The Table comes First, a journal : part 3

Posted on May 24, 2022

Dining area : the space, as used by the previous owners of this house

Dining area, on the day we got the keys to the house 4 years ago.

Our dining table, all moved in and lived in, 4 years ago.

2 years ago. Our tenants showed us the potential of this space. Sans the gray paint and with a chic light fixture, the place opened up.

The prodigal table returns after her cross country moves.

Furnishing an empty house

We have happily slept on the floor for the last decade. Bought temporary cheap couches on craigslist that we returned to craigslist buyers when we left. Owned just enough to pack up in under 8 hours for the moves. One exception all along : we always had a too-big-for-its-own-good beloved dining table. When my husband realized he had some reliable income and emergency savings account funded, from his first job, his first splurge was a flat screen tv during a thanksgiving sale. When I got funding in grad school and hit my goal on a 6 month emergency fund, I bought this big dining table. We have always designed our home around it ever since. I had bought it for 280$, on a super sale for 1/4th of my take home student pay cheque, making it an irresponsible purchase back then. This is year 12 and we want to grow old with it making it a good investment. It serves as a desk, catch all, kitchen butcher block, kitchen island table, breakfast nook, dog tent, cat bed, earthquake shelter, book stand, diaper station, feasting station, WFH desk holder, gaming table, crafts table, idea plotting booth, … We once had guests sleep under it in our former tiny home when there was no space for the 10 of us. Small homes where every inch gets used, is the sustainable way. Without a table, we would be less efficient in our way of life. A couch facing a tv supports mindless leisure. A table supports active leisure. Our closest friends usually walk into our front door straight to the table and gather around it. It is the heart of our home. I once had a chance to make 5x the money I spent on it from a generous offer made by a visitor, and my friends protested. It survived the multiple offers it got during an open house. It probably will stay with us as long as we can carry it to where ever we live. Before we made a list of what else we need for the house, we took stock of what we have. Dining table : Check ! My list of requirements on what I look for in the table ( all met ) :

It has to have a commanding presence. None of those delicate looking ones.
Should not be made of glass or stone or concrete or anything cold. If you bump against it, you shouldn’t get a concussion.
Should be made of wood. No veneer please. Transparent wood stain so that we may see the tree grain underneath. When I rest my hands on it, it should feel warm to touch, natural to the eyes and remind me of the trees/great outdoors. I constantly want to be reminded that this home and everything in it, is a gift from the ecosystem.
Should not have too many straight lines. Rules out anything too modern.
Live edge or reclaimed wood or vintage farm house table. It should not meekly blend into the house but stand its ground with a commanding presence. Looking for an older woman with lived experience and stories who will unapologetically take up the space, not a slender pretty teenage girl with youth as her beauty blushing in a corner.
Should not look prim and proper. Let it collect bruises and water stains. The table should look better with age.
Shouldn’t be too precious like I see in homes with formal dining rooms. The grand tables in formal dining rooms are seldom used every day. The McMansions seem to hoard them for when the guests arrive or that one thanksgiving feast per year, in favor of breakfast nooks and informal smaller tables. I do not want another table. I do not want to “save” my “good furniture” for guests. We gotta use every inch of the house and every piece of furniture everyday. If a tree was felled, the wood should really be put to too much use, not hoarded. The land was cleared of trees/grasslands/wetlands for this house. Roads laid by fracturing ancient ecosystems. Cars bought from mined metals to get me here. All of the house should be used well in gratitude. I got to resist the philosophy associated with the McMansion way of life.
Repairable, by retired local carpenters. If it’s too technical, I may not find folks who can fix it without costing a fortune.
Shouldn’t look too precious. People shouldn’t fret wear and tear from everyday use.
I have a target of wearing my 2 winter coats for a decade or more. I wont buy another so that I may use my two well. I take care of them accordingly. For the dining table, I set my target at 2 decades at the least. I will take care of it accordingly.
The Table comes First, is a fantastic book by the food writer Adam Gopnik. Do read, if you get a chance.
Gathering at the table, is bigger than the table or the food on it.

Meaning of a Place, a journal : Part 2

Posted on May 22, 2022

A place

“I need to live in as many places as possible”
“I am a traveller, not a tourist. I will try to move to the place instead of visiting the place. ” ( This sort of travel is harming locals by gentrifying neighborhoods and making housing unaffordable. Opting out. )
“I need to stretch my comfort zone and try out various kinds of living.”
“I am a climate activist. All lands are my home. I have to see more. ”
“Let me try living in my car.”
“Let me try community eco village.”
“Let me try tiny home.”
“Let me try loft living.”
“Let me move neighborhoods in the same city, every year.”
“Let me live in an environmental justice neighborhood.”
“Let me try the suburban McMansion living.”
“Let me get a roommate from every nationality, race and walk of life possible.”
“Where is the farthest from here I can move where I know no one and start again?”
“Where are the maximum diverse professionals per square inch and least number of tech folk, in this city ? I need to move there.”
– me.

These narratives are great to explore the world around me and gather experiences. However, at some point, I got to stop being the perpetual tourist who eventually leaves. People can no longer count on you to be there for them. Organizations cant count on you to do deep work over a period of time. Lot of local climate work is being done by volunteers/poorly paid grant dependent professions, folks with children who carve out the time and it’s very dehumanizing when projects stall. To belong, one has to become a native, with deep knowledge of the land and ties in the community. This realization is in stark contrast to my younger individualistic self who though she exists as an atomic unit and can float around the world. Too much Ayn Rand during childhood clashes philosophically when trying to solve for a problem like climate change which requires collective cooperation, to care about humans who aren’t my immediate kin and to think beyond my personal comfort/desires/wealth. To want a democracy, is to NOT sleep walk towards “survival of the richest” scenario as an inevitable outcome of climate change. When I was struggling philosophically, I discovered Wendell Berry, a poet farmer from Kentucky.

“If you belong everywhere, you belong nowhere”.
“There is no such thing as a global village. No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity. We thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one’s partiality.”
“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”
“There comes . . . a longing never to travel again except on foot.”
“The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life.”
“The difference between a path and a road is not only the obvious one. A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. It is a sort of ritual of familiarity. As a form, it is a form of contact with a known landscape. It is not destructive. It is the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of movement to place; it obeys the natural contours; such obstacles as it meets it goes around.”
“The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating.”
“A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has his mind precisely against what is wrong with us… What I am saying is that if we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of earth, but also the earth’s ability to produce.”

I started craving a marriage over one night stands, with a place. I started seeking everything local. Wanted to stop moving around and settle in. Wanted to go from seeing places to being a part of a place. I started craving “my place” that I knew in and out. Reading Wendell Berry and Vandana Shiva changed me deep down. Mary Oliver and Matsuo Basho slow travelled locally, learnt to see the world around them and produce such brilliant work modeled after their deep observations. I learnt about walking meditation. I started reading about pleasures of walking and the art of walks. I started walking and wearing out shoes. It dramatically altered the meaning of travel for me. I now get to slow travel every single day and don’t crave mindless vacations anymore. It now frustrates me when I only pass by places and leave without a deeper understanding of it. I cant hike without trying to learn the plants on the trails. I cant walk my neighborhood without planting gardens in my head on the land I see. Travel isn’t something that only starts when one gets on a plane and ends on a return flight. Deep curiosity and the gift of seeing, isn’t a switch that only turns on after burning a shit ton of fossil fuels on a plane. As I discovered literature by Native Americans, this craving for deep knowledge of a place strengthened. I want a village of my own and deep wandering. In the patriarchal culture I was born into, being a part of a community as a woman meant : being a cheerful domestic servant to the ones above me in the patriarchal ladder, to serve them lavish food, to clean up after them as they lounge on the couch, to be a martyr for their needs, to “adjust”, to run a house as a hotel, to not question patriarchy, to be a conservative, to never push back and to be an obedient daughter. I could never seamlessly fit into such communities. To know that other kinds of community can exist and that “service to community” can be defined outside the confines of patriarchy, made me stop running.

