Tiny homes

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

So-called “tiny homes” – and my God, tiny they often are – are all the craze in the “Western” world, it would seem, right now, in the second decade of the 21st century, and many families with children even downsize to those small and tiny dwellings which, in many cases may not be a bad idea. There are even, though primarily at present only intended for homeless (single) people, tiny homes villages – communities – springing up in some places with communal buildings, launderette, etc.

At the same time, however, almost everyone seems to be up in arms about the fact that Roma families in Eastern Europe “have to live” in small homes where all the kids, sometimes together with the parents, sleep in one bed and there are but a few rooms, if not just one, in the house.

A little like when the Gypsy caves in Sacramonte and Quadix were condemned by the authorities as “unfit for human habitation”, the Gitanos forced into apartment complexes, which did not suit their lives, and the caves then sold off to non-Gypsies as holiday homes and some even for permanent use. Just saying.

I am not against small homes, the opposite rather, as I can also clutter up a large one, and I think that many homes, in the USA and elsewhere, have gotten way too big and their footprint, both literal and environmental, also.

Most people, however, still see it the way that if you have a small house and your children have to share a room or, oh dear, they may have to share a bed or even the bed with the parents then you are poor, very poor, and, oh no, this can't possibly be, especially not when it is working class families or Gypsies. This goes especially for countries such as the USA, Britain, and some other places. Some of those tiny homes today, however, are taking tiny to the extreme. Small, even one-roomed, cabin kind of house is one thing but some of those are about the size of a sheepherder's wagon.

In those tiny homes into which many people downsize, even entire families with two or three kids, this is, shall I say once again, the norm, namely the family bed, with all sharing. But, hey, those are the modern well-educated folks and that's OK.

I am all for smaller homes and, yes, even, like in China and other places in Asia, for the family bed but what I cannot stand is the way that some people who live in small homes, whether out of choice or often not, and the whole family sleeping in the same bed, being told that they live in homes that are too small for them, and so on.

I am even and especially for the small homes communities – as some of those tiny homes are really a little too tiny that are in use there – for co-housing of larger extended families and intentional communities where the homes are mostly for living and communal kitchens and other common areas are also available. They would reduce the footprint in all aspects greatly. They are a great idea and far too many homes today are far too big.

My peeve is only with that the world seems to measure with two different kinds of scales here. When it comes to the hipsters and such like then downsizing to tiny homes is being applauded, even when this is with children. However, people who, to some extent by force of circumstances, are living in small homes, such as many Rom (Gypsies) then they are being castigated for living in such small homes.

Small homes are the way to go, I very much believe, and therefore rather than condemning the Rom (Gypsies) and their small homes maybe people could learn from them and, at the same time, help those Rom to better small homes. How would that be?

The family bed (more about the family bed in another article) is also very hip today among many of the “modern” families while not so long ago the very idea was being held as an anathema and people where the co-sleeping of parents and children is common were portrayed as backwards, such as in many Asian countries. In China this is still very common today for everyone to pile into the same bed of an evening, even among the urban dwellers, and for many a Chinese mother having their children sleep in separate beds, let alone in rooms away from the parents would be an anathema and a cause for mental anguish.

© 2018

Are we living in a fake democracy?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Please see that question as a rhetorical one as the answer is not only yes, yes, and yes, but that we have nowhere, and I repeat and mean nowhere, democracy. Not in a single country of the world at this present moment.

Being permitted to vote every four or five years for the next captain and crew of the ship only to have it continue on the same course towards the abyss is not democracy. The truth of the matter is that we are not even living in a fake democracy; we do not live in any democracy at all.

As Mark Twain said, if voting would make any difference they would make it illegal. And as they have not made it illegal in all those years it must mean that it does not make an iota of a difference.

The fact is that not a single country that claims to be democratic and have democracy is and has nothing of the kind. They who claim that and they who believe that have no idea what democracy actually means in reality.

With every year that passes, another corrupt politician or political scheme is exposed. With increasingly right-wing political parties serving the interests of capitalism over the basic humanitarian needs of the people, is it possible that our system, for democratic it is not, is rigged against the majority in favor of an elite minority? I think the answer here is also a very loud and definite yes.

