How I End up with Stashes

Today I felt the urge to go shopping for yarn. Doug and I recently started taking a free local crochet class together. We like the company, the activity is peaceful and potentially useful, and it's something we can do together.

At this point, my actual production is half of a scarf, a decorative heart, most of a rose, and the first few rounds of a hat. In other words, I haven't done a lot and most of my projects are unfinished. I have been reading every crochet book that appeals at the library, and a good number additional from Kindle unlimited, plus I have a few that I found very inexpensively at thrift stores. I'm beginning to grok how crochet works.

I'm also beginning to look at projects and say, "Ooh!"

So today I noticed that this is an action pattern for me. I love to have ideas and make plans. In our civilization, it is almost as easy to shop as to imagine.

(Plus, I have a reading superpower. So it's not unusual that I have read more than a dozen books about crochet in the two months since we first took a class.)

The part of completing a project that takes more effort and traction begins after shopping. It's easy for me to imagine a project, purchase the materials, and then bog down before completing the project. Voila! Stash!

I have stashes for reading (of course, the unread book pile, even with my superpower), origami (somewhat trimmed before our last move), and jewelry-making (including a variety of rings for chainmaille and a wide selection of beads, especially in the seed bead categories). All of this is perfectly normal for someone who likes imagining and planning and lives in a civilization like ours that provides a beautiful abundance of materials.

I have the power of walking to my bead stash and selecting from one hundred and fifty shades of Delicas to make a harmonious colorway for a kaleidocycle! Can you imagine how much more freedom that gives me than someone who has to make their own beads? Or can only trade for perhaps six different colors, twice a year when the merchant comes to town?

I do love the abundance our creative, diverse, and vast markets have given us. I also recognize that my time will limit how many projects I complete, and my enjoyment of an orderly home will limit how much I can stash for the support of future projects.

So for the moment, I'm resisting swelling up a stash of yarn.

I tell you, though, that book of crochet flowers is mighty tempting, and would also require about 8 colors of yarn in each of three different weights to complete. We'll see how I manage.

An Interview from the Future

Today we are talking with Jheri Nyongo, who recently completed their 20th year in the Civilian Conservation Corps. Jheri was the architect of the Every Home a Garden initiative and rose from installer to executive director of the northeast region.

Anna: Jheri, thank you for coming today.

Jheri: Thanks, Anna, I'm glad to be here.

A: Tell us about your first year in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

J: We started with a mandate to install solar panels. At that time, I was going wherever they sent me. We were climbing on roofs and fitting panels and explaining about choosing exposures. About six months in, I'd heard several homeowners complaining about the electric utility of the time. The company kept delaying on connecting the panel systems to the electric grid. So I talked to the team, and we went to talk to the utility board. Turns out, they were worried about live wires from the panels. That's when the team decided we needed to work on the electric grid, too.

A: I spoke to your coworker Gordo Finnegan, and he said you were the leader on that.

J: If he says so. It took a team.

A: Did you like the electrical work?

J: It was interesting. We had a new set of safety procedures to worry about. I studied up on power lines and transformers and all that.

A: Eventually receiving a doctor's degree in electrical engineering.

J: Yes, that. I had some useful problems to work into my dissertation, so the work and the studies helped each other. We were dividing the grid into little sections. When everything went well, power would pass between them. When one section had a problem, it would isolate. The grid had to be smart, to handle all those power plants on roofs, which is what our solar panels were.

A: How long did you work on making the grid smarter?

J: That was my main concern for the next eight or nine years. Other teams took it up, worked in other areas. We traded what we learned between regions and made good progress.

A: Did anyone oppose the work?

J: (chuckles) There were some. One man I won't dignify by naming spent a year following us around with signs claiming that our smart connection points were the devil's surveillance plan. He had a few folks worked with him for a while. I kept my head down and worked and that blew over. We had some funding fights, too. Our first budget came in with the Green New Deal, and was up for reconsideration two years later. We saw some stink in congress. But by then, we'd given a lot of folks free solar panels, and more people wanted them. So the budget held. Most of that happened above my pay grade.

A: Why did you stop working on the grid?

J: We were mostly done by then. There were remote areas that still needed work. We'd sorted out the fun questions. I started looking around for the next problem.

A: Was that insulation?

J: No, another branch of the CCC began work on insulation while our team was working on the grid. The two approaches helped each other – insulation lowered energy use, which made the grid work better, and the better grid made areas that needed help pop right out. Insulation, appliances, light bulbs – the home team had all of that under control. So I started looking for another area we could work on.

A: What were some of the options you considered?