Around this time, I was learning about climate impacts on Connecticut for my organization. Started with geology when the glaciers retreated, evolution of ecology, economy, health of ecosystems, key species, jobs, environmental justice neighborhoods, budget allocations by county, impacts on every sector for 1.5 C and 3C warming, …. requiring 100s of hours of study. This is the first time I really learnt a place and our interconnections. This was the first time I stopped being a tourist. This was the first time I could be left on any unglamorous corner of the land and I found myself curious about everything there. We were doing work which required us to respect every citizen and ask them to vote for climate. It is not possible to make progress without zooming in and understanding a place. To leave again was painful given how much work I put in, the projects I was a part of and the friends I made. Shallow work, superficial tinkering with problems and excessive job hopping, can not be my work ethic.

We wanted to find a place where we could stay in the long term, in a safe environment given the political climate in the country for immigrants. During a pandemic, the need for our closest friends and a garden to retreat into, over rode exciting cultural experiences in new places. We moved back to our old house in California. A place to love and one that loves me back, economy I contribute to, ecology that I see as a mother, communities I am a part of, villages in which I am a favorite aunt, bookstores that welcome us with water-bowls for our puppy, neighbors who are musicians, street art on every corner, a affordable neighborhood with trees, diverse professionals, .. – what more can I ask for from a place ? We initially assumed that this house would be a place holder or a “starter home” that we move out of as soon as we can afford something “better”. Life taught me that no place is bad or good by itself, as long as my human rights aren’t trampled upon. Moving to a richer neighborhood and a larger house, isn’t what finding a house means for me anymore. This is my place. I am a pilgrim on the San Lorenzo Creek.

Finding home : a journal, part 1

Posted on May 19, 2022

Finding solace in the nest by a great-grand-ma maple tree.

To be at home, is an extra ordinary state of being. To feel safe, to be surrounded by loved ones, to have some stability, to grow roots, to feel at peace, to not constantly be on the move, to not being chased out of one’s home, to not run from place to place chasing my own tail, to respecting and maybe loving ones neighbors, to hope that the gods of time allow you to be alive for a tad longer in this place, … are goals that became tangible for me in 2021. We moved into our house and it started supporting the life we always envisioned : a garden, us, our kinfolk and all the animals. To be able to do so in California, given how expensive housing is, is a privilege and I will never take it for granted. Maybe the Trump 2.0 will find a way to terrify immigrants again, and I won’t feel at home ? ( I used to think identity based politics were stupid until I realized my rights are constantly changing and at the mercy of the populists, because of my identity. Any president can revoke my work permit and I will have to self deport. ) Till that day arrives, this is home and I will live well here. (“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.”) To live with him and puppy, in this house, is magical. To sit under the maple tree at night with Mina and to read, daydream, write, sketch, work, drink tea, watch the moon, watch movies, see the wild animals stroll, listen to the wind, …. is to experience an endless night. To become a caretaker of the soil and to plant a garden, is when I find my highest creative self. This house is alive with it’s history and seasonal changes, and we are yet to discover all of her secrets. The ecosystem surrounding the house is recovering with more of us planting our gardens and the birdsong rewards us for it every morning. This sense of home, is a first for me, as someone who left her parents home young, have been floating around since age 16, and has lived in 17 different homes since. I want to stay. I want to stay here.

Patina : 3+ years, 300+ wears

Posted on May 16, 2022

Shoes are for exploration.

Today, I fell face down on the street while walking and had to come in terms with my shoes having no threading on its soles. This pair is ready to be retired. This is probably the first shoe I have truly worn out in a long time now. Every other pair was donated or sold or dumped at a thrift shop, before it became unusable. I have stopped decluttering since the pandemic hit anticipating premature decisions made for a temporary condition. COVID has dragged on for years and I am still WFH. Slowly, I am wearing my clothes out and am finding joy in the process. A certain pair of black pants are looking ash gray. There is a linen dress that has protest group of its own, from friends who don’t think I should wear it out in public. My hiking shoes and running shoes are worn out. After years and years of trying to not need excess / to not dispose fashion prematurely / to resist the fast fashion mindset, I see a glimmer of hope. Using my things is hardly a reason to congratulate myself, but something is working. I am cutting new rags from worn out garments. I have been mending and am comfortable with a needle. Since I started tracking wear, every garment has become precious and I can’t bear to waste it. I refuse to give it away frivolously. I refuse to hoard it and have been using my spread sheet to distribute wear. My money matters so much more now that I get paid by green energy tech industry. It’s money that came from humans investing in the climate and every penny made in wages, sales, profit, research, grants, subsidies, … matters. Generations have marched, protested, begged, shouted, altered our lifestyles, innovated, failed, tried again, deeply loved the planet, deeply thought about their long term future, … for this climate investment. Every dollar matters. If I bought shoes with it, I better extract their worth in cost per wear. These shoes had a glorious life/death from walking hundreds of miles. My puppy came along and totally changed the meaning of shoes. They went from vanity-outfit-completer to aids that enable exploration of my city. So be it.

Women’s Rights & Climate

Posted on May 9, 2022

We are currently fighting to save an old-growth forest from diamond miners. “But there is a diamond in the ground and it’s very valuable”, they say. Indigenous peoples homes and lives, the old growth trees, the already fragile ecosystem, the stressed water ways, the endangered animals, … they do not seem to consent with your request. Do you get to over ride them? Who gave you this power ? “Once the diamond is found to exist, all their rights are not as important as the diamonds right to be unearthed. It’s a diamond !! ” they say. Same arguments are been shouted around this week. The planet is a gorgeous women infected with patriarchy and burning up in failed attempts to cure herself. In lieu of the clerics at the Supreme Court imposing their religion on women’s ability to family plan using her own mind and based on her unique circumstances, I have to emphasize : Forced pregnancy is classified torture by the United Nations. The States in America are currently tripping over each other to see who can pass the most restrictive laws on abortion. Women empowerment is a climate solution and our work went from harder to so much more harder. Patriarchal mindset of putting women last, got us here and the climate solutions are intertwined with women’s rights. The extractive mindset of forcibly taking from Mother Nature while ignoring the costs, started with the forests/rivers/oceans/mountains/marshes/what-ever-else-can-be-extracted and continues to come for our uterus time and again. Patriarchy asks “what more can we take from the mother?” Indigenous ways of living ask “how can we regenerate, empower and safeguard the mother?” I do not need to frame this issue from the lens of climate change OR do I need scientific reports to make a case for rights of women in this cruel unsafe unequal patriarchal world, but the excerpts of the IPCC report put the implications of women empowerment rather succinctly. Part of the report has been copied here :