We only need to look at the European Union and especially with regards to the way they are dealing with Greece. Predominately the reason for having made it is difficult as possible for the Greek government under Syriza is that the great majority of Euro-Zone member states wish to remove the radical left Syriza from power in Athens.

Other methods of the EU are also more than undemocratic, even in the way democracy is seem by most at the present time, in that they, if there has to be, in a country, a referendum will, should it be a negative outcome, as in Ireland with regards to the Lisbon Treaty, force the member state to keep holding a referendum until the outcome is a positive one. If people still believe that we have democracy anywhere then they must be rather daft.

Now, let us look what democracy actually means. It means “the people govern themselves” as the word democracy comes from the Greek “demos” which has two meanings, in the same way that the second part of which the word is made up, “kratos”, has a second meaning. “Demos” means either “the people” or “the village” and “kratos” means either “govern themselves” or “pulls the cart itself”. So it is either “the people govern themselves” or “the village pulls the cart itself”. In both cases it is the people who do the governing, if you get the meaning.

And now someone show me any country where such democracy exists, where the people actually govern themselves. Such a self-government of the people also means that there is not state. The state and its apparatus are diametrically opposed to true democracy and it is this that we need to understand before we can even look at establishing democracy.

Democracy came from the village and to the village it must return, I wrote a while back, and this because true democracy can only work in small groups, in the village or the city block, which must become the village in the city. You can read my articles on this subject of democracy needing to return to the village here and here.

© 2017

Matching neighborhood skills

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

There was a time when everyone knew their neighbors and that not only in a village and they all knew who did what for a trade or who was good in this or that and, even more important, everyone was prepared to help one another.

Today, however, we barely acknowledge our neighbors let alone know them or know who in our community – what community? – we can go to for help in this or that matter.

There was a time when everyone knew that “Uncle” Erik just down the road was a barber, though he may be working in some other job now, and would be prepared, at his place or at your home, to cut the hair of the family. Or there was Old Bill (no, not the police) who did all manner of woodworking, or James, the mechanic, who would be prepared to fix this or that, including a car, on the weekend.

The community that government so often speaks of no longer exists and in many cases the very destruction of it, such as in the working class areas and the villages, was aided and abetted by the very government that keeps harping on about it and, more often than not, throws every conceivable spanner in the works when people want to bring community back into their areas. Obviously people that do things for themselves are a threat to the powers-that-be (but should not be, the powers I mean) on a local as much as on a central level.

If we, the people, want really and truly resurrect the community in our areas where we live then it is up to us to do it. Government is not going to do it. It will more than likely do its damnedest to prevent it, although in a clandestine and subtle manner.

Get to know your neighbors. Most of them are not going to bite. Start by acknowledging their existence. Smile, say “good morning”, “good day”, or whatever. Some may blank you initially but do persist. The day will come when they don't just reply but may actually engage in conversation. And then the ball starts rolling.

There is no community and can be no community if and when we do not know our neighbors and engage and interact with them.

When I was a youngster we had real community in our villages and even in especially the working class districts in the towns and cities. The drawback of that was though that when you got home of an evening your parents already knew what you had been up to during the day, good or bad. Everyone popped in and out of each others' homes, even if only for a natter, a cup of tea, to borrow some sugar, or whatever and everyone looked out for everyone else's children as if they were their very own.

You knew who had this tool or that you could borrow, who could fix your bicycle if you could not do it yourself, or who had a long ladder. You knew which skills everyone had in the community and also how prepared they were to help out, either for a fee or on a barter trade basis. People swapped garden produce and seeds, books, you name it and all the children called the adults uncle or aunt.

In the working class areas of the towns and cities it was, as already mentioned, equally the same and they were like little villages in that respect. Then again, those districts arose from villages and many still had that feel, to a degree, and definitely as far as community was concerned. That many of the men (and later also the women) working in the same factories and workshops probably also helped to cement this community and community spirit. And then, in Britain and elsewhere, came the redevelopments to improve the areas which was, more often than not in fact, social cleansing, and in London it is really in full swing more today than ever. Communities have been and are being broken up and people dispersed far and wide, as nuclear families and not as a whole community.

But it is up to us to build and rebuild our communities into real living and thriving ones, whether or not the powers-that-be like it or not. Attempts of this building and rebuilding of community are growing in many places, such as via the Transition (Town) Movement or their German equivalent, the Kietzwandler. But those are but a few of many. This aside from those that create alternative communities and even entire towns and villages on a new model, or new models.

