I’m half-way through “Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the road to economic, social and ecological decay” by Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler and I’m already regretting my decision, a year ago, to replace my aging Mazda with a brand new Kia Soul. I would have been better off with a bus pass and the […]
Continue readingTag: environment
Things Are Good: Heat Your Home By Hosting the Internet
As the internet continues its growth it consumes more and more electricity because larger server and data centres are required. Microsoft has come up with a brilliant idea to allow ‘the backbone’ of the internet to continue to grow while helping heat houses and providing a faster internet.
Microsoft has released a research paper that […]
wmtc: moby duck: "that’s the difference. there are things afloat now that will never sink."
I’ve re-started reading Moby Duck. I don’t know if this ever happens to you, but sometimes if I pick up a book at a particularly busy time when I don’t have enough uninterrupted time and concentration, I end up reading in tiny dribs and drabs, a page h…
Continue readingthe reeves report: Long-term thinking needed in the fight for Ontario’s Green Energy future
While in Vancouver last week as part of a First Ministers meeting, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty made a direct link between subsidies paid out to the oil and gas industry in Alberta, BC, and Saskatchewan, and the need for greater subsidies from Ottawa for Ontario’s green energy sector. According to the Vancouver Sun, McGuinty claimed … Continue reading »
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Scary Bear Soundtrack Performs "Beaver Pond Forest"
I recently had the opportunity to hear Scary Bear Soundtrack perform both their acoustic and rock versions of “Beaver Pond Forest” live and I have to say that I prefer the rock version of it, and of all their music. Those women can really rock and thei…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to end your weekend.- Nick Falvo discusses the unfortunate theory that any talk of improving standards of living for the neediest Canadians is either fruitless or extreme politically:In reference to the Put Food In The Budget cam…
Continue readingOur "world class" tarsands PR monitoring plan
This week saw our federal, provincial and territorial energy ministers, minus Ontario, trot out a joint communique describing the tarsands as "sustainable and responsible", even as the Cons were simultaneously slashing the federal Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency budget by 43% and its staff by…
Continue readingOn the Green Party platform.
Finally — for now, at least, until the Tories and NDP release the rest of their platforms, and the Libs release anything at all — I’m going to take a quick look at the Green Party of Ontario’s platform. It’s the shortest, and the slimmest when it com…
Continue readingTrashy's World: Who needs EA’s?
Industry can police itself, right?
More bold-faced lies from the Cons during the May election campaign…
Sigh… environmental laggards indeed…
Share and Enjoy:
Trashy, Ottawa, Ontario
Continue readingTrashy's World: Heat. Humidity. Earthquakes. Where are the locusts?
I get the heat and humidity… but I swear I just felt the earth move. And no. The Resident Love Goddess is out with the kids at Shakespeare in the park! Pervs… I mean, if the Christian doomsayers are right… I’m thinkin’ I’ll have THOUSANDS of grasshooper-like insects gnawing at my bald head by dawn! […]
Continue readingThings Are Good: Change the System
System Change wants to protect the environment by systems thinking. Change the system, save the planet.
I’ll keep following this project and update everyone once they launch in September, in the meantime you can help the project.
The popular slogan: “system change not climate change” has become central to a growing and vibrant global movement for climate […]
Accidental Deliberations: Deep thought
An environmental monitoring plan explicitly designed to improve the reputation of the industry involved is a thoroughly useless environmental monitoring plan.
Continue readingthe reeves report: Riding to ‘Save Jarvis’
At last count before the event started, the RSVP on Facebook claimed that about 900+ people would be attending the ride to ‘Save Jarvis.’ But like anyone who has thrown a party and relied on Facebook to count the attendees, I figured that number would drop by at least a third as things came up … Continue reading »
Continue readingThe Liberal Scarf: I’m offering an endorsement of what Mr. McGuinty has done, absolutely. This is a great plan. Any party would be foolish to talk about abandoning it"
That’s what David Suzuki had to say about the Ontario Liberal plan to keep Ontario’s economy on track by creating green jobs and helping our environment.http://www.thestar.com/mobile/news/canada/politics/article/1028008–suzuki-warns-tory-scheme-to-can…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Henry Farrell points out why supposedly progressive ideas which don’t do anything to counter corporate power are doomed to failure:Neo-liberals tend to favor a combination of market mechanisms and technocratic …
Continue readingthe reeves report: Ontario and Equalization Payments: ‘have-not’ actually means ‘has-no-oil’
In the two years since Ontario officially joined the ranks of the ‘have-not’ provinces, the volume of equalization payments received has jumped 534%. That’s right – 534%. From the first payment of $347M to this years whopping $2.2B – Ontario is officially suffering through a massive downturn brought on by the loss of almost 300,000 … Continue reading »
Continue readingredjenny: DIY, Homesteading, Radical Housewifery/Homemaking
Though I haven’t read the book yet, the lifestyle described in Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming domesticity from a consumer culture by Shannon Hayes is kind of seductive. I’ve flirted with these ideas a bit. Screw the rat race and 70 hour work weeks (all in the attempt to make partner, or get an elusive tenure-track position or not get fired). Instead focus on a slower pace of life, gardening, baking bread, living close to nature, voluntary simplicity, reskilling etc.*
Mother Nature has shown her hand. Faced with climate change, dwindling resources, and species extinctions, most Americans understand the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crises-drive less, consume less, increase self-reliance, buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities.