Gender, race, intersectionality and climate mitigation
There is high evidence and high agreement that empowering women benefits both mitigation and adaptation, because women prioritize climate change in their voting, purchasing, community leadership, and work both professionally and at home (high evidence, high agreement). Increasing voice and agency for those marginalized in intersectional ways by Indignity, race, ethnicity, dis/ability, and other factors has positive effects for climate policy (high evidence, high agreement).
Climate change affects people differently along all measures of difference and identity, which have intersectional impacts linked to economic vulnerability and marginalisation (Morello Frosch et al. 2009; Dankelman 2010; Habtezion 2013; Godfrey and Torres 2016; Walsh 2016; Flatø et al. 2017; Goodrich et al. 2019; Perkins 2019; Gür 2020). Worldwide, racialized and Indigenous people bear the brunt of environmental and climate injustices through geographic location in extraction and energy “sacrifice zones”, areas most impacted by extreme weather events, and/or through inequitable energy access (Aubrey 2019; Gonzalez 2020; Lacey-Barnacle et al. 2020; Porter et al. 2020; Temper et al. 2020; Jafry et al. 2019) Disparities in climate change vulnerability not only reflect pre-existing inequalities, they also reinforce them. For example, inequities in income and in the ownership and control of household assets, familial responsibilities due to male out-migration, declining food and water access, and increased disaster exposure can undermine women’s ability to achieve economic independence, enhance human capital, and maintain physical and mental health and well-being (Chandra et al. 2017; Eastin 2018; Das et al. 2019). Studies during the COVID crisis have found that, in general, women’s economic and productive lives have been affected disproportionately to men’s (Alon et al. 2020; ILO 2020).
Women have less access to social protections and their capacity to absorb economic shocks is very low, so they face a “triple burden” during crises — including those resulting from climate change — and this is heightened for women in the less-developed countries and for those who are intersectionally vulnerable (Coates et al. 2020; McLaren et al. 2020; Wenham et al. 2020; Azong and Kelso 2021; Erwin et al. 2021; Maobe and Atela 2021; Nicoson 2021; Sultana 2021; Versey 2021). Because men currently hold the majority of energy-sector jobs, energy transition will impact them economically and psychologically; benefits, burdens and opportunities on both the demand and supply sides of the mitigation transition have a range of equity implications (Pearl-Martinez and Stephens 2017; Standal et al. 2020; Mang-Benza 2021). Mitigating gendered climate impacts requires addressing inequitable power relations throughout society(Wester and Lama 2019).
Women’s well-being and gender-responsive climate policy have been emphasized in international agreements including the Paris accord (UNFCCC 2015), CEDAW General Recommendation 37 (Vijeyarasa 2021), and the 2016 Decision 21/CP.22 on Gender and Climate Change (UNFCCC 2016; Larson et al. 2018). Increasing the participation of women and marginalised social groups, and addressing their special needs, helps to meet a range of SDGs, improve disaster and crisis response, increase social trust, and improve climate mitigation policy development and implementation (Alber 2009; Whyte 2014; Elnakat and Gomez 2015; Salehi et al. 2015; Buckingham and Kulcur 2017; Cohen 2017; Kronsell 2017; Lee and Zusman 2019).
Women have a key role in the changing energy economy due to their demand and end use of energy resources in socially-gendered productive roles in food production and processing, health, care, education, clothing purchases and maintenance, commerce, and other work both within and beyond the home (Räty and Carlsson-Kanyama 2009; Oparaocha and Dutta 2011; Bob and Babugura 2014; Macgregor 2014; Perez et al. 2015; Bradshaw 2018; Clancy and Feenstra 2019; Clancy et al. 2019; Fortnam et al. 2019; Rao et al. 2019a; Quandt 2019; Horen Greenford et al. 2020; Johnson 2020).
Women’s work and decision-making are central in the food chain and agricultural output in most developing countries, and in household management everywhere. Emissions from cooking fuels can cause serious health damages, and unsustainable extraction of biofuels can also hurt mitigation (Bailis et al. 2015), so considering health, biodiversity and climate tradeoffs and co-benefits is important (Rosenthal et al. 2018; Aberilla et al. 2020; Mazorra et al. 2020) . Policies on energy use and consumption are often focused on technical issues related to energy supply, thereby overlooking ‘demand-side’ factors such as household decision-making, unpaid work, livelihoods and care (Himmelweit 2002; Perch 2011; Fumo 2014; Hans et al. 2019; Huyer and Partey 2020). Such gender- blindness represents the manifestation of wider issues related to political ideology, culture and tradition (Carr and Thompson 2014; Thoyre 2020; Perez et al. 2015; Fortnam et al. 2019).
Women, and all those who are economically and/or politically marginalised, often have less access to energy and use less, not just because they may be poorer but case studies show because their consumption choices are more ecologically-inclined and their energy use is more efficient (Lee et al. 2013; Permana et al. 2015; Li et al. 2019). Women’s carbon footprints are about 6-28% lower than men’s (with high variation across countries), mostly based on their lower meat consumption and lower vehicle use (Isenhour and Ardenfors 2009; Räty and Carlsson-Kanyama 2010; Barnett et al. 2012; Medina and Toledo-Bruno 2016; Ahmad et al. 2017; Fernström Nåtby and Rönnerfalk 2018; Räty and Carlsson-Kanyama 2009; Li et al. 2019). Gender-based income redistribution in the form of pay equity for women could reduce emissions if the redistribution is revenue-neutral (Terry 2009; Dengler and Strunk 2018). Also, advances in female education and reproductive health, especially voluntary family planning, can contribute greatly to reducing world population growth (Abel et al. 2016; Dodson et al. 2020).
Carbon emissions are lower per capita in countries where women have more political ‘voice’, controlling for GDP per capita and a range of other factors (Ergas and York 2012). While most people recognize that climate change is happening (Lewis et al. 2018; Ballew et al. 2019), climate denialism is more prevalent among men (McCright and Dunlap 2011; Anshelm and Hultman 2014; Jylhä et al. 2016; Nagel 2015), while women are more likely to be environmental activists, and to support stronger environmental and climate policies (Stein 2004; McCright and Xiao 2014, Whyte 2014). Racialised groups are more likely to be concerned about climate change and to take political action to support climate mitigation policies (Leiserowitz and Akerlof 2010; Schuldt and Pearson 2016; Pearson et al. 2017; Ballew et al. 2020; Godfrey and Torres 2016; Johnson 2020). This underscores the important synergies between equity and mitigation. The contributions of women, racialised people, and Indigenous people who are socially positioned as those first and most affected by climate change – and therefore experts on appropriate climate responses – are substantial (Dankelman and Jansen 2010; Wickramasinghe 2015; Black 2016; Vinyeta et al. 2016; Pearse 2017). Equitable power, participation, and agency in climate policy-making is hence an effective contribution for improving governance and decision making on climate change mitigation (Reckien et al. 2017; Collins 2019). Indigenous knowledge is an important source of guidance for biodiversity conservation, impact assessment, governance, disaster preparedness and resilience (Salick and Ross 2009; Green and Raygorodetsky 2010; Speranza et al. 2010; Mekuriaw Bizuneh 2013; Mekuriaw 2017), and women are often the local educators, passing on and utilising traditional and Indigenous knowledge (Ketlhoilwe 2013; Onyige 2017; Azong et al. 2018).
Higher female political participation, controlled for other factors, leads to higher stringency in climate policies, and results in lower GHG emissions (Cook et al. 2019). Gender equity also is correlated with lower per capita CO2-eq emissions (Ergas and York 2012). In societies where women have more economic equity, their votes push political decision-making in the direction of environmental/sustainable development policies, less high-emission militarisation, and more emphasis on equity and social policies e.g. via wealth and capital gains taxes (Resurrección 2013; UNEP 2013; Glemarec et al. 2016; Bryan et al. 2018; Crawford 2019; Ergas and York 2012). Changing social norms on race and climate are linked and policy-relevant (Benegal 2018; Elias et al. 2018; Slocum 2018; Gach 2019; Wallace-Wells 2019; Temple 2020; Drolet 2021). For all these reasons, climate policies are strengthened by including more differently-situated knowledge and diverse perspectives, such as feminist expertise in the study of power (Bell et al. 2020a; Lieu et al. 2020); clarifying equity goals (e.g. distinguishing among ‘reach, ‘benefit’, and ‘empowerment’; obtaining disaggregated data and using clear empirical equity measures; and confronting deeply-engrained inequities in society (Lau et al. 2021). Inclusivity in climate governance spans mitigation-adaptation, supply-demand and formal- informal sector boundaries in its positive effects (Morello Frosch et al. 2009; Dankelman 2010; Bryan and Behrman 2013; Habtezion 2013; Godfrey and Torres 2016; Walsh 2016; Flatø et al. 2017; Wilson et al. 2018; Goodrich et al. 2019; Perkins 2019; Bell et al. 2020b; Gur 2020).
IPCC REPORT on Mitigation, Chapter 5.