As far as Transition Towns in the UK are concerned, aside from its small town of Totnes in Devon, where the movement sort of, started, it would appear that the greatest successes are had, for some strange reason, in the more urban areas, including and especially in inner London, such as Transition Town Brixton. In the more affluent areas, such as rural and semi-rural Surrey, etc., this ideas, and others of this nature) seem to be getting nowhere and are falling on deaf ears.

So what do I mean by matching neighborhood skills and why it is a good idea?

It means matching the skills, trades and what-have-you to the needs, so to speak, that members of the community may have. Need a plumber? Joe at No.10 is a professional plumber, so give him the job instead of calling in an outsider. Thus the money stays in the community. Need you PC fixed? Call on young Richard just a round the corner who knows how to do it and who builds his own systems. And this goes for every job – well, almost – that someone in the neighborhood may need doing and even the almost is with a great caveat for there may be more skilled people out there in our neighborhood, or people with skills, than we may be able to guess until we actually find out.

If we all use local skilled people to do the jobs that we may need doing the money stays in our community or it may even be done on a barter trade and thus does not go into the pockets of some boss somewhere. It is the same if you get your vegetables, eggs, etc. from local farms rather than the supermarkets or purchase other things from local makers.

Not only do those who perform the tasks benefit but we may actually get the job done cheaper and better that if we would go to an “outside” firm and at the same time we get to know those in our neighborhood and create some form of community cohesion (which can serve as the foundation for a real community).

One of the biggest problems today is that people have become very insular and shut themselves off from those around them. We hardly, if at all, know our neighbors and often do not even acknowledge them when we see them, out an about. But we can all change that in that we act differently. A smile, a “good day”, and such cost you nothing and if the other person does not reply still keep doing it. There will come the day when – suddenly – they will respond and the first steps to getting to know one another and to building some neighborliness and community are taken. That is the first step to Community Building. But, as said, it is just the first step. The rest really follows on from that. A blueprint for building community to give I do not think to be possible but a Community skills database for the purpose of sharing and caring but also allowing people to make some income is a great step in this direction also.

Such a database would match skills with needs and vice versa and can go a long way to bringing people together through mutual beneficial actions and thus can lead – and we should surely hope so – to real community where we go to our neighbors, close or not so close, to get things done or to learn skills rather than calling in outsiders.

But, in order to set up such a database and to match neighborhood skills with possible neighborhood needs requires that we get to know our neighbors first of all, at least the organizer(s) of such a database and matching service. So, let's go and do some matching and through this build communities in our neighborhoods.

© 2017

System change not climate change

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday; or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons; or that dancing around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”? Why are these “solutions” not sufficient? But most importantly, what can be done instead to actually stop the murder of our Planet?

While “personal solutions” have some effect, even the smallest things, but they will not really change anything unless we are, all together, prepared to change the system. It does not matter how “green” and environmentally-friendly you may make your lifestyle capitalism will still remain unsustainable. Thus system change that is required for the world to become a better place where people and the Planet count and not (just) money.

When it comes to climate change the question we also have to ask ourselves if why is the emphasis placed so much on the word “carbon” and everything almost is, even when it is pollution in the form of soot, and such, all called carbon, in the latter instance “brown carbon”. So, why? Because carbon has become a tradeable commodity, so to speak, with modern day indulgences, called carbon certificates and such. That does not make it right; the opposite rather. So, in other words, are we being sold somewhat of a falsehood or at least a half-truth?

The Hippies, who often today are being belittled, warned us already in the 1970s about pollution and what we were doing to the Planet by doing what we were doing. The message still stands for it is pollution that has been the culprit and is the culprit, industrial pollution and the pollution from vehicles, from the burning of fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas.

Many people today seem to forget that in around that same time of the Hippies scientists were telling us that the world was going to be hit by a new ice age and that we were going to end up with glaciers all over the place and to some extent the very same signs that then were claimed to be the signs of global warming were cited; the expansion of the Sahara and the Sahel, and books were written about it and movies made.

Fact is that the Earth is going through some kind of climatic upheaval but despite the fact that everyone – or almost everyone – is jumping up and down in triangles claiming carbon-dioxide and other “greenhouse” gasses being the culprit such changes are not something new. And, no, the last changes did not happen millions of years ago; they happened around a thousand years ago, and it would appear as if there is an almost 500 year cycle from cold to warm to cold, etc.

