrate turning 40, I chose to take the whole winter off to write my first novel.

But a mother of two on a family farm doesn’t do such a thing. Instead, I take an hour or two each day. Then I referee over bicker matches, arrange schedules, help with breakfast preparations, walk the dogs, teach my children, fix lunch. And in this particular year, confronted with labor- and age-induced injuries on our family farm, as the strongest adult (for the moment), I find myself spending more time splitting wood, throwing hay, chipping ice out of frozen buckets, and carrying meat boxes.

On the morning of my birthday, Dad had an appointment at the hospital and I knew I needed to be at the farm before I could even have a celebratory cup of coffee with Bob and the girls. But I woke in the predawn hours, long before the cattle stirred and the sheep began their morning chorus. And I gave myself the gift of sitting down to work at my novel.

Then I drove to the farm and greeted the cows, chickens, and sheep. I laid down fresh bedding for the hens, poured water slowly from a bucket so the red Devon steer could stick his tongue in the falling stream (he really enjoys that), stopped and gazed at the sun streaming through the cracks in the barn as it lighted the floating hay chaff, spotlighting its dance in the winter air. I puttered about the barnyard until my parents came home from the hospital. Seeing Dad smile with temporary relief from his pain, I took my leave and headed home.

I removed my barn boots and coveralls, pulled off my hat and gloves, then found my way to my little rocking chair that sits in a sunlit corner of the house. And there, the girls flocked around me, little chicks, their bodies in a confused tizzy with an eagerness to nuzzle under their mother hen, but equally eager to chirp, dance, and make a celebration. My lap was soon piled with colored drawings, handmade birthday cards, and baked clay jewelry and coiled pots.

Bob sat quietly in the chair opposite, his kind brown eyes taking in the entire scene. Then he brought out a box and set it on my lap. In it was a sculpture of an Iroquois woman, a burden strap around her head, a bundle of sticks on her back. And beside it, a poem he had written:

Carrying Home

The sleet whispers to the husks of beech leaves
as she passes before the unblinking eyesof somnolent aspens
who have relented their bones to her use,
kept dry above the coveting snow.

Each footfall chosen and deliberate,
she leans from her load
dwelling where its weight, dragging backward
is poised against her own, drawing ahead
on the path she has cleaved with her wanderings.

Her heart sings its song with quiet certainty,
her brow bears its burden, resolute and knowing
that the sentient thicket and woodland always intended
that she carry home the blaze of their autumn fires
to be reawakened as the light and warmth of her hearth.

I looked up at him, my eyes growing watery. “To celebrate your burdens,” he whispered, then brushed my lips with his own.

And, with his help, I see the significance of turning 40. One part is about being grown-up enough, confident enough, fearless enough to face my deepest, most secret dreams and to bring them out into the world.

And the other part is to embrace all those forces that seemingly work against those dreams, those burdens I have chosen by the act of living and surrendering myself to those that I love.

Celebrate the dreams. Celebrate the burdens, too. For it is in that delicious tension point—where dreams pull forward against the backward draw of one’s burdens, where life becomes a beautiful work of art.

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I recently saw the Hollywood blockbuster film Elysium, directed by Neill Blomkamp (District 9) and starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster. The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in 2154, degraded by ecological disasters and extreme inequalities of wealth.

Elysium is both a metaphor for immigration but also a dire warning about our society’s extreme inequalities of wealth

In the film, the super-rich have relocated to the ultimate gated community, a pristine orbital station called “Elysium,” which is based on location shots from Malibu, Calif., and replete with turquoise swimming pools and palatial mansions. On Elysium, all physical illnesses are instantly cured by climbing into a “med-bay,” a contraption that looks like a designer MRI machine. As a result, life expectancy is three time longer on Elysium than on earth.

Which brings us to the film’s scenes of earth, which were filmed in a populated garbage dump in Mexico City. There, people dream of getting to Elysium to cure their cancers and other illnesses. Max DeCosta, played by Matt Damon, is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation and his only chance of survival is to get to Elysium. In his quest to get to Elysium, he becomes an unwitting hero.