J: The CCC's first tagline had been "Solar panels for every home" with a little asterisk to cover those cases where they'd never pay off. As we finished up with that, and expanded into improving the grid and making homes more efficient, we needed a new line. The public relations team tried a few that no one liked. Finally, we had a big conference. Those who couldn't fly to Cincinnati joined by video call. Everyone put their thoughts in the big bucket of ideas. It took a week. Finally, we came up with the line we still use now.

A: It broadened your aim quite a bit.

J: At that point, anything that would reduce carbon, reduce other greenhouse gases, make any product or service use less energy or create less waste became fair game. I had a lot to think about. I considered home battery systems, universal broadband, transportation. I wanted to work outside, and I saw that we hadn't made much progress on lowering methane from garbage collection. What would encourage people to keep food waste out of their garbage? If they could compost it and use the compost at home. Plus, gardening calms a place. So we came up with Every Home a Garden.

A: Lots of people have had gardens. How was this different?

J: We wanted everyone to have a garden. Didn't matter if you lived on the eighth floor, or couldn't walk. We were looking at gardens that could be part of your roof, your walls, gardens for people who had no yard or no sunlight.

A: Wouldn't that raise electricity use?

J: It was a whole new set of problems to solve. Sometimes, we did need some artificial light. We worked to make that as efficient as possible. Lots of times we could choose the right plants or bring sunlight through pipes. We had some misfires where the compost was chasing people out of their homes before we found a few good systems for that, too.

A: How many homes have you reached?

J: We estimate about 30%. That's enough that we've found solutions for most home types.

A: Does that mean you are looking for your next interesting problem?

J: (chuckles) I'm not ready to talk about that.

A: Can you tell us anything about what you plan to do next?

J: I expect I can do good work for the CCC for another decade or more. We've taken care of some of the big areas of waste, and we can keep finding ways to do better.

A: Thanks very much for your time, Jheri. And thanks for your service.

J: It was a pleasure talking to you.

Dispatches from the Green Future

"I was there, at the last miner's march. When they said they were going to close all the mines, we decided to stand together. First, we picketed the mines. Then, word came around that we would walk to Richmond. I had nothing to lose. I took a roll and a pack and we walked along the highways. Ten thousand, twenty thousand men, coming by twenty or fifty to fill the grass in front of the capital. We were there two nights before the president came, told us the mines would close and we would all have jobs. Didn't believe it. Some social workers lined us up and took our names. They even wrote us checks. Thought it was just cheaper than arresting us, but I took my check back home so I could pay rent and buy some groceries." Ronald Black shakes his head. "Thought that was the end. But a couple weeks later, here come more social workers, with another check. I go up now instead of down." He gazes at the towering windmill behind him. "Pay's good, kids are fed, that little cough I had, just in the evenings, it's gone now. It's not what my father did, but it'll do."

Maria Estancia Lopez walks along the acequia at the edge of her small farm. "We have good water this year. My father thought the water was gone. At the end of the twentieth century, and into this one, every year we had less. My brothers and sisters moved to Albuquerque, except Adam, who moved to Taos to paint. When it started to cool again, more snow fell in the Rockies, and it filled the Rio Grande, melting in the spring and flowing out of Colorado. I am planting corn and chiles like my grandfather did, some melons. The soil is hard, because for twenty years it baked and we had no water. Bit by bit, I am bringing it back."

Fred Ma waves at the busy bike lane in front of him. "This is the part I'm proudest of. All our city planning was paying off. We had offices near apartments so people could walk. We had the buses running every five minutes, and they were full. Any time you needed to move something heavy or travel in a group, you could get an electric cargo car in ten minutes. So these four lane roads – we just didn't need them any more. Owning a car – not too many people wanted the hassle, the expense, the smell. Really, two lanes was plenty for the traffic. So we give full lanes each way to bicycles, wide as the lanes for cars. The problem was, how do buses reach the curb without interfering with all those bikes? Well, wrong question. We set up islands for pedestrians, raised the crosswalks like they do in Amsterdam, and the buses pick people up from the center now. Easy peasy."

A Thought Experiment

Earth can absorb a defined amount of carbon every year. What if everyone on Earth had equity in that carbon? Each person could use their share or sell their share. If someone wanted to use more than their share, they would have to find someone willing to sell their carbon equity. Let's dream a few lives.

Letsha lives in Lesotho in a traditional one-room hut. When people first approached to buy her unused carbon equity, she couldn't believe it. It took several weeks for the strange foreigners to show their good faith. Now she shows visitors the solar panel that lets her charge her phone and do a little reading at night. She has a new stove, too, that takes less wood to cook. She and her neighbors record and share traditional songs and download new ones to sing together.