In essence, the great work we face requires rekindling the home fires.
Radical Homemakers is about men and women across the U.S. who focus on home and hearth as a political and ecological act, and who have centered their lives around family and community for personal fulfillment and cultural change. It explores what domesticity looks like in an era that has benefited from feminism, where domination and oppression are cast aside and where the choice to stay home is no longer equated with mind-numbing drudgery, economic insecurity, or relentless servitude.
Radical Homemakers nationwide speak about empowerment, transformation, happiness, and casting aside the pressures of a consumer culture to live in a world where money loses its power to relationships, independent thought, and creativity. If you ever considered quitting a job to plant tomatoes, read to a child, pursue creative work, can green beans and heal the planet, this is your book.
I know and admire several people who I would class as radical homemakers/homesteaders/DIYers. Some off-the-grid, some minimally on it. Some with children, some without. Some with lots of land, some with tiny patches in the city. They pretty well all combine this with some sort of income generating work. I respect what they are doing. It’s hard work!
Indeed Not One More Winter in the Tipi, Honey (found with commentary over at Historiann) discusses gendered labour off-the-grid.
Too often, modern homesteading asks women to return to the toil so many of their grandmothers left behind. No matter how progressive the homesteading couple, the unfamiliarity and the physical demands of DIY living make it easy to fall into traditional gender roles — to retreat to the stereotypically masculine and feminine skills most of us still learn first and best. The result is that in many modern homesteads, despite highly evolved intentions, men build the houses, and women, like their pioneer-era counterparts, cook over the wood stove. Or scrub the floors. Or care for the babies.
This old-fashioned division of labor means that women are often the first to encounter the worst realities of homesteading. While their partners are outside, impressing the neighborhood with their construction skills, women are inside, confronting the cultural invisibility of domestic work and the social isolation of rural life.
Of course, this is a generalization. I’m sure many relationships are more egalitarian, but so many fall back into these gender roles. Though I think some work traditionally gendered female is beginning to be seen as admirable and even cool – cooking, baking, knitting and gardening were definitely not ‘cool’ when I was young. Young women tried to get AWAY (to be liberated) from doing those valuable yet unpaid (and therefore not contributing to GDP, and therefore having no official value) tasks. I’m not sure yet that toilet-cleaning has made it into the newly-cool category, but maybe it is just a matter of time.
I guess my question is: Is it really that radical for a woman to stay home and do what women have been doing for generations? Actually, it might be.
Which brings me to the feminist activist Radical Housewife blog (named with tongue-in-cheek), and a whole other way to be a woman who does not currently work for wages. One can still have a voice and be political and be a primary caregiver to children or a household. The danger is in supposing that simply “staying home” or dropping out of the paid work force will somehow automatically fix the world. Of turning completely inward and forgetting to be political. (Or confuse property rights with real human liberties.) Forgetting to fight for social justice and rights for others. Forgetting to be active in our communities. Becoming blinded by our own halos.
*I know, I know, it sounds so bourgeois and indeed it may require a degree of privilege (I suppose being minimally middle-class or at least upper-working-class) but I suppose there are worse things that one could DO with that privilege. (This reminds me of a similar discussion going on over here – Is minimalism just for the rich?)
Continue readingredjenny: DIY, Homesteading, Radical Housewifery/Homemaking
Though I haven’t read the book yet, the lifestyle described in Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming domesticity from a consumer culture by Shannon Hayes is kind of seductive. I’ve flirted with these ideas a bit. Screw the rat race and 70 hour work weeks (all in the attempt to make partner, or
Continue readingredjenny: DIY, Homesteading, Radical Housewifery/Homemaking
Though I haven’t read the book yet, the lifestyle described in Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming domesticity from a consumer culture by Shannon Hayes is kind of seductive. I’ve flirted with these ideas a bit. Screw the rat race and 70 hour work weeks (all in the attempt to make partner, or
Continue readingTrashy's World: Disasters! Events! As they happen!!!!
This is a map which supposedly tracks nasty shit happening in the world in real-time.
Earthquakes? Yup.
Floods? Oh yeah.
Forest fires? They’re hot on that!
Plane crashes? They’re DOWN!
Haven’t had chance to verify if it’s eve…