Elysium is a metaphor for immigration but also a dire warning about our society’s extreme inequalities of wealth. I recommend it for the powerful images of science fiction inequality—if you can stomach the Hollywood combat and chase scenes. If you abhor action pictures, I recommend the film’s amusing website, which includes advertisements for businesses like “Elysium Realty,” whose slogan is “Live Above It All,” and lists homes starting at $250 million.

The antidote to the Elysium economy comes in the form of a new documentary, Inequality for All, which appears in theaters on Friday, September 27. The documentary stars former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who serves as storyteller and tour guide.

The filmmakers hope that Inequality for All will give the economic justice movement boost, similar to the one the climate movement got from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

This is a powerful documentary, in part because the dramatic realities of U.S. inequality are revealed with powerful graphics, memorable examples, and Reich’s self-effacing humor. We are now living through a second “Gilded Age,” a period of extreme wealth inequality that mirrors the dizzying disparities that came after the Industrial Revolution, from the 1890s to 1920.

A recent study by economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty reveals that the top 10 percent of U.S. income earners took home more than 50 percent of all income in 2012, the highest share recorded since modern data collection on income began in 1917.

Inequality for All offers a number of possible solutions for this problem, such as raising the minimum wage, campaign finance reform, restoring tax progressivity, and expanding workers rights to organize and join unions. But as I argue in my book, 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World, we need to press for bold policies to reduce the concentration of wealth and power.

To reverse our drift toward greater inequality we need a robust inheritance or estate tax that would limit intergenerational transfers of wealth larger than $50 million—and the elimination of offshore tax havens, which enable trillions of dollars in income to escape taxation and accountability.

Inequality for All is blessed with backing from the Weinstein Company, a major Hollywood studio, and opens in 25 cities on September 27. But even the best documentaries only get a couple of days in commercial theaters unless the audiences turn out.

Now its up to us: Spread the word and organize a group of friends to go see Inequality for All.

I’m not much of a drinker, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a time and a place for it.

It was true that we hadn’t eaten all day. But unless we took all the time we needed, our problems would only multiply.

For me, that would be a dirty martini with Bob on the front deck on Saturday evening, after our farmers’ market ends. Since our long market day starts early, Bob is absolved from Saturday evening chores, and time is on our side. We sit together, chat sporadically, listen to Prairie Home Companion, and enjoy the girls’ antics, but mostly study the waning light as it illuminates different parts of the forest along the eastern edge of our property. That ritual is followed by the next joy of the night, a roasted chicken dinner, and then by our once-a-week dessert. Saturday night is a celebration we look forward to all week long.

But last Saturday, Mom and Dad were gone on vacation. We had someone come in to do the afternoon chores for us, but the thunderheads on the horizon suggested that there would be a strong downpour sometime in the night, and the chickens would need to be herded into their shelters beforehand.

“Ok, let’s do it now,” I urged him, once we’d unpacked from the market, “so we can go home and not come back.”

“No,” he shook his head, grimacing at the skyline. “It’s still too hot. We need to wait until dusk.”

I sighed. That meant Saturday martinis would be replaced by herbal tea. But at least we’d get to watch the light from the deck, listen to the radio, and enjoy a good dinner.

But when we got home, we had another surprise waiting for us. A bear had broken through our electric fencing and attacked one of our beehives. Bob madly began trying to reconstruct an ad hoc hive to keep the bees from abandoning the site, while the outraged worker bees took their rage out upon his legs and ankles. I watched briefly from the safety of our screen porch, then set about calling every one of our beekeeping friends and neighbors to find hives and helpful advice.

Carol up at Heather Ridge Farm patiently talked me through the procedure of nailing and strapping the remaining hives closed. We would have to wait until dark. And we couldn’t procrastinate. The bear would be back.

The martini was already out of the picture. There went the herbal tea as well. There went the nice dinner. And if we were to be so busy, it wouldn’t be worth bothering with dessert, either.

Mark and Lissa down the road had a spare hive they weren’t using. Heather next door told me to bring the kids over and she’d watch them while we ran about trying to fix things.

