PART II –Thinking Beyond: Becoming a Local Asset

In Part I, Thinking Beyond, I spoke about first steps. The personally driven ones that come from my most inner Ring of Resilience - myself. I’ve got to decide what I can do. Want to do. Then I commit to those things by anchoring the activities in my home.This gives those pursuits the respect of a real space to do them, and gives me the ability to grow the habit of folding them into my regular life - so important with new, or renewed transition skills! 

But something more happens when we anchor in place: Together, we and our house now offer our community that skill. We become a Local Asset, a gift to our neighborhood and town. 

I love that my abilities, inclinations, passions,and quirky loves make my community more unique and resilient. In fact, I see the goal of a Transition Town as coaxing all these individuals' skills and “making passions” out of as many of us as possible so they are alive and available. To get the full breadth and depth of what our town's resources really can be.  

There’s a man who bought a lovely home in the hilly streets of my City a few years ago. When I walk my dog past his home in the afternoons, the garage door is usually up and he has moved some woodworking project out to his driveway into the natural light. For the longest time, I just smiled at him as I walked by. But TJ told me to look into his garage next time. Yesterday I finally did. 

He has broken through the back of the garage and incorporated all the house space behind it into what is his labor of love. And what a  workspace he’d created: Clean pegboards with every woodworking hand tool I’ve ever heard about, including those fine Japanese blades. His work table is ringed with the table, band and scroll saws and a long table holds his rip saw. The drill press lives just next to that so he could easily move around from one to the other and back to his worktable for assembly and finish. It is beautifully thought out, and amazingly professional. Hmm, perhaps a bit too neat to be an everyday business. But now I understand the man in a new way when he stands there lovingly planing a door. Intent, and content, I’ll bet.

On one level, it matters little if it is a business or just this man’s beloved hobby. He does it with attention and care.That’s a good energy to put into his home and my town. Thank you. I will introduce myself next time and get to know this man who smells of wood shavings! (And yes, it harkens back to my wonderful husband who did as well. So first, it’s a new connection.)

On another level, knowing he’s there also means he can possibly be my and TJ’s local woodworker if we need something turned or crafted beyond our own skills. I’ve got a master walking distance from my door. He can expand what I can have done. What a gift to me.

On yet another level, as transitional needs become more acute, his skill could become a local business right in our town. His space is large enough to hire a “coupla” journey people. Anchoring and folding his love into his home gives him options as the world changes and possibly offer a few others jobs the town can really use.

Lastly, if teaching is his bent, he could choose to take on a young apprentice or two to help our community keep the skill local and grow it beyond himself now and then after him. Succession is so much a part of Transition Town-ing. Ahhh, all that from commiting a space to the abilities of our hands and hearts!

This is what it means to become a Local Asset.

So what are your loves? Quilting, playing piano, storytelling, teaching, woodworking, reading, bread-making? It need not be a craft. Can you bring culture, offer economic opportunity, education, encourage social cohesion. How do you DO resilience?

I mentioned early in my post about Toadhall, that this very unique space in our home was my Local Asset, a space I got to use and offer my neighborhood. I told you how Toadhall broadened all the ideas about what I could do, and did, in my house and with my community. That is true. 

But in the end, it is not the space alone. It will always spring from who I am, and what TJ and I love and want in our lives. That is what drives how each of us ultimately use our home. We ourselves are the essential kernel of value to our town. I ask you to dig deeply into yourself and pull it up into life and into your dwellings. Together we can create a uniquely designed tapestry of Local Assets whose threads are composed of our own character and what we grow to be.

Part I: Thinking Beyond: How do I DO Resilience?

As our house moves through the rest of our remodel and redesign, TJ and I jump in at points to prime, paint and move furniture out. Then we back out so our contractor can assemble and install. Then it's back in again with our old and new mix of furniture and personal goods in new arrangements, places and configurations.

It means three things: We're slightly crazed, as the mix of old places and new places keeps shifting like sand between our toes. "Where did we put my coat rack that we want to hang here now?"  It also means I'm not ready with AFTER pictures and plans to show you what we've accomplished. Lastly, between the chunks of intense activity, there are chunks of mulling time. (And that mulling helps me escape the feeling of invasion, since all the work is in our private quarters at this point!)

While doing all this furniture shifting, we assembled our new clothing wardrobes in a temporary place - sigh! our sitting area, the catchall for the time being - so we can completely clear out the former master suite upstairs and rent our final suite.

This time, we are specifically  advertising for "Transition-minded housemates" and "people wanting to move toward resilience."  I'm excited. Finally I'm saying that I want people living with us who also need to take steps towards self-reliance. But doing so means I have to define what resilience is in very concrete terms for day-to-day living.

What does resilience mean to me? How do I do resilience? 'Til now I've just thought about it as gaining security and control over my life. Yes, that is the goal, but it does not articulate the actions.  As I mentioned in my post Gift to the Group, I realized that I want to do very specific, personally satisfying things that make me feel secure and empowered. Resilience begins with who I am. Who we each distinctly are. Our inner most Ring of Resilience is ourself. To my mind that's exactly as it should be. First we must ask, "What do I know, love to do and feel is a valuable skill to possess (as well as offer to my community and neighbors)? What is my unique mix of passions and mastery?"

