"October is usually one of the easier months here on the Northwest Coast with the weather still fine, the days still longer than the nights, everyone settled back into school year routines and no holiday interruptions. It’s the perfect time to test our Local Quotient: how well can we do living on just what’s here in our local environment.

Last year we pledged to spend the entire month off the grid, with only 1 tank of gas, and no purchases, and challenged others to take on a similar pledge. Our efforts were recorded in the local press, and spread to KGW TV and the internet. People from Portland to Adams Center, NY took up the challenge, avoiding everything from plastic packaging to purchases to gasoline to wasted paper. Instead, they went for bulk items, local purchases, local foods and local transportation, biking or walking -- and had fun doing it!" said Caren Black of the Titanic Lifeboat Academy.

And this year, they were even more determined. Following up on our feature in the October Relocalize Newsletter, Caren Black reflects on their month spent focused on drastically reducing their energy consumption.
--

Reflections On Green October
By Caren Black

Each year during October we challenge ourselves and our friends and our community to simplify life, pare down to the basics and rediscover what’s truly important to us.

This year I realized that lessons learned this way easily become permanent.

Cutting back seemed “no big deal” because we’d never really returned to the way we were living before last October. It’s easy to go an entire month on one tank of gas; we usually do, and we often go longer by planning and combining trips. It’s easy to minimize electricity use because we now know where the “energy suckers” are and avoid them. It’s easy to cut purchases because our spending habits have drastically changed. It’s easy to cut waste because everything gets composted, fed to happy animals, reused or recycled – except for the amount imposed upon us by the packaging-happy planet-killing corporate world, an amount minimized by our shopping habits and still comprising less than one small garbage can monthly for ourselves, our homestead and TLA*students.

Our life is better than it was before we made these changes. We have more time for tasks that feel important to us, more time together, more peace.

October can also be a month of checking up on things. Is there enough wood cut and stacked, for winter? Are there more apples to can or seeds to collect? Are our emergency kits up-to-date and ready for storms?

What about information?

With unimaginable amounts of information at our fingertips these days, it’s becoming easy to overload. Overload takes the form of facts that are generally correct, but not specifically accurate. Like our email address! No doubt we missed some Green Fest pledges because we didn’t update the address given in the article. But we trust these people went on successfully without talking with us. Then there’s my comment in September’s article about the length of days in October. Yes, they’re still long, but noticeably shorter than the nights.

Overload occurred at the seed exchange, too. The first annual Seed Ball at the October Netel Grange Country Dance provided several of us with new seeds to plant and informative conversations. I spoke at length with a wonderful woman who happens to work for Monsanto, a corporation I love to bash. She pointed out an error in some information I’d displayed. I didn’t believe her until I got home and checked it out. While my concept was correct, one detail was definitely not.

This is the whole point, isn’t it? Time for us all to chuck the overload in our personal lives, practices, and ideas. We’ve been fed a fairly steady diet of malarkey by a small group of people who’ve amassed enormous wealth and obscene power by getting us to buy things, beliefs, practices which benefit them far more than us, the bailout being the most stunning of recent examples. Time to stop buying the malarkey and tighten the belt.

Winter is upon us. We extend our October challenge into the foreseeable future. Simplify. Become at ease with consuming less. Save electricity, save the planet, save your brain: Turn off your TV. Read. Check the facts and details. Be prepared for storms -- not only the Nor’wester, but also the economic and government varieties. There’s lots more malarkey brewing on the horizon. Stay warm and safe.

_____

You can reach Caren Black or Christopher Paddon and TLA for comments or more information on the Green Fest or other programs at 325-6886 or TLifeboatAcademy @ q.com (Christopher) or LifeboatAcademy @ aol.com (Caren).

Caren Black is a retired educator (school administrator, teacher), author, and musical theater director. A local homesteader and avid researcher, she wrote a column for Hipfish, produced “The Lifeboat Show” for Coast Community Radio, is active in both Astoria and Lewis & Clark Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT), belongs to the Sunset Empire Amateur Radio club and the Netel Grange, and directs education programs for TLA* (Titanic Lifeboat Academy), a tax-exempt educational nonprofit.