When the Romans were in Britain they grew grapes in this country, apparently almost as far north as Hadrian's Wall, for the making of wine. Then, and more for reasons of climatic change than anything else, in the early fifth century they just packed up and left.

Some centuries later the Vikings settled on a large island that they called Greenland and unless they were all seriously colorblind the “green” part of the word should be a giveaway. The island was covered in forests and meadows.

In the tenth century the son of the Viking chieftain of Greenland, one Leif Eriksson, arrived on the Labrador coast and, according to records, was presented with sweet black grapes by the local inhabitants. But less than hundred years later the Vikings seem to have abandoned Greenland for climatic reasons.

In the sixteenth century frost fairs were held on the Thames with the river, apparently, frozen to almost its total depth. The cold time seems to have then carried on, more or less, as far as winters are concerned, because some of the summers seem to have been very hot and dry at some times during King Henry VIII time, until about the beginning of the Industrial Revolution when it started to get warmer, incrementally, to where we are today.

While some of the climatic upheaval, or climate change, today is due, no doubt, to what we have been doing, in the name of progress and profit, to the Planet, some of it, probably around fifty percent, or even more, is due to the cycles the Earth seems to be going through on a more or less regular basis.

What we are facing at this very moment also is an Earth axis shift, which the powers-that-be claimed to be a shift of the magnetic north pole, and this will impact on the changes even more than anything. The magnetic north pole, by the way, cannot shift or move, at least not according what we were taught when I was a little younger, as it is located, according to what were taught, on an island off the north coast of Canada. In know that Wikipedia and other “sources” today claim it to be different but I am not buying that.

If the Earth axis is tilting, or even if it is that the magnetic field of the Planet is changing, this will have an impact on the likes of the Gulf Stream, the Jet Stream and many other weather and climate phenomena, and no matter how much we cut “carbon” it will not make much of a difference. That is not to say that we should not reduce or eliminate pollution of the air, the water and the soil, etc. we should and we must. But we must, along with this, also prepare to adapt to the changes and prepare.

But this is not going to happen in the current political and economic system where everything is run by some hidden agendas that just do not make sense to anyone who is prepared to think for him- or herself. The great problem is, though, that many, the great majority in fact, it would appear, are not prepared to think for themselves and want to leave that all to the politicians, the very same who have gotten us into much of the mess in the first place in many instances.

We have to be and create the changes that we want and need and the models for a new society, community by community and area by area and while there are many things that can be done on a individual basis others may and do require a community to do them.

There are some things, as said, that we can do on our own, and those can also be done on a larger scale, such as withdrawing our support for the current system; refusing to partake in the wild consumerism that we are being encouraged to partake in; and others. Creating the new models of the society that we would want, however, can only be done in a group, in a community, in a village, and therefore we must find like-minded folks to work together with.

© 2017

ECOVILLAGES | DESIGN AT THE EDGE

“Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love.”

-Teilhard de Chardin

Ecovillages are laboratories of human relations, in which we test the power of new systemic thinking to bring about necessary changes in the local and global economic, social and ecological environments. Ecovillages provide conditions for cutting-edge sustainability experiments. In these living and learning laboratories, we quickly learn from mistakes and advances. Both are held in a complex framework of dream and vision, earth and cosmos, technology and spirit, intention and love, dance and chant, cycle and balance, death and renewal.

What is sustained in an ecovillage is not economic growth or development, but the entire web of life on which our long term survival depends.  A sustainable community is designed in such a way that its ways of life, businesses, economy, social activities, physical structures and technologies do not interfere with Nature’s inherent ability to sustain life.

As laboratories of sustainable living, ecovillages offer widely applicable insights for the planning and reorganization of our societies. Ecovillages combine a supportive social-cultural environment with a low-impact/high-quality lifestyle. When we look at the ecovillage model developed on five continents, it is clear that ecovillages are creating a sustainable middle ground between rich and poor, while designing interdependent and life-enhancing bio-physical and psycho-social processes. In these experiments we find no sign of the deprivation that the popular media depicts as the necessary price to be paid for reducing resource consumption.

Read more here.