As we decide what we wish to do with our time, it becomes a commitment to ourselves to create a place for that in our homes. Rather than just think, "My home houses what I do.", it should turn into more concrete questions:

"How will I do it?" "Where will I do it?"  What will I need?" " With whom will I share this activity?"

That then drives the layout (or the redesign) of the space so we can easily "do."  This facilitate those acts. This makes a commitment to them that makes them real. This helps us develop a rhythm of acts we want our life to include. Anchoring them in place is the important step that respects both who we are and how we intend to live moment to moment.

So when I start by asking "What do I wish to do here?", I rightly bring myself, my skills and my intentions to that answer. That may and should require me to think beyond expected or usual uses in my rooms, but I think it's important that it puts my activities as the top priority that I anchor there. I expand a room to meet my requirements and style of doing.

Take a great utilitarian space like the laundry room:
 

http://woohooie.blogspot.com/
2010_04_01_archive.html

http://www.home-decorating-room-by-room.com/
sewingroom.html

For me having been in costume and set design years ago, and home space planning now, I love to manipulate textiles. It is natural for me to expand that space into a place that encourages making with material. And that extends to anyone who shares my house with me. So a utility sink for dying and washing materials, sewing machine, cutting tables, and threads fill my small laundry area, with shelves and drawers for fabric, buttons,  tapes, and patterns, like these pictures of laundry sewing spaces. Mine is an invitation to me, but also to my housemates  to explore fabric, ...and making.

There are all levels of polished or utilitarian finishes. Different levels of "put away" or "leave out and readily accessible." And all kinds of inclusions and exclusions. It can be planned for one, ....or like me, would you make yours for a group to use occasionally?

Laundry Room, sewing area, storage, drop down ironing board, 
washer and dryer, pole to dry clothes
cherylcaseyrossinteriors.com

But if I was a gardener what then? If I loved aromatic herbs, what might I expand the laundry room to be instead? Instead of a hanger bar over the heat register to naturally dry dyed fabric and clothes, would there be hooks for drying herbs, and flowers? 

http://backyardpatch.blogspot.com/2012/10/
drying-your-herbs.html

Would the work tables and shelves house tincture supplies and let me work the leaves and inhale the pungent aromas?

http://www.homesteadanywhere.com/blog/
drying-herbs/

If I defined myself as a foodie, would lovely glass bottles in playful shapes be waiting on those shelves to be filled with herbal homemade vinegars and springs of lavender or rosemary?  

http://thebaldgourmet.com/
how-to-make-bottled-herbed-vinegar/

It's the same room. Who are you, and what do you wish to make of it?

Martha O'Hara Interiors.
charainteriors.com

As someone reaching to grow resilient, this is what transition doing is about. For me, it is a taking back a right of making in a proper space to do it well.

It is an expression of self into beautifully functional things.



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But then there is another important part to transitioning. Having found this expression, call, or talent within ourselves and having anchored them in place, we now amplify it. We share what we're doing in all sorts of ways with our immediate community, making ourselves a Local Asset. 





 

I have a Black Thumb, but a Green Hammer

The whole question of becoming more resilient always seems to start with growing our own food. With good reason, since without water and food, everything else is eventually moot.

But I am not a gardener. And no matter how many times I have tried, I have not learned to enjoy growing plants, or gotten any better at it.

I often believe in a natural division of labor. It certainly worked for my late wife Trish and I: I built her gardens, she grew stuff in them, I cooked the stuff, and together we ate it. (And evaluated my experimental recipes for disposing of the inevitable garden excess, such as the Twenty Pounds of Green Tomatoes Salsa.)

We were both seriously satisfied, and grateful to each other. I still can see Trish bent over in between her rows of plants, happy, involved and grounded in a way I never understood. I enjoyed helping her harvest, but she was nourished by all the parts of gardening.

(So much so that I got Trish her own chipper shredder for an anniversary present, and she was deeply pleased. Now she could make her own mulch!)

Well, I am not nourished by gardening. It actually drives me a little crazy. Which is why it will not be one of my contributions to resilience.

Oxalis

Because I have realized that I work best in a 1:1 ratio of physical work and result. When I lift up a big rock and carry it across the yard, I am happy that it stays put until I choose to move it again. When I cut a board and nail it to another board, I am truly pleased that they stay together, unless I screwed up and need to redo the joint. When I demolish a wall, I am so satisfied that the drywall and lathe and plaster stay in the debris bags and don’t climb back onto the walls overnight.

My experience of gardening is that crook neck squash that you spend weeks growing, that look so healthy and perfect for picking tomorrow, can become shriveled gray blobs by dawn. That when you (naturally) fertilize and feed your soil, oxalis invites itself to the feast, turning your garden green--but not in a fun way.  That your hours of weeding are rendered useless as soon as you water your garden again, given the regenerative capabilities of oxalis. And that basically, nature loves a stockpile, so the more you grow, the more bugs and slugs and invader plants and fungus and deer and not-so-cute-bunnies come to eat it and undo all your work.

Please believe me. I know we need to grow our own food, and that gardening is a challenging, essential task for resilience.

But it isn’t going to be my challenging, essential task.

***

So as part of this project, I will be blogging about my search for how my passions and skills can be as effective and useful as growing food.

Because I can’t be the only terminally non-gardening person concerned about self-reliance and resilience.

Right?