Erin’s post on how to help.

Cup of Jo’s post on how to help. ( Read the comment section if you are in need of some internet conversations. )

“Why don’t you write about tasteful second hand clothes and personal style? Why all this justice stuff on your once fun blog”, I get asked. I really want to live my little life, create a cozy bubble, be enchanted with the natural world, practice writing, read more, travel, eat better, go on longer walks, climb mountains, take pretty outfit photos, talk about personal style, … but they are making it hard to bury my head in the sand and ignore everything else. On that note, any interest to read home decor journals if I publish them here ?

Gratitude Journal : April

Posted on April 28, 2022

*Women in Lakshmipur who have been planting mangrove trees in Sundarbans, India.*

To April rains. The land that knows drought, gulped it up. Mina and I went on extra walks to see the plants sing.
To the sense of being native to this place, to diving head-on back into old cliques like we never left and to belonging.
It was my birthday. My parents were giddy with joy remembering the day I was born. To see them that happy, made my day.
A bar owner in Berkley donated his venue on Fridays for climate. We can get any musician we want and use the proceeds for fundraising for climate solutions.
I am learning pottery at Merrit Ceramics, Oakland. My teacher is wonderful and pottery is hard !
‘Happy’ in French is ‘content’. To Duolingo. Even I can learn a new language without being dejected.
We got to host a film festival in Berkley’s Brower Center. Thankful for a venue for climate artists to present their work. “Have a good time saving the world, or you’re just going to depress yourself”. The activists need the artists to keep going.
Climate writing. “We’re cashing in a billion years of planetary savings bonds and blowing it on assorted bling.” -The Overstory, Richard Powers.
To climate startups being funded.
On one fine bad day, I walked down to a friend’s place, sank into her couch, hugged a pillow and whined for an hour. She whined back. I am grateful for my girl friends more than anything else in the world right now.

Reading :

“Individuals with high socio-economic status have high behavioral plasticity and capability to reduce their GHG emissions, especially in mobility by flying less and utilizing electric two, three, or four wheelers, by becoming role models of low-carbon lifestyles, by investing into low-carbon business, and by lobbying for stringent climate policies.” – IPCC.

Individual lifestyle choices matter in changing the socio-cultural norms required to combat climate change. IPCC Chapter 5 once and for all put an end to the debate. I read it twice.

Sufficiency and Efficiency.

Ublobia and otivon.

Land of Little Rain, by Mary Austin, is available online.

Housing not meeting climate goals. Looking at you America ! Can t h e American dream be updated to townhome with courtyard ?

Same feelings on colorism. Lots of them. #bridgerton2

Well explained insight on environmental impact Vs sustainability in fashion.

Explore Indian art.

Watch :

This documentary on regenerative travel.

This comfort food recipe.

Materialism :

Bought this dress and these trousers. Big shopping month for me.

Smoke. Burnt Sugar. Pine. Breakfast tea can be a campfire experience. Add hot water, pause for 3 minutes as it seeps and drink up.

If I had lots of money, I would buy these shoes.

Am saving for this vessel.

Tiny Thoughts :

We have indigenous souls in us that we have been trying to forget for centuries. I am started to remember.

Be a wild flower in a world of roses.

Money we loose from slowing down cant be more important than money we have.

To garden is to observe a million clocks tick. The faster ones are instant joy. The slower ones connect us to our collective history in time and place. By tending the soil, I can alter time, make plants grow faster.

Question for you :

Our local climate chapters have women below 35 and above 50. The child rearing years must be all consuming. How can we get more women included ? Or is it unfair to ask more of mothers ?

Gossip from my Garden

Posted on April 1, 2022

Perhaps it is alright to feel the grief over humans trying to survive wars and the pandemic, and take up space on the internet writing about the trivial joys like the birdsong in the mornings, finding worms under garden stepping stones, the leaves finally coming back from the winter death, fresh humus from the compost bin from our Fall/Winter collection of scraps, to naming creatures we find in our garden after our best friends, that there is a word called Aman Cara meaning a soul friend, …… In a turbulent world, I think downsizing our delights is the way. I have kept a journal that I write into after I work in my garden. Some entires :

I am living in and writing myself into my own novel. I observe the environment deeply for world building. As I move through the day and do certain actions, I fit a tad better into the pages of my own book. Every bird that comes to drink at the water bath, is a potential character. One has to know their characters. So I observe. What is its essence ? Did it come here because there is no other vegetation around or did it come here for the comforts our yard provides her ? How does the heroine, me, conduct herself through the story ? Lately, the animals have become less scared of me. We look at each other and go about our work. Georgia Okeefe famously once asked “who has the time to observe a flower” and hence she painting them to force us to see. Gardeners who journal can learn to see. Only after I started painting our bamboo, did I observe the many configurations of leaves as they sit on the stem. As I later discovered, there is a whole discipline of Sumi-e brush painting dedicated to the ones who spend their lives perfecting how to draw bamboo in an act of meditation. This world has a lot of pleasure to provide to the humans who pursue depth and slow travel. How slow? Tree time. That’s how long it would take for me to master painting bamboo.

“What did you do last weekend ? We went to Paris. And ate at ****** and stayed at ******. We then met someone (with generational wealth) and spontaneously went to their country home in ******. Too much fun …I am so tired since we got back. And so busy. What did you do?”