The Power of Community

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Cohesive communities are a threat – or at least are as such perceived – to the powers-that-be (but really should not be) and it is for that very reason that such areas, such communities, are always targeted for break up and its residents for dispersal.

A community whose people work together, help each other, looks out for each other, defend each other and also “play” and party together, reduces the influence and “power” of government whether “local” or central and this just cannot be allowed to happen and be.

It may be for this very perceived reason that (former) working class areas in European cities, especially, are being “gentrified” and socially cleansed and it “original” residents dispersed – as if by an order from “above” – to as far away from each other as possible. We are seeing this in London's East End and Docklands (part of the original East End), all working class areas, and in Berlin in Prenzlauer Berg, Wedding, and other areas that were the “red” districts.

A proper community is a powerful thing and rightly feared by any oppressor, whether it be just a city block, and entire neighborhood or a borough, town or village, as such a community, where everyone helps one another, where resources are shared, where everyone is taken care of in time of need are, or can be, autonomous and are not dependent on the say of some outside “power”.

That, however, is what the powers-that-be hate to see, namely a people who can think for themselves and are, as individuals or especially as a group, able and prepared to do things for themselves. Can't possibly permit that to happen. What would happen to the power over people that they so desperately want? That is why while they are talking about empowering the people (on a local level) every spanner possible is thrown into the works when people actually take them up on that. The fear that the people would actually do things and realize that they do not need a government to do things for them is frightening to them. And that is the very reason why we need to rediscover community and the power of community.

Today, though, community hardly exists in our co-called communities. Neighbors hardly acknowledge one another let alone know each other. Once cohesive communities have been broken up, purposely, as we have already discussed, to disperse everyone all over the place, so as to put a spanner in the works of people organizing and doing thing for themselves.

Despite the fact that where we live today may no longer be the community of old should not stop us to rebuild the community and organize to do things for ourselves.

A few small steps will be required at first though and the first of those is actually to get to acknowledge the existence your neighbors and to get to know them. Without that we cannot even consider building a community. Unfortunately in most areas today people hardly acknowledge the existence of the other let alone actually talk to one another.

More often than not this is due to the fact that, aside from being, maybe, from different social backgrounds, people no longer work in the same companies, be that factories or whatever, nor use the same shops or whatever. And we have begun, due to pressures or work and also for reasons that often are beyond me, become very insular in our lives and seem to shy away from making social contacts (aside from on Facebook and elsewhere in the virtual realm) aside from, maybe, among work colleagues. Most of those latter “contacts”, however, rarely live in the same street or even the same local area. But our neighbors should really be our contacts, our friends even, for it is them who are close enough should we ever need help; rarely those that are our contacts anywhere else.

If we really want to have community again in the paces where we live then we must come out of the virtual world into the real one and get to know the people that live around us, in the same building, the same street, on the same block, in the neighborhood, in the village. While there is nothing wrong, to some degree, with social media and while it can be used as a change for good and as a great means of communicating with like-minded people and groups our first port of call, so to speak, must be the establishment of real community in the places where we live.

A true community is a powerful thing and especially one where everyone looks out for everyone else in whatever way possible. Such communities did exist once but they have been destroyed in more than one way, but to an extent on purpose as they were considered a threat by those in power to the people control systems that they intended to create.

In order, however, to establish the new society that we must create if we want to make the world better for us and our children and theirs, those cohesive communities must be recreated again and brought to life and helped to thrive.

If we want to be truly free people then we must create communities where we, the people, can govern our own lives and thrive in the new world that we must build for ourselves. A society and world that is different to the one today where only money seems to count and nothing else.

© 2015

Loving Local: Place, Economy and Community

A block of brownstone row houses in West Philadelphia became my place in the world – a place where I aspired to start a business, raise a family, and help build a strong and joyful community. Making a commitment to this place and taking responsibility for its well-being was the first step I took toward helping to build a sustainable local economy in my region. After opening the White Dog Cafe on the first floor of my house in 1983, I soon began buying from local farmers. Fresh local food not only became a hallmark of my business, but also the way I learned about broader economic issues for my region and beyond.