"Always I have been part of the earth, and now other people see it. My heart is full," she says. Besides the improvements to her home, she has sent her daughter and her son to school.

Carl and Livia have a large house in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona. As we watches a team installing solar panels on his roof, Carl grumbles, "The carbon payments are killing me. It's actually cheaper to put up these panels than to keep buying credit." Livia chimes in, "They are very ugly, but it's just good sense. At least we aren't the only house in the neighborhood with them." In fact, almost half the homes have added panels since the equity plan went in, and another team is working to install more down the block.

Magali and Guiseppe run a small family vineyard in southern France. "The equity payment, bien sûr, it was expensive to start. Year by year, we make improvements. Now is not so bad." They have added a windmill on the slope above the vines. Parts of the home date to the 1500s, so the walls are thick and naturally insulated. They replaced the oil furnace with a heat pump and have revived traditional methods of crushing the grapes and returning the pressings to the soil. "A little slower and our neighbors help. And the wine, you taste the feet in it. Is so rich." They offer you a glass, and sit with you to watch the shadows of the vines lengthen. You have a delicious and abundant evening.

I believe we are all in this together and that we can live well on a neutral carbon budget.

Why Don't I Eat More Vegan Food?

I talked a few posts back about the reasons I'd like to eat more vegan food: health, environment, flavor, adventure. When I wrote about systems for eating, that implied that one reason I wasn't eating more vegan food is that I didn't have a vegan cooking system.

I'm still mulling and brainstorming on that.

Meanwhile, let's look at some of the other reasons I don't eat all vegan meals for clues to eating more of them.

Some reasons are other facets of needing a system: inconvenience, lack of knowledge, old habits. If I had a system, it would include making some vegan meals easily, knowing their recipes by heart, and having the habit of including vegan meals on a regular basis.

Then there are health concerns. Doug, my husband, is diabetic. I like to cook food that helps him regulate his blood sugar. Our best results so far have been with a low-glycemic diet that tightly limits grains, potatoes, and other starchy vegetables. This makes a lot of vegan recipes problematic. When I read vegan recipes for rice bowls, polenta dishes, pasta, stuffed potatoes and shepherd's pies, or even sandwiches, they frequently look far too glycemic to serve to him. Our experiments have seen him doing well with spaghetti squash or broccoli as a pasta substitute. Small amounts of homemade, whole-grain bread also seem fine for him.

We are accustomed to generous quantities of protein, and "not enough protein" can be a concern with vegetarian or vegan diets. Although we are in no danger of kwashiorkor, we feel better with protein in our meals. How much of that is biologically optimal and how much of it is custom and changeable, I don't know. We made a large batch of lobia (with olive oil rather than ghee) from Urvashi Pitre, and ate it lunch and dinner for several days, along with our usual vegan breakfasts. After the last meal, I said, "It doesn't feel like we've been eating vegan." Aha! A clue. This is a fairly high protein vegan dish, with both the black-eyed peas and spinach contributing. So it's possible that the feeling of eating vegan comes from getting less protein than I am used to, and if so, keeping the protein up could help vegan food feel more sustaining. Our experiments around Doug's blood sugar led us to meals with about 30% calories from protein in them for him. Vegan meals run lower than that on average. It's easy to include enough protein to avoid protein deficiency. There is not yet a consensus on how much protein an optimal diet includes, and there is some evidence that the optimal diet varies widely from person to person. So we might be able to adapt our diet to run higher in protein, like the lobia recipe does, or we might be able to adapt to less protein, as some very healthy traditional diets contain.

Another reason is comfort: eating the food I grew up with feels supportive. If I feel ill or stressed, I often crave my childhood favorites. I've made some progress on leaving the ground beef and cheese out of the burritos from our family table. I gave up cheese with few pangs when I stopped digesting milk well. We spent some years mixing half TVP into our taco meat, and trying ground chicken, pork, or turkey instead of beef, and it tastes better to us now that way. The burrito recipe always contained refried beans, and the vegan ones taste better to me. On the last version, I tried adding corn kernels and sunflower seeds to the refried bean filling to round out the protein and add some fat to satisfy my expectations for a burrito. With plenty of seasoning and salsa, I found that comforting. Adding avocado makes any burrito more appealing, too! Matching the protein and fat content I'm accustomed to may make vegan food more comforting as well as less glycemic.

Typing out these thoughts has given me some good ideas. I can see why people want paleo vegan recipes. Their high-protein emphasis might solve some problems for us.