100% Organically Grown Rant

Theresa, Deb, and I decided to play a bit of hooky from work on Friday. Well, actually, only Deb did -- Theresa and I legimitately requested the day. Deb, put on the spot by her boss about why she had to take the day off, replied that she thought she might be coming down with a urinary tract infection. She hadn't anticipated that her boss actually had had a few UTI's and would express her worry that Deb wasn't going to the doctor immediately. So she phoned Theresa and asked her to lookup symptoms of UTI's on the web.

Anyways, Thursday night, for Cinco de Mayo -- a celebration of liberty for Mexicans and another excuse to drink for Americans -- we inbibed cheap margaritas, tacos, and spicy scrod at the Pour House in Boston. I think the US tends to half-ass the drinking celebrations. We do Cinco de Mayo or Saint Patty's as somewhat contained one-night drunken affairs. In Spain, every town takes off a week when their patron saint was born (or martyred -- or some significant, vaguely relevant date). Scotland celebrates Robert Burns day over several days. (Well, in truth, it's officially one day -- but no one really pays attention). In Japan, they take off like 10 days to honour the emperor for Golden week. Even the country of anime and contemptuous understatement parties harder than we do!

But I digress. Friday, we arrived in Rumney, New Hampshire for two days of climbing on hard stuff. Our choice of lodging: D Acres Hostel. This turned out to be a hostel/organic farm/self sustaining lifestyle/biodegradeable sort of place. I have never quite felt like such a genetically modified, materialistic over-consumer as then. We walked up to the house; there were two folk lying on a garden well, gardening. Some sort of herb or shroom it appeared. They pointed us to through a trellis fashioned from branches presumably gathered from the surrounding forests. We were met by Abby, a friendly girl of the typical hippie build -- skinny limbed, a chill slouch, probably no bra. The sort of look that conservatives mark as a granola eating, hemp wearing, bean bag kicking tree huggers.

Abby showed us around the house. She showed us the composting toilet. The library which contained a multitude of books on farming, self-sustaining lifestyle, craftmaking, and other related topics. The sink, down which only biodegradable toothpaste and soap were to be drained (dead skin also qualifying as biodegradable). The yoga room which doubled as a movie room (movie of the night: "Inspirational Gardening"). And a wonderful kitchen which had at least five different sizes of skillet -- rather odd since a skillet really earns its keep when a piece of meat sizzles in its own fat -- not exactly a vegetarian cooking implement.

But it was an odd form of a hippy lifestyle -- if that was what it was. It was quite opulent, actually. There was an incredible music collection, playable on B+W speakers fed by Onkyo electronics. The shower had two four shower heads streaming wonderfully warm water. The floors were tiled quite elegantly downstairs with various hardwood in other rooms. Four flavors of icecream in the freezer downstairs. A computer for graphic design.

I think I figured it out -- this was school of sorts for sustainable living. It wasn't really a proof of concept. It allowed those who might be interested to congregate and learn, but it wasn't actually attempting to be self-sufficient. I got into a conversation with one of the staff members there about food, consumption, and environment. I think there's a stock list of talking points that many well-meaning environmentalists draw from, eg. the amount of grain it takes to produce beef for one person could feed like 10 people, the waste water from the production of a computer is in the hundreds of gallons, etc. I often get that sense of diffuse lamentation of the problems of the world when I get into these conversations. But I have yet to get into one that's also accompanied by a grounded, convincing argument of how to effect real change.

The lifestyle promoted at D Acres is not a panacea to the world's woes. That said, there are number of lessons that can be culled. They certainly consume much less than the average household. I'd say the Leon Calejesan residence produces several times the amount of waste than the dozen odd folk there produce. And they compost everything. Granted, they have chickens to eat the food compost and farmland to fertilize with the fecesish compost. I'm sure they buy only what they need. They probably eBay things that have no more use. They really live a lifestyle that seems free from the soma the market pushes on us -- TV, consumerism, gossip magazines. Yes, the world would be a better place if these lessons were taken to heart.

But if magically, all households became D Acres, the world would be an unbalanced dystopia. Many of the "good things" of the world depend on metropolitan centers. Where would a starving artist exchange ideas or find an audience. Where would the inventive minds experiment? Where would an efficient government congregate to craft law and enforce it justly? Nay, cities are not only a reality; they are a necessity. Civilization rests upon it. Ask our hunting and gathering ancestors. Subsistence living sucks. Some must produce food in excess that others are freed up to think and invent.

The truth is that there's no one-size-fits-all lifestyle. And I actually don't think that D Acres is advocating that. It's just that when one sees the pure and arguably spiritual life they're living, one may be tempted to think that that's the way everything should be. It's not. There's a wide spectrum of lifestyles. Who knows what the distribution of people looks like, but I'd guess it looks like a bell curve with the nature people on one end and the city slickers on the other end, with your average Walmart consumer proudly bulging, phallic like, in the middle. But the trick is not to push everyone to the nature end of the curve. The trick is to get everyone across the curve to consume less, reuse more, and produce less waste. Society cannot continue to suck Earth's well dry. But we cannot give up the treasures of civilization that cities make possible, because if we don't have them, what do we have?

Hmmm...I'll go mull over this more while I sit on my non-composting, probably-about-to-get-clogged toilet.