“I removed some weeds, read about flood protection and did a write up to share my finds with our neighbors, turned the compost, built some support for a vine, tried to figure out the name of the surprise plants that seem to sprout on this land using iNaturalist, painted a bird in an effort to remember it, took a nap outside, read a few more pages from the book Ecological Gardener, did some time travel to learn how the Native Indians lived on this exact piece of land, drew some garden designs that might work, … till I overwhelmed myself. I need to get out of the garden. I need some boredom and less stimulation.”

So tiny and incomplete, this understanding. But enough to live for. I learn one more tree / one more plant / one more bird / one more insect / one more weed / some more geology, … by the day and feel satisfied.

“You have to do Paris.”

My happiness and joy is tied into the health of my local ecosystem.

I wish I was born into an indigenous way of living. It’s a hard life, but maybe a good life ? I sometimes wish I was my great-grand-ma’s peer. I wish I am as spiritual and wise as she was. I wish for a pathway in life that takes me there but am terrified of the hardships that made her. I am not an orphan nor did I ever experience poverty. I have not been reluctantly wed off to a much older widower at age 13 whom I didn’t want to marry. I do not know the pain of seeing several of my children die. I do not know war, patriarchy and hunger the way she does. Yet, she was an environmentalist. They way she blossomed into an elder : protective, tough, just and beloved, warms me. She is our banyan tree and I am one of her aerial roots. The hard life chiseled her. Such woman should be in charge of the world, not the grifters with pretty words we seem to fall for. I think of her when we feed the birds. She would give an offering of rice to the birds first, before she sat down to eat her meal. She cared for the land well into her senile years. She thought of life beyond her own children, at every meal, every day, all of her life in-spite of not having the luxury to do so. Can I become a native to this land like she once was ? The land my house sits on was once a Yrgin Native American village. To be precise, it was a swamp grove with the native village built in the willow groves. (They were eventually driven out by squatters who came during the gold rush, after loosing a court battle. The Spanish missionaries who once lived alongside them employed the natives to help alter the land they once lived in symbiosis with. ) Decades of ranching irrevocably drained out the water shed. A farming community subsisted on the water for a while. Out of farms was born a segregated suburb from world war 2 profits. Our house is made with logged old growth redwoods, which horrifies me to learn. I benefit for it all by owning this house. This land currently sits on a flood zone and a liquefaction zone. Should I move and save my neck ? Should I stay, gather our neighbors and get the government to build adequate flood control measures ? Which other personal activity does this time and energy come from ? What does it mean to be a native of this land ? There is a gold rush mentality in the Silicon Valley : get rich, do nothing for the place, become a NIMBY opposing any measure that will make you less rich and comfortable, displace natives, take your gains, leave preferably to a tax free state with less regulation. Will I become a native or a gold digger ? How do I balance wanting to be a native with wanting to live in lots of kinds places over my lifetime ?

All the things I deemed essential in my youth, have proven needless with time. I spent a lot of time outdoors in the sun with muddy nails and dirty feet. A younger me would have covered up, slathered way more sunscreen way more diligently, thought about stylish garden clothes, thought about having the perfect body, …. I transitioned from a young vain woman to an older woman very quickly. Aging no longer bothers me. I am not attached to my bottle of SK-II like I once was. I have let go of a lot of my own style lessons. Yes, I know what fits and looks good on me. But does it give me pleasure ? Not anymore. What I shed, the next generation seems to pick up, polish it and obsess over it. I ought to be careful as to what I learn in the first place. Bad inheritance is a not to be my legacy. As I clean the rotting plants from fall/winter crop, I think of my own body slowly creeping towards death. The old should die and make the soil rich for the new. Old ideas like patriarchy, neocolonialism, … should die with our generation. I was outrunning my age for a long time but it finally caught up. My back hurts from being hunched over. I have cuts and bruises from reflexes that don’t match my activities. Texture of my hair has changed and I am balding. The weight gain seems sudden. I have very little energy for too many aspects of society. “Take up the space and do what you set out to do.” That is all I will tell myself today. In lieu of the lives we lost last year, I can say with certainty : aging is a privilege. I bet Maanasa would have asked for all the wrinkles possible and embraced declining organ functionality to be alive to see her children grow up, to do her research, to age along side loved ones…. I immediately saddled up Mina and we go on an extra walk, to celebrate being alive.

The desire for a pair of coveralls is back. With work from home, I seem to interact with humans in blue collar work wear more than humans in white collar work wear. Today, I saw a man jump out of his truck, wearing cowboy boots and overalls. He changed into steel toed boots, put on a hat and started work. The men seem to look good in helmets as opposed to how I have always thought my bike helmet looked stupid on me. One of the men was wearing an antique turquoise bracelet that made me wish I was wearing mine. And then, there was a woman worker, who jumped out of an excavator to greet my puppy. We were both enamored by her enough to ask her to visit us at home to use our bathroom over the portable potty on the street. My influencers wear the same overalls everyday, are as classic as classic can be and aren’t trying to sell me random stuff. The overalls I tried on in the flea market are too big to be practical or as expensive as Patagonia’s version when when they do fit while sporting the perfect hipster-ish paint splatters. I need to pair of my own.

My father visited us. I tried to get him to spend time with me away from the constant background noise of breaking news and in the garden. He spent most of that time complaining about the garden tools I own. That we have any tools at all ! He ranted : the hardworking peasants in India do much more without owning rakes, spades and gardening gloves. He had similar complaints about my owning a dish scrub with a handle and oven mitts. According to him, the hardworking women in India don’t need them and produce wonderful food. He called out my wet mop for having a pole. “Women in India have a strong backs from bending over as they mop the floors”. That line did it for me. A threshold was crossed and words flooded out of me. Only someone who never never mopped a floor with just a cloth rag can say that because they don’t know the pain. According to me, we value lives of certain people so little that we do not try to make lives of the poorer women and the peasants better. Why cant we have some tools as long as they don’t harm the earth, to make the chores that fall on the shoulders of women a tad more pleasant ? Older men have all the influence in the world when it comes to decision making. Will he buy the required tools for his employees ? I think not. He will over work them in the name of grit, hard work and work ethic. Frugality of tools for them, luxury McMansion for him. Sigh ! So, I sat down with him and had a very long conversation. I shared every fact I could remember from the book Invisible Woman. I told him about how regressive Indian movies are, towards woman and it’s influence in our life. I told him about how my precious time is demanded to serve the folks higher on the patriarchal ladder, while they lounge around and browse at their screens. I told him about how women in my mothers generation are only remembered for the food they make and every other quality is not cherished. I complained about how I interrupt myself from deep work because I was taught to constantly scan the environment around me to tidy up after messes that the male/female man-children make in my house. I told him about how I can sit / sleep on the floor in what-ever-conditions because the they grabbed the most comfortable seating always and they now praise me for being a good Indian girl who can sit on the floor/sleep anywhere. He stayed silent for a long time. He told me he never thought about any of this. Oh Garden gods, please bestow upon me the patience to have better conversations without bursting into flames.

Solar calendar, is for the life’s rat race. A day to keep track of birthdays, the day to buy your valentine presents, the day rent is due and for the passing deadlines. Seasons are for the traveler who rejoice in pleasure of observing changes around them and live accordingly. Lunar calendar, is for the soul. A way to rejoice for no other reason but a full moon, to celebrate the full moon by sitting in the garden at night, miss it once its gone and long for it till it appears again. It comes back, with certainty, as long as I am alive.