A farmer who supplied my restaurant once told me that successful farming is the balance of masculine and feminine energy – of efficiency and nurturing. Too much efficiency and not enough nurturing means a well run farm, but poor quality products. While too much nurturing may produce great tomatoes, but end in a failed business. I applied this concept to the larger economy and saw that our industrial food system is all about efficiency with little or no nurturing. How much can we squeeze out of the soil, the animals, the workers with as little as possible in return? How little space can we give that egg-laying hen? How little light and air? How little food and water? All to get the cheapest egg possible. No nurturing there.

It’s just as bad for pigs. In windowless factory farms mother pigs are kept in crates so small that they cannot turn around, lie down or take a single step for most of their lives. When I first learned of these conditions in 1999, I was horrified to think that the pork we were serving in my restaurant must come from these animal factories, as most all pork in our country does. I went into the kitchen and announced, “Take all the pork off the menu – the bacon, the ham, the pork chops. We cannot be part of this cruel and unhealthy system.” In our search for a humane source, our supplier of free-range chickens and eggs told us of a neighbor who raised pigs on pasture. We began buying two whole pigs a week, and our chef created recipes to use all the parts of the meat.

Read more: http://theeconomicsofhappiness.wordpress.com/2014/10/19/loving-local-place-economy-and-community/

More than village gossip: how hyperlocal journalism is reinvigorating communities

As local newspapers close and budget cuts put increasing pressure on remaining journalists, the hyperlocal journalism movement is stepping up to provide the services communities rely on. Nicola Slawson finds out more

For 126 years there had been a local newspaper in Fulham and Hammersmith. The first issue, which came out on 6 April 1888, featured a story about an accident involving a local boy who had been delivering milk on Dawes Road. In April 2014 the Hammersmith and Fulham Chronicle was closed, leaving 180,000 people without a local newspaper.

Some, including the local council, were shocked when owners Trinity Mirror announced their decision. But some 242 local newspapers were closed between 2007 and 2011, according to the Press Gazette. More newspapers are being added to this figure each year. And it’s not just closures that are causing waves in local journalism; budget cuts and redundancies are putting increased pressure on remaining staff.

It’s in this environment that a new sector is fast emerging. Known as ‘hyperlocal’, or community journalism, thousands of websites have been set up across the UK serving local communities.

Read more: http://positivenews.org.uk/2014/community/16699/village-gossip-hyperlocal-journalism-reinvigorating-communities/

Bilboket, the first social network of your neighborhood

You know when your run out of sugar or salt and that you are by yourself at home and the first think you think about is going to your neighbor and ask for a little bit of sugar or salt?

Or this one time you had to rush out the door, for any urgency, and you asked your next-door neighbor the typical favor of watering your plants or feed the cat?

Yes. Of course you did at least once.

Our neighbors are people with who we share more than we think: neighbor meeting, little talk in the elevator, anecdotes, favors, and even mad when the technician is late to repair the light of the staircase… In the end, our neighbors are people with who live in community with, people we welcome everyday with a big smile that they always give back even in our worst days.

So, why not create a virtual community for neighbors and extend the radius, not only within your building or neighborhood but also with adjacent areas?

Read more: http://blog.cronnection.com/sharing-economy/bilboket-first-social-network-neighborhood/

Hacker houses offer shared living for the young, green, and tech-obsessed

Matthew Oswald’s house in the outskirts of Seattle’s Capitol Hill harbors a peculiar breed of chaos. “Everyday there’s something new,” Oswald says. “It’s like a sitcom.” Just think: Big Bang Theory meets The Real World.

Oswald is a bearded, tattooed, proud New Yorker who first moved to Seattle for a job as an Amazon engineer. Now the 34-year-old lives and works at the IO House, the first manifestation of GrokHome’s business plan to provide long- and short-term communal living to whizzes and geeks who are looking to break into Seattle’s budding tech scene. It’s Oswald’s job to keep the eight-person hacker house filled with fitting residents — described on GrokHome’s website as “smart people working on interesting projects” — and then make sure it all runs smoothly as they go about indulging in geekdom together. Some days that’s easier than others.

On one of the more interesting days, Oswald came home to find a Mack truck parked outside. It contained 20,000 pillowcases, all of which belonged to 22-year-old resident Jordan Schindler. The blossoming entrepreneur had come up with a zany product idea: pillowcases infused with acne medication, so teenagers could work on their complexions as they slept.

