Monday, April 25, 2011

Haiku - Song

Sit. Listen to the
morning song, wind song, light song
woven into voice.

---

May sit and write on this tonight. I have been too busy for keen senses. I wonder if Janine is right, that I hear and see the world differently. I want to dwell there for a spell, but not just yet.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Moving Outside the Dialogue

The New York Times has been sponsoring a series of community conversations on NAU campus about various issues concerning sustainability. Community, energy, and now water have been discussed by professors, students, and community members in a casual but critical way. They have brought together members of Flagstaff in exciting ways, similar to Earth Councils that Eric Utne once discussed at Gustavus and, with which, Lauren I believe has been involved. The only problem is that they don't go anywhere.

How do they fail to move anywhere? Well, they generally focus on policy on the federal and state levels which, in terms of sustainability, are going nowhere. In fact, for Arizona much of the conversation seems to be going in the opposite direction. Just yesterday the Governor decided to veto - rather surprisingly - the bill that would allow concealed weapons on university right-of-ways legal. The notion is that an armed student body is safe against the violent aims of unbalanced community members. Of course, having more armed students doesn't seem to perturb a majority of the legislature here. What madness.

So, if we assume an uncooperative set of policy-makers, then the arguments about swaying the hearts and minds of these men and women becomes an unchangeable aspect of the conversation. My friend Jon (affectionately called "Goose") and I have been rather disappointed by these talks for just the reason. If we recognize the limits of the political discourse, it requires us to move outside of that discourse into alternative channels. Our take has been a variety of outreach and community work, social business models and green consulting, and small-scale but widespread problem-solving. If water is the issue, let's retrofit houses for stormwater catchment, graywater utilization, and household or neighborhood-scale natural machines to process wastewater. These reduce household utilization, can build synergies such as water-as-heatsink for passive temperature control, manage community/per-capita water consumption, support green collar jobs, and can transform communities from neutral or resistant to empowered and invested citizens. Jason is involved in Solar Mosaic, a crowd-sourced solar project to augment our carbon-based energy industry, but doing so through community investment (usually through churches) and education.

Many of these initiatives can be conceived as simultaneous environmental, economic, and capacity-building endeavors. Tim and I have discussed cooperative or crowd-sourced/community-owned small enterprises to respond to absences within Flagstaff. I began with my cooperative, green, affordable housing (Resident-Owned Green Urban Equitable Housing, or ROGUE Housing) and use some space from a house as an open bike workshop (perhaps a suggested donation or volunteering for usage) so that Tim and others can build custom bikes in their free time and have the storage to wait until they can be sold. Tim, having noticed that Flagstaff has only one cinema of note, suggested creating a community theatre; my subsequent suggestion was cleaning and renovating a warehouse or factory that has fallen out of use, whitewashing a wall, bringing in a projector and sound system (surprisingly affordable second-hand), and requesting donations and advertising via zines to avoid copyright violation by making events pseudo-private. While we're at it, Tim can employ his recording experience and we can make the warehouse/factory-gone-cinema into a recording studio for local artists.

What is the end product? Well, a series of cooperatively owned and managed affordable houses that demonstrate green living. You have a community bike workshop that provides entertainment, services, and adds to the unique accents of Flagstaff. Similarly, a zine allows us to publish work going on in the houses and the workshop while "advertising" for the theatre and studio. The theatre - because of its semi-private qualities - is open to the entire community at minimal cost and can show second-string movies, arthouse films, and independent projects. Given proper time and sound management, the studio provides an affordable space for musicians while attracting amateur and experimental technicians and artists. Through all of this is the network of communication and involved citizens creatively employed (albeit in a limited way) in creating the Flagstaff they want to live in. Besides, there is a richness in the self-satisfaction and anarchic, but cooperative design of such a structure of development.

The issues at play are, of course, finances, time, and skills. I have begun to think of ROGUE Housing as coming out of tax incentives and grant funds which lead into economic self-sufficiency. If managed properly with reclaimed materials and labor is mostly volunteer (Learn skills! Work Hard! Build Community! slogans and vintage style posters come to mind.) then the organization can build a fund to lead into other projects. I hope to learn about tax codes and claiming property through paying taxes on unclaimed spaces over the period of a few years. I believe this works through assuming responsibility for three or more years and then appealing for the deed from the city or county. If I am able to declare ROGUE Housing a business of some variety, I believe I can leverage it for loans or grants in the future; the subsequent reality is repayment, but if these decisions are democratically made through the organization then I hope crowd-sourcing is highly likely.

Oddly, I have become increasingly concerned with social needs and realities despite the environmental stress placed on the American Southwest. Coal and uranium mining, coal power, dammed rivers, water scarcity, and more plague this region. The mythos of the West has resulted in a macho attempt at domestication and domination of this landscape. Unfortunately, the very recent habitation of this region by Anglos deprives much of the population with any sort of historical identification with the land. I, of course, am part of that cultural even if I am an heretic amongst the believers. (I appropriate this turn of phrase from Donna Haraway who explains her diction in The Cyborg Manifesto.) I believe if we retool our society for human connectivity then we prepare ourselves for connectivity to the more-than-human world. Without a firm sense of the human within the world, then I doubt transformation is likely. This work, while constructive in its own right, is about precipitating - which I mean richly, that we are fostering the potential for - the change we need.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Haiku - Walker

Becoming a walker -
in space, in time - measuring
distance by footfalls.

...

I may have included this in the daily journal assignment. I wrote - or rather spoke - it then on my way to work. Only yesterday did I get back in my bike again. A month or two on foot; I am thankful for the change of pace but will certainly appreciate the celerity of being on Nicolai again.