We live in a working class neighborhood with *mostly run down small homes and non-tech immigrant population. One can always spot an extraordinary thing of beauty that the resident has saved up to splurged on. When splurges are seldom made, they really stick out. That one cherry tree that was planted and taken care of fills me with gratitude as I walk by. They are providing me with beauty and making walks more pleasurable in a world built for cars. That fountain holds the promise of water splashing and distracting me from the noise of traffic. That fresh coat of paint on the exterior makes me dream of picking up my paint brush. That single flower blooming by accident and not mowed down inspires every gardener to let the wilderness be. As we walk around, the little accents always stand out over decrepit backgrounds. We know that a very careful consideration has been made. Life should have fasts and feasts. If we have one and not the other, a poverty of spirit can creep up. ….. I used to want to live in an eco-village. This is one and I never really realized it. Most folks live a low carbon lifestyle and hardly waste anything. If trash cans are full, it’s because they contain soiled diapers that need to be disposed. If there are trucks parked up front, its a vocational requirement than toxic masculinity at display in car form. Package delivery trucks dont spend a lot of time on our streets. Repair is the way of life here to keep old things functioning. There are no vain renovations except for the recent onset of fixer-upper-folk who are making the neighborhood unaffordable. None of the homes are above 1000 sft and families of 4 live inside. This is not instagram version of minimalism. There are no white lime washed walls inside mansions with objects sparsely displayed but copiously filled into cleverly designed storage, but our ecological footprint is low. I am at home here and there is a lot to learn from our neighbors. We need a new definition for eco-village that include us. It has to change from citizens checking out of the society to live by themselves in car dependant forest cabins with a view, to walkable urban dense communities that are low-carbon in nature by design.

I am sometimes exhausted from my daily travels. We walk and take notes. We notice plants and the conditions in which they seem to thrive. I need to know them better. Need to learn about the soil under. Need to see them as they grow by the season. When this land floods in the future, how will these plants cope ? Where can I go to read about immersive, regenerative, soul stirring, funny, acceptance centered, garden writing ? The quick garden tips and how-to’s are too shallow. The scientific literature too cumbersome. Judith learner Lowry’s books are the answer. I want to host a dinner party + a book club for humans who are understand this feeling. Novella Carpenter of Farm City, Rebecca Burgess of Fibershed, Alex Harris of Birds of Lake Merrit, Susi the neighbor who knows the wild animals in our neighborhood well, Mary Austin of The Land of Little Rain, Etel Adnan of Journey to Mount Tamalpais, Sylvia Linsteadt of The Lost Worlds of San Francisco Bay, …. What would our conversations be like ? We would bond over our common dislike for monoculture. We would give a land acknowledgment before we start drinking. We would reminisce about days of abundance of water. Read some poetry. Talk about our travels close to home. Talk about our love of walks and walking. Share our adventures. Praise our animals for being the most trusty companions as we do our work. Talk about writing. Plot climate action. Get emotional. Drink some more. I would cook a big pot of dal and rice for us.

Need water. But not as a flood.

Same prayer as the one on my greatgrandmother’s lips through life as a farmer’s wife, farmer’s widow, a farmer, farmer landlady. Everywoman in my family has prayed for the same many times in their lifetimes. Every one of us tried to make life choices that would make our lives independent of income from farming, and yet we pray. When I call home, the elders ask about our well being. “Job okay ? Eating okay ? Mina okay ? My health is fine. ……. We had one good rain this month”. It spills out because it’s a shared prayer of wellbeing embedded in our bones. We were once indegenous people, have urbanized and can never fully forgot. It’s in our cultural DNA.

Rain. Come make our world better.

The water wars that are starting amidst California’s drought scare me.

Our compost bin is a popular destination for the birds, waiting feed off the insects/worms attracted to the decay. The cats are watching the birds. Puppy is watching over them all. We are an ecosystem with our roles cut out. The roots dont get pulled out after the plants die. The stem and leaves go into the compost bin. The soil structure is not to be disturbed. We add fresh compost on top and plant again. We add unfinished compost as mulch. That’s an honorable death for the plants we grow for food. What’s the human equivalent of leaving with roots in when its your time to die ? Is it raising environmentalist children ? Is it creating legislation that form the roots of societal behavior ? Is it building a co-op that challenges the CEO-worker pay structure and economic inequality ? Is it working in a B-corp that will continue to do the good work after you are gone ? What is the human equivalent of regenerative farming ? What is a B-corp blog ? Who can I have such conversations with ? Everyone is too busy.

He wants to call a gardener. That man brings a tiller, destroys the soil structure we tried to build, laughs at me when I mention no-dig gardening, has the sole aim to do the task in the least amount of time. Land should be worked by people who love it the most. Land should never have become a commodity to be held as a financial growth asset if we were to make citizens stewards of the land. The mention of a gardener starts a ticking an unrest in my head. The race begins. I run and start to do the work that is meant to be outsourced. He wants to make the call to the gardener tomorrow ? I wake up early and try to do the work before any call is made. I have to outrun him. My back is breaking from being hunched over but at least the birds visit while I am at it. A pot of tea awaits. Robin Kimmerer reads Braiding Sweetgrass out loud as I work in her melodious voice.

They asked her, “What is this all about, this notion of sustainability? What are they talking about?” She gave them a summary of the standard definitions of sustainable development, including “the management of natural resources and social institutions in such a manner as to ensure the attainment and continued satisfaction of human needs for present and future generations.” They were quiet for a while, considering. Finally one elder said, “This sustainable development sounds to me like they just want to be able to keep on taking like they always have. It’s always about taking. You go there and tell them that in our way, our first thoughts are not ‘What can we take?’ but ‘What can we give to Mother Earth?’ That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Her words give a voice to what my great grand mother would have taught me and conducted her life by. Her words turn me into that sizzling soil on a hot day absorbing it’s first rain after a long drought. Her book is full of lessons I wish were taught in families and school. I often tear up. I nod. I pause to listen to some words again and again. They sometimes knock the wind out of me and I turn to goo. They make me take my gardening gloves off amidst the work, to be more naked. There is an exquisite mind-body space that is entered when inspiration, motivation, skill and being in the groove of work intersect. Runner’s high. Meditator’s high. Duende. Yogi’s high. Smoker’s high. Coder’s high. Her words sends me into a gardener’s high : Doing and being become one.