“Don’t worry, I think I sold them all,” Schindler assured Oswald. Sure enough, about two hours later another truck arrived, loaded them up, and carried them over to Amazon. “And they sold 20,000 units within like, I don’t know, less than two hours,” Oswald says.

Cooperative housing — a.k.a. co-living — has become a hot topic for anyone thinking about the future of urban living. In late 2013, the hype about co-living was in full force; tales of millennials packing into Bay Area buildings sprang up everywhere from Gawker to NPR and The New York Times.

Read more: http://grist.org/living/hacker-houses-offer-shared-living-for-the-young-green-and-tech-obsessed/

Always Talk to Strangers

People who know and trust their neighbors are less likely to have heart attacks. New research builds on the understated health benefits of a sense of belonging and community.

The first time I met my neighbor, my heart did stop, briefly.

Do you remember those cylindrical, metallic “neuralyzers” that the men in black in Men in Black used to erase people’s short-term memories? I think about those things all the time. Specifically how great it would be to have one. It would be unethical to use my neuralyzer on other people, because I’m not a man in black. I would just want it for myself, for when I see or hear things I can’t really deal with. Or when I say or do things I immediately regret, which is pretty often. It would also be great at times like when I first met my neighbor.

My building has three units, and I had been living in mine for a few days before Stephen and I actually crossed paths. We introduced ourselves, talked a little about the neighborhood and our mutual intentions to be respectful and communicative, possibly even social, and then said good night. He turned and started walking to the stairs. But then he stopped and turned back.

“Oh, and, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.”

Of the sentences I realistically expect to hear in life, that may be my favorite. Do go on.

“The last tenant in your apartment, he was your age … he died in there.”

Stop.

“But everything should be fine now,” he continued, and turned to leave again. “Well, good night.”

No one brought up this fact prior to my moving in. Stephen was right, he probably shouldn’t have told me. He would have spared me nights and nights of unwanted speculation. Gas leak? Murderous robbery? Something to do with the plumbing? But on the whole, I’m better off for having met my neighbor.

Specifically, according to new research published today from psychologists at the University of Michigan, I’m less likely to die of a heart attack than I would be if I gave in to my more introverted tendencies.

Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/social-cohesion-heart-attack-prevention/378694/

The village and Nature have had the answers all along

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The personal revolution is the realization that the village and Nature have had the answers all along. We must, therefore, turn to our community and the great Earth for sustenance and knowledge.

We must, once again, become fallible and human again by living dangerously and stepping off of the assembly lines of unnatural life before it is too late.

The simple things in life are the greatest gifts. They are all there waiting for us to realize their value and partake in their blessings. We do not need to change anything, except ourselves.

Nature is the supreme cradle of life, and must be protected and treated with the highest respect and care. We must have clean air and water, and beautiful natural foods for everyone, everywhere.

We must cultivate beautiful spaces, where communities and families are free to come together to share and enjoy the bounty of earth. Above all all of us deserve real freedom, but to have real freedom, we must be wild and free yourself.

It means and will mean changing the system of exploitation of man and Planet and reconnect with the Planet and the people around us. We must create working local communities again and manage ourselves, away from government interference. In fact, we must abolish the state altogether and start a fresh, learning from the mistakes of the past.

Democracy – proper participatory democracy – is not possible in large groups or communities, let alone nation states or federation of states, and thus we must return to clan and tribal level, and the village of the size that it used to be in the days of old, before villages became dormitory places for city commuters to live, is a size that just about would have worked, before the advent of the 20th century. Thus, in order to free ourselves from the way things are in this current world, we must return to the village and work everything on a village level.

The village, in times past, was the center of everything. Almost everything was made locally with but a few “essentials” being traded from further afield. Nowadays almost nothing is produced locally, not even in the country, but comes from abroad. Even local produce cannot be sold – legally, in most cases – direct to the local people. It is sent far away to the wholesale markets from where even the local greengrocer has to get his produce instead of from local farmers and growers.

People who have surplus from their own little plots and their own hens and such are not permitted to sell any of this to neighbors without the appropriate government license – which means interference no end to obtain and maintain – and even the bartering of such produce is frowned upon by the powers-that-be and this again points to the need for a change of system.

In fact, everything needs to be brought down to village level for us to be able to live a sustainable life and also a fulfilled life. Life must return to the village level – and village can mean a number of things here and refers more to size of are then anything else – and that includes work also and people will govern themselves and look after themselves and each other and that state must be abolished once and for all.