I brought the girls down to Heather’s cabin. I apologized for interrupting their Saturday night. She shrugged her shoulders. “Take all the time you need.”

Bob and I drove down to the farm to exchange the car for the pickup before heading out to Mark and Lissa’s. Lissa led us through her barn to find all the pieces, then helped us load the hive into the truck.

“We’ll try to get this back as soon as possible,” Bob assured her.

“No,” she waved her hand at us. “Take all the time you need.”

By this point, the light was beginning to fade and the intense heat of the day was finally letting up. We drove to the farm to put the chickens in. As we arrived in the back field, we were greeted by the calls of a few evening thrushes, and the sight of contented, happy chickens just settling in for the night. We both sat quietly for a moment in the truck, studying those darkening storm clouds. The impulse was to rush, to rouse the birds and hustle them into their shelters as quickly as possible, to get back to fixing this beehive mess, to get some supper, and to find a way to move our hives out of the danger zone before thunder, lightning, and a return visit from a bear with a sweet tooth.

Time is the most essential ingredient when producing food in a sustainable fashion.

But rushing, in this business, results in further complications and disasters. A bird could be injured or killed, one of us could fall and get hurt, or our nervous energy could just make the livestock unwilling to comply with our herding. We needed that second in the truck to transition, to lose our tension and to stop worrying.

I repeated in my head the words both Heather and Lissa had said: “Take all the time you need.”

I gave thanks that I live in a community where folks understand the nature of growing food.

That’s a funny quirk about this business we are in. Urgency comes often in the throes of the growing season, but a panicked response will inevitably create more urgency and, possibly, catastrophes. As we slowly coaxed and scuttled the birds into their shelters for the night, talking softly, moving with care, I thought about the stereotype of the rural farmer—the plodding bloke who speaks slowly, who never seems in a hurry, whose brain function seems moronic when compared to his urban cousin. It was true that we could hear thunder rumbling. It was true that the bear would come back. It was true that we hadn’t eaten all day. But unless we took all the time we needed, our problems would only increase in number.

It was a long night. We worked until well after dark, then breathed a sigh of relief once the storm finally rumbled its way into our front field. We trusted that not even a bear would be interested in coming out in thunder and lightning. Bob rigged up lights to shine on the hives and spent the remainder of the night on the screen porch, just to be certain. We slept a few hours, then woke before the sun came up to finish moving the hives.

And in the end, we got it all done. The chickens were safe. The undamaged hives were relocated. The angry workers got a new hive (although they are still inclined to make a punitive sting now and then).

As I reflect over this past weekend, I recognize how time is the most essential ingredient when producing food in a sustainable fashion. But it cannot be saved. It must be taken.

Watches and clocks mean little. So long as something is growing, daylight and weather are the arbiters of the schedule.

As for the martini and the roast chicken and the Saturday night desserts, there will always be next Saturday. And if not, come next winter, we’ll make up for it beside the fireplace, when we can take all the time we need.

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Sooner or later the question comes up, whether it is between two friends sharing a pot of stew made from local grassfed beef and their garden harvest, livestock farmers gathered on a pasture walk, neighbors working together to tend a flock of backyard chickens, or organic vegetable producers discussing yields at a conference.

“But can we feed the world this way?”

As we try to move humanity away from dominant power regimes and thoughtless extraction of the earth’s resources, toward a way of life that honors the earth and all of her creatures, I think this is the most maddening question we can be asking ourselves.

Nevertheless, we’ve all been conditioned to reflexively turn to this question as we challenge our methods and consider new paths toward sustainability.

The local producer’s job was to support the family, the community, and his or her bioregion–not the world.

However, 75 or 100 years ago, such a question would never have entered into our dialogue. To ask a local farmer or homesteader how his or her production methods were going to feed the world would have been absurd. The local producer’s job was to support the family, the community, and his or her bioregion–not the world.

But following World War II, with the onset of the “Green Revolution,” feeding the world became a national mantra. It was a ubiquitous “good” that handily justified the discovery that the petrochemicals used in warfare could find postwar applications if dumped on our food supply.