Sitting in my garden at night, puts me at ease and melts the day away. Time seems to become a non entity. The history had many phrases for it. You must cultivate your own garden. Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid. Then, the answer to a big question came to me one night. I have always ask myself “why climate?” I dont have children of my own. I am relatively privileged and can ride out some of the climate harm. I don’t plan to live for too long. I have want for few things and am not running the rat race. On the other hand, climate work is a thankless job. You loose most battles and we are loosing the war. The ones who enjoy burning fossil fuels and consumption seem to be having all the fun. They have more time to tend to their own needs. They will constantly brag about their vacations, their mansions and stuff they bought. Taking public transit is less pleasant than driving. There is no tangible personal return for living a low carbon lifestyle. There is one great return for doing climate work though : friendships and community around the cause. But that can be found around any other cause. Why is climate my dearest cause ? The answer : I owe it. I get so much joy and pleasure from being outdoors, the civilization we built and the ecosystems we are a part of. I owe it. It’s a debt of gratitude. My mindset used to inspired by the Buddhism. “Renounce and recluse at individual level. I am doing less harm and that is enough for now. If more people do the same voluntarily at their own pace, problem solved !” But that sort of hyper individualism does not solve this problem at all. Buddha lived in a different time when harm from invisible emissions on a global scale couldn’t not have been conceived. ( Vegans concentrate on not eating a chicken but are not talking up arms to reduce emissions causing the biggest mass extinction of animals in our lifetime. Pro-lifers who scream about abortions aren’t voting for universal healthcare, minimum wage, affordable housing, free college, climate, … either ! ) At peak Buddhist popularity in India, citizens who would otherwise care were checking out of the society and minding their own minds. The society was getting worse with power grab from the ones who were aggressors in the first place. Bhagavad Gita offered an alternate philosophy : Do not leave the fight and go live in a forest. Stay in the civilization and work towards collective change. You may have to battle near and dear. It is going to be hard, painful, soul searching, but that is the way. “You have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to laziness, either. Perform every action with your heart fixed on the Supreme Lord. Renounce attachment to the fruits. Be even-tempered in success and failure: for it is this evenness of temper which is meant by yoga. Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender. Seek refuge in the knowledge of Brahma. They who work selfishly for results are miserable.” Atomic Habits, Stoic Philosophy, and few other schools of thought advocate a similar mindset without the references to deities. As I changed my philosophy, I have found peace. Show up to CCL and do my tasks. That is it. I have time to think about all of this, as I work in the garden. We may need more urban community gardens for thinking, conversation and ideas to evolve.

He has garden lust. His light is on. He is okay spending money in sums he seldom spends on anything, to get the expensive stone garden basin we both want. He is eager for an end product for a process which in its reality is a journey to no where. The romantic meets The deadline. Sparks fly! “I want a straight path here with circles around the trees” is met with “we should let the vegetation claim the place and observe the path our puppy takes through the over growth. That should be the path we pave. Animals intuitively know the best routes”. “What !” Bhoom ! We bicker. We are disappointed in how the other thinks. I am on tree time. He wants it done by summer. Lawn mowers and leaf blowers are cigarettes in my book. They should stay the fuck away from our lands. We bicker again. “It doesn’t matter”. “It does. Running this leaf blower for 30 min is akin to driving a car for N miles” “what’s wrong with that” “The lawn has to go. We are in a mega drought. It’s ugly monoculture that needs maintenance for no benefit to anyone but the McMansion gods”. Anger and love collide in confusing ways over a garden that we both worship and use as a retreat. So be it. Talking to him about garden plans trains me to have better conversations on climate without getting angry. I can use all the help I can get.

Gratitude Journal : March

Posted on March 25, 2022

Betty Reid Soskin. Image Credit :Andrea Sher

To having a home, some calm and stability. For the sense of community. That my home is brimming with people since I moved back to California. There is a psychological cost to being around some people because – patriarchy says : “your love language should be to be my maid, as I lounge on the couch”. Indian relatives confuse being a house guest with checking into an all expenses paid hotel. I am learning to accept some of this cost, openly talk about patriarchy to people who treat me poorly and to firmly delegate the duties. It took me a long time to get to this mind space.
For Mina. For the time spent outdoors, multiple times a day.
To Sylvia Plath’s journals. For showing me how everyday thoughts can we written down with skill. I now keep my own.
To Mary Oliver. When an environmentalist writes about living : as a pilgrim in one’s ecosystem, not as it’s predator, it’s transcendental.
To Masanobu Fukuoka. His book One Straw Revolution is a life lesson.
To CCL for soul fulfilling work, for helping me find humans who care deeply* and for giving me a venue to turn climate grief into action. *A member from the org moved to West Virginia to help with lobbying Senator Joe Manchin, Democratic Party’s road-blocker. We have a local group focused on ways we can help West Virginia chapter – fund raise, write about just transition for coal workers, …. There are days when I love being a human being.
For my husband and the wilderness in him that the civilization hasn’t claimed yet.
To all the aunts/uncles who worried about Mina with me, when she was ill. To all the neighbors for pooling in to pay for Cinco’s vet visit.
To chicken biryani, for finally revealing it’s secret formulae to me.
To aging, for helping me loose interest in what is not important for the soul.

Reading :

Betty Reid Soskin wrote a blog from 2003-2019. What a treasure. ( This is how one belongs to a place in this world. Really really belong. This are the sort of lessons in civic engagement I want to be taught in lifestyle blogs written by phenomenal woman. )

This newsletter by Bookshop.

This poem, read at my grandpa’s funeral.

The aesthetic of care. (“To allow for mess and life and things that don’t look good as I think they could.” … “I break things in my home garden. Ideas, conventions, ingrained behaviours.”)

10 ways to confront climate crisis, without loosing hope.

The myth of good taste. ( espy for an immigrant like me who *used-to yap about the superiority of European sensibility. #DecolonizeBeauty )

Indian caste system and taste. ( Continuation from the previous article. The rich kids in India now have savior complex for art directing the rural craftspeople to make beige toned things. #DecolonizeSupplyChain )

A planetary consciousness.

Hugging the X-axis. ( Apply this to longevity of clothes, commitment to personal style, to marriage, to friendship/family, to career, to activism, to a place, to an idea, ….. )

Urban density, Urban density, Urban density. We should talk about land mis-use more.

Watch :

Environmentally Friendly, without reducing consumption, is a greenwashing. I used propagated this nonsense as a blogger back in the day.

David Foster Wallace on Consumerism.

This women’s workshop on construction.

The creativity that went into living the life that made this video on beets.

Green renaissance.

Wild and Scenic Film Festival. I am working the event. Come say hello if you see me.

Memorized the information in this video on how US almost solved climate change in 1980s.

Materialism :

This colorful pottery.

For future reference, great looking rain boots.

O il, for leather and wood maintenance.

Pink glaze.

TRX bands, for full body resistance training sessions with out high-carbon equipment. Highly recommend.

Hiking pants for multi day walks.

Tiny Thoughts :

“In a time when we need deep work, we are window shopping. Dont do a place, be a part of the place.”

“reduce before reuse, reuse before recycle. The greenwashing monsters usually talk latter and never the former.”

“No plant needs human help to grow if its suited for the soil it is native to. When gardening, the garden is you.”