© 2013

How to live (properly and well) in the 21st Century

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Why do we get the urge to publicise our private emotions and relegate our family and friends to cameo roles while we worry over the ups and downs of reality show characters or celebrities to fill the void of emptiness and loneliness? Why do we try as much as we can to act out a role, convinced that what we consume defines how successful we are, how independent we are, how worthy we are of attention?

Because it’s what we respond to best. Because deep down, we prefer the conformism of running the rat race like a hamster on a spinning wheel and the standardised consumption of “keeping up with the Jones”. We prefer the quick fixes of consuming, because we fear freedom – the freedom to be what we want to be rather than what we think others want us to be – embracing our complexity and tolerating our contradictions, doing things for the pleasure of doing them without calculating how we appear to others.

Whether it is our libraries or our post offices closing, our parks or our open spaces and other things not being looked after anymore, what can help us recover through the recession in a way that builds collective spirit and social solidarity?

The Big Society should not come from above, directed and “ordered” from government and enforced, basically, in that they cut services and then say “if you want them kept open you have to provide the people to run them”.

In some of our towns and cities this is happening even as far as the repair of potholes in the roads is concerned and the cleaning of the sidewalks. People, council tax payers, when complaining to the council, were told that they could have brooms and such provided to do it for themselves. The council, they were told, did not have the money to do it.

Having said that, when you look at our continental European neighbors, such as and especially Germany it is the norm there for the people to sweep and keep clean the sidewalk in front of their homes, etc. In fact, it is a legal requirement and that also extends to keeping the path free of ice and snow in winter. No one complains about it; they just get on with it, and often in neighborly cooperation.

Parks and open spaces can, indeed, to some degree, be run with, though I hasten to add not (entirely) by, volunteers and it will actually be one great way to involve the entire community of users, maybe even the young people, often referred to as YOBs. Doing some volunteering in the parks and open spaces of their neighborhood may, actually, give them a sense of ownership, but also of belonging and self-worth.

I do believe that many of our young people who do cause problems suffer from despair and a serious lack of self-worth and self-confidence, even though they act as if they have all the self-confidence in the world.

It is, I think, to some extent our serious consumerist society that is causing our ills, including the YOB culture and such like. In fact, I think that it is more than just to some extent; I believe the majority of our society's ills can be laid at the door of consumerism. And it is not just us, as people, who are to blame for this consumerism. Nay, it is our very governments.

We are told to go and spend, spend, spend, our way our of the recession, despite the fact that that does not work and we are told that we need this or that new and then to recycle what we no longer want.

Goods, that is to say, products, are no longer made to be able to be repaired, with very few exceptions, and everything has an obsolescence of a year to three factored in. If things work on after that you are lucky, and then things break down, as said, they cannot be fixed; they are made thus.

Things need to change and I do not mean here only things in a physical sense, as in products and goods, but the way we live, the way we travel, where we work and live, and how we interact with one another, and how we take care of our community assets.

It is time that we got off the idea that government has to do everything for us. In fact, I do not even think that that is a good idea for government to do everything for us. There are many things that volunteers and we, personally, can do things as well, maybe even better, than can government.

The most worrying sentence in the English language, as far a myself and many other people are concerned is “I am from the government and I am here to help you.” It also makes us dependent on and slaves to and of the system.

While I am the first to want to keep the welfare state – in its basic and original form – that we have in Britain there are many things where government has no place in our lives and many places where we, as people, individuals or groups, should get things done ourselves which we demand at present that the government do.

Time for some real changes and those changes begin with us and must come from within us...

© 2012

Be Zero Waste - Join Brixton (2011)

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

A documentary of 10 minutes duration by Chocolate Films that can be viewed in full online. Directed by Ben Clough and produced Rachel Wang for Lambeth Council.

This short documentary produced by Chocolate Films features local Brixton residents on their journey to a zero-waste lifestyle. Participants were trained in film making and how to use lighting, camera, and sound kits. They also share their tips on being zero waste by demonstrating easy ways to recycle and reuse.

It is a film that belongs up there with others that were made on the subject of stuff and waste and green living and being just ten minutes in duration it is not much time that one has to spend watching it.

Everyone is down to earth and very much to the point and the film is very well made and presented.

© 2011