“Feeding the world” consoled farmers as they incurred mountains of debt to afford the fossil-fuel-intensive machinery and expansive acreage that would enable them to crank out tons of food for which they would garner increasingly lower prices. “Feeding the world” was the elixir offered as our grandparents attempted to adjust their palates to a food supply that was suddenly tasteless as local food disappeared from the market. “Feeding the world” was the slogan tossed about as rural people the world over surrendered ties to the land, moved to cities, and trusted that the food system would take care of itself. “Feeding the world” was the background tune playing in the bank, on the car radio of the seed salesman, in the office of the accountant as farmers were counseled to “get big or get out,” to expand their production and change their growing practices to participate in a global food supply, rather than a regional one. “Feeding the world” was the motto that let Americans turn their heads and not notice the polluted waters, the increasing severity of floods, soil loss, or the fact that the little farm next door had suddenly disappeared.

There is no such thing as a universally applicable production practice nor a universally acceptable diet.

But those petrochemicals and farming practices that feed the world are washing away our topsoil and leaving what remains nutritionally deficient. Ironically, the goal to feed the world has led to a form of agriculture that has made it increasingly difficult for the people of the world to feed themselves. And the fact that fossil fuels are not quite as abundant as they once were, nor as cheap, means that even if we could generate yields of global proportions in perpetuity, we wouldn’t be able to deliver the goods in any cost-effective manner.

Can the local, sustainable food movement in the United States feed the world? Hell, no. Nor can the industrial agricultural paradigm. No one can feed the world. One country cannot do it, nor can any specific model of production. The earth must be allowed to reclaim its natural productivity. That’s why we need local and regional food systems, designed to work harmoniously with local ecosystems. While certain ecological lessons may apply, it would be absurd to think what works for us here in upstate New York for producing food is going to necessarily work in Africa. Heck, many of the methods that work on farms 10 miles from our house won’t work on our steep hillside farm. There is no such thing as a universally applicable production practice nor a universally acceptable diet.

Rather than asking farmers if the methods they use can feed the world, we should ask ourselves, “Do my choices help the world to feed itself?”

This is not to say that we shouldn’t be concerned about global starvation. But if enabling everybody to have access to good, nutritious food is really our goal, we need to look deeper than crop yields and feed conversion ratios. In addition to the complicated politics involved, we need to examine our individual actions.

How are our daily habits impacting humanity’s access to a nutritious food supply? Our daily sustenance should not require that other people in the world go without nourishment. Our daily sustenance should not demand excessive fossil fuels for growing, processing, and transporting the food to our tables. Beyond that, our consumption habits ideally should not be requiring people in foreign lands to destroy their own access to clean water and fertile soils for the sake of dying our clothing, building our electronics, or making our children’s toys.

Feeding the world starts with individual accountability. It needs to be considered in every home, in every business. But the question must be reframed. Rather than asking farmers if the methods they use can feed the world, we need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, “Do my choices help enable the world to feed itself?” If the answer is no, then it is time to make different choices.

There is not one of us who is blameless when the question is reframed (myself included). But it is not solely up to the farmers to feed the world. It is up to each and every one of us to strive to live a life of personal accountability that will enable this earth to heal, and enable this world to feed itself.

And, just as no single agricultural practice will be universally applicable, nor will any single life path. There are many routes to a healed planet. What matters is that we keep asking ourselves to be accountable, and that we keep making the changes that are direly needed.

Thus, I leave you with one question: What can you do today that will enable the world to feed itself?

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Interested?

• “We have a lovely home, we eat well, we have lots of fun, we’re warm, and we don’t worry about how we’ll keep the lights on.” Shannon Hayes on how she has managed to live a fulfilled and happy life without going broke.
• Sometimes Shannon Hayes finds herself missing the days before she was a mother. But the circle of familial give-and-take love makes the trade-off worth it.
• Breaking our families into nuclear units has an ecological and emotional cost. Could the multigenerational farm remind us where to turn for a viable future?