Gratitude Journal : September

Posted on September 30, 2021

To our grandfather. He was the first to get an education from our village. He made it a point to uplift our family of farmers by exposing us to opportunities outside our village. What a difference having his mentorship a generation ahead made !! We all went to school because he convinced the family, that small scale farming can’t support the growing family, like it once used to. Buying more land, was not financially possible. Education was his solution out of low-income-barely-scarping-by-homesteading subsistence. His mortal life ended and the entire family is experiencing life differently since. He truly was the best of us. I broke my flight free 2021 pledge to attend the funeral in Baton Rouge. Grateful to my mother for giving me this family. She did the work and built the bridges. She continues to do the work everyday and I have a village to grow in. My grandma, his wife, lost her sister this week. Their son, my uncle, is in the hospital battling leukemia and lives in the state of least vaccinated. Amidst all this heart ache, my aunt is helping organize the Woman’s March on October 2nd. “The darker elements of our past are closer than they ought to be, and perennially in danger of catching up“. This is how one may channel grief, by uplifting everyone. Please make it to the march if you live in America. Or attend it virtually. ( And play this song in your homes.) Thank you !
To boardgames played into the night. To big buckets of biryani that can be purchased in and around the Bay Area. To a certain XL sized cheap whiskey from Costco. To wool socks. To my neighbors and their dogs for the warm welcome. To all the books I could buy this month. To the previous residents of this house for leaving a full compost bin for us to garden with. To the banana plant that came back from the dead and had a baby. To the feeling of home I currently experience. To move around, was learning, excitement and lust. Staying is love.
For having an uninterrupted water supply during drought. My childhood was filled with us on severe rationing and lot of mind space allocated to optimizing water. Anyone lower in the patriarchal heirarchy were at the front end of course. The men/in-laws/children would ask the mothers “why didn’t you fill the tank at 4 am before everyone else woke up?” We are monitoring our usage and using the gray water to grow food.
“The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.” – thankful to Poet David Whyte for these words. (Philosopher-poets and poet-philosophers are my current topic of exploration.)

Reading :

Eco-minimalism.

a modern curriculum.

We Need a Real Culture — Not this Garbage Fire of Superheroes, Influencers, and Pornification.

This Oakland home.

This list of CSA boxes for East Bay Area.

Gentle introduction to micro-economics.

Vogue on sustainability.

“Sustainability appears to have become an elitist, even imperialistic concept in which the interests of the global north define the conversation.”( These interests are both those of the present generation, whose right to purchase and discard clothing in volume the system seeks to preserve (by switching to ‘circularity’ and ‘more sustainable’ fibers), and the interests of future generations whose needs are to be secured at the sacrifice of producers whose fibers do not meet the global north’s unilaterally declared ‘sustainability’ standards.)

Reading, re-reading, sharing, rewriting.

Chef Imam’s philosophy on food. (His book Monk is the current rock star of my library. )

Watch soil live.

Dont pay for the 95%.

tiny thoughts :

“Spend your time with geniuses, sages and books. “

“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”

“There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.”

Materialism :

a tea cup.

To my first bookshelf ever.

Akari light sculptures.

Juliette Lemontey’s paintings.

Upstream, by Mary Oliver. What a book companion !

Too Small To Matter : #16

Posted on September 5, 2021

Find your “third space”.

If you currently eat out a lot, you may go into withdrawal if you try and cut down, but there’s a high probability that what you are missing isn’t the food so much as the ‘third place’ factor. This neat little term describes a place that is not work or home, but a third kind of place where you feel at ease, and a part of the greater world. Town squares serve this function beautifully in many cultures where they are used as a staple of the community’s ‘going out’ life. People set themselves up on a bench to watch the passing crowds, or take a leisurely stroll arm in arm, pausing to chat when they pass acquaintances. Teenagers get all teenagery in giggly group huddles, glancing excitedly over their shoulders to see who could be glancing back. You might buy a cob of roasted corn on a stick, or a handful of grain to scatter to the pigeons, but it’s not obligatory. You feel refreshed by having been in the world, and stopping to drink it in. There are very few obvious non-commercial substitutes in your average western city.
Raser-Rowland, Annie,; Grubb, Adam,. The Art of Frugal Hedonism.

The Art of Frugal Hedonism is such a fantastic book that I bought an extra copy to stuff into our neighborhood free library. From the view point of Sustainability, we often learn of what not to do. Dont chase more. Dont buy the big car. Dont become a frequent flyer. Dont eat red meat. Dont buy the 15th pair of shoes. Dont buy the blue dress you dont need. Dont buy too many plastic wrapped things. Dont ……. At the end of the day, we are all trying to keep our lives in order, grow enough wealth for security and practicing joy. A systemic approach to hedonic happiness without spending, that is attainable for all, is what this book is about.

Finding a third place is one of the many greatest ideas suggested this book. Existence of third places is probably why I enjoy travel in certain European countries. It is what makes New York City interesting and walkable. When enough citizens spend time in public spaces, there is a desire to make these places enchanting and inviting. Since reading this book, I have found a few places that I have become comfortable being at without a phone in hand :

library, bookstore, lake side, beach, local park, play ground, dog park, public transit, town square, public garden.

My puppy is my ticket to starting conversations. She greets strangers and has become the ice breaker.

My best find so far, is our community garden. I don’t have a plot but we spend time here anyways.

Gardeners are some of the kindest people I have met. Before someone screams “correlation is not causation”, it’s my personal belief that taking care of soil, smiling at worms and speaking the language food sovereignty changes a person. Saving and sharing seeds/tools/compost changes you. Not abusing the soil because we want who ever leases the bed next to eat well, changes you. If hope is a verb, gardening is a practice. Gardens anchor humans to places, and make us care about a place more deeply. My daily walks are enriched by conversations with the gardeners in our neighborhood. I have seen them accept winters that killed everything they planted and start over in spring. Going through life cycles made them philosophers. The spaces they create, have become my third space. That a patch of land to garden is rentable for 50$ a year, without needing a mansion in a suburb, is revolutionary. That a church donated a patch of its lawn to gardeners, makes me wish more institutions did the same. Living in an apartment and finding a third place, helped me re-imagine urbanism and housing :

A single family home with big yard and multiple SUVs parked in the front, has been the cherished American Dream. Is it compatible with our climate goals ?

I wanted the dream. Finding 3rd spaces helped me re-imagine the dream. Having places to spill into, to get out of the house, helped. In my life, everything is an acquired taste. I was born liking sugary starchy food. I taught myself to love vegetables. I was born liking shiny things. I taught myself to understand wabi-sabi. I grew up in a house larger than any space I lived in the last decade. I now like small cozy spaces. I taught myself to sleep on the floor and take cold showers. To do yoga and meditate. To bike and walk. …… I am now teaching myself sustainable living.

Urban density is essential to prevent sub-urban sprawl. We clear out forests, meadows, swamps, animal habitats, corridors that aide animal migration, etc that sequester carbon/dampen floods, and build mansions far away from work places that are only reachable by cars . The 2,200 sft average American home 2,200 requires clearing 20 trees. ( A 25,000 sft mansion requires clearing 380 trees. ) The wealthy own multiple homes full of stuff. We are making it harder and harder on ourselves to solve the climate crisis. Apartments near transit and smaller multifamily homes are a part of the solution to the housing crisis in California. NIMBY-ism, abuse of environmental laws and regressive zoning created scarcity making it unaffordable to anyone not selling ads and gadgets. Chefs, musicians, writers, activists, visual artists, … cant afford to live here and our cities are ugly without them. The old order now landlords over the young, who have to give away a significant chunk of their paycheck as rent. The ones who got their foot in the door go to every Town Hall meeting opposing new development and fund election campaigns of politicians who wont legislate. We need urban density and affordable housing. It is pro-human over pro-home-equity-for-millionaires. SB9 ( multi family units ) and SB10 ( 10 unit apartments near transit ) passed the assembly in California and now sit at the Governors desk as of today. Let’s do this California.

Meanwhile, let’s all find our 3rd space(s) so that we participate in urban design of our cities.

If you have a third space, would you care to share? I can use your narratives.