Last January post

Last night at 1am when we were setting the alarm for 5am, so we could get to the Torrens Island Market by 6am, we couldn't remember if there was a reason we'd planned to be there so early or if we'd just thought it sounded like fun when things were less crazy.

Four hours later we almost didn't get up, but we did because we wanted the adventure for the last day of the 31 Things. It was beautiful and surreil. The dawn was coming up behind us and the full moon was still glowing ahead of us. After a brief detour involving Garden Island and then the Torrens Island power plant, we found out (from the power plant security guard) that the market is actually opposite rather than on Torrens Island.

The moon was still up, but it was light by this stage. We sleepily wandered around admiring all the fruit and veg that seemed particularly large, uniform and sort of glowing with colour (in a healthy, dawn-lit, rather than the radioactive way that I've made them sound) and quickly spent our allotted $15 on: two pieces of pizza bread, onions, tomatoes, banana peppers, potatoes, plums, nectarines and eggs. The seller assured us they were free range, but in fact they turned out to be caged. Here's a link about caged hens. The compost bin will eat well tonight.
We took a lot of pretty photos, but I dropped my camera the other day and it seems to have developed a serious malfunction. I'm hoping to get them off the camera somehow later.

I'm still recovering from seeing "The Road" the other night. Researching into Peak Oil simultaneously wasn't the best idea. I honestly do not think the future after oil becomes scarce will be like "The Road", or anything like it. Later we'll be doing a long piece about it, but at the moment I think we've overdosed on unstructured, open-ended peak oil research and it hasn't been constructive. We're going to look at it further though and as the days go by the concept is becoming much more acceptable. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, we've finished or at least set in motion all of the 31 Things (minus one!) Check the list out below, with some comments.

The 31 things.

1. weed tea DONE
2. get Jules' worm poo DONE
3. make gift for Anne's baby DONE
4. pesto with zucchini and basil DONE
5. work on quilt, cut patches DONE
We're making a quilt! John cut some patches in January for the challenge. We're on the look-out for vintage fabric from op-shops, or if anyone's relatives have an old bag of fabric scraps, let us know! Anything up to '50s is great.
6. investigate home brew DONE
Coopers homebrew kits at the local Foodland, and Alison's partner Mike makes his own.

7. join Sustainable Communities started
We have the details, but no money to join til Thursday!
8. food co-op started
Flinders Food Co-op and Clarence Park Food Co-op are our options.
9. get shower timer and use it DONE
10. soil test started
There's a soil testing lab really close to us who offer a free kit. We've emailed for it.
11. investigate Peter Singer's thing about income started
This challenge was to try to work out what we thought about Peter Singer's book The Life You Can Save, about donating to charity to help end world poverty. I've read it and John's going to. The idea is about the ethics of giving as much as you can to reputable charities. I don't know if we can afford it; this challenge is about trying to work out what being able to afford something means in this context. Would we give up a few beers a week to donate to Oxfam, for example? A meal or two out? What's a luxury and what's a necessity in our situation? And so on.
12. call Rudd etc. DONE
13. call Harry re: rotten wood DONE
14. make a climate change info pack for Maja started
I'm putting together a "pack" of helpful links, not yet complete.
15. smoke alarm DONE

16. book permaculture course started
Bad news on the permaculture course front. Even with the early-bird discount, it's $1427.50 each! We'll do it eventually, but not this year . Meanwhile we'll read our books and maybe go to some short courses and workshops.
17. find a source of eggs DONE
Jules suggested a colleague from the Conservation Council who sells her eggs, so fingers crossed this will work out. After today's free-range egg deception, we're really over trying to find any free range eggs that aren't actual backyard pet hens. (By the way, check out the Con Council's website. I haven't been for a while and it's looking very swanky.)
18. get a compost screw started
We've contacted a permaculturalist guy I know who told us about compost screws ages ago, but have yet to hear back.
19. Torrens island market DONE
20. go for massage DONE
We went for a joint massage down the street in one of the many swanky beauty parlours around Norwood! My "massage epiphany" (the insight you get when you are relaxed and having a massage) is that I need to relax more! Yoga and exercise would be good. And more massage!
21. go for bush walk DONE
22. Tiny Towns pieces and zine and climate change zine DONE
23. go to an escapist movie not done
"The Road" did not cut it! Nor did "Sherlock Holmes". We considered "Fantastic Mr Fox" today but we were working on the last few pieces for the show on Tuesday and didn't have time. We were also knackered after the early market start. Here's what is a complete escapist treat, and it's embarrassing, but we don't care. It started in the heatwave, when we were zonked out, but we're watching it now: "Friends". That's right. "Friends". When I was cool in the 90s I scorned it to the point of not watching it ever. Now it seems to hit the spot - back to back episodes, funny, clever, social and good for John's facial recognition practice. What can I say?
Update - "Fantastic Mr Fox" was also not very fun, (despite the impressive stop-motion animation), with the Americanised woodland creatures being hunted and a horrible orange sky throughout. We'll keep an eye out for our escapist movie. Though we want to see it, "Precious" isn't going to be in the running either.


Coming out about "Friends".

24. free hair cut for John DONE
25. leaflet for Critical Climate DONE
After the massage we walked past a local eatery, Vego to Go, and the guy called to us frantically to stop, then gave us some leftover apple and walnut muffins. We were then approached by another guy advertising a free wine tasting at the Norwood Town Hall, which we attended forthwith. When we were drunk, we still had to leaflet for local climate action group, Critical Climate, so we did, had a lovely evening walk, and discovered an old tram barn that had been turned into apartments. It's fun getting to know the neighbourhood on foot.


"Look at my tongue, it's wearing a purple sock!" At the Town Hall in Norwood. The guy in the background, who seemed to be in charge of the tasting, was, I swear, the same person who was in the pizza delivery to Kylie Minogue ad from the 90s. This must be his new line of business.


Leafleting in Norwood.


The old tram barn in Stepney.

26. go to gym once to twice a week started
We started, but haven't been going, because we're too busy doing the 31 Things. Ha.
27. make Moroccan lentils and send others a recipe DONE
28. bake bread DONE
29. research the depression and peak oil started
This is on the list because it's hard to do. It's started but definitely not finished.
30. go for a meal at Sterling Organic DONE
Yesterday we borrowed John's parents car and went to the Sterling Organic cafe in the hills. Then we spontaneously went to Murray Bridge, where it was boiling hot (we wanted to go to the butterfly farm, but it had closed years ago. Even the mechanical bunyip was broken!) It was nice, though, to visit the Murray. Despite the drought and lack of environmental flows, it felt good to look out over a big body of water where the locals were swimming, paddling, boating and waterskiing. We're so used to dry creeks in town, and thinking about the river as an abstract concept.
The land changes dramatically once you get over the Mt Lofty Ranges (the hills) and onto the plain between Mt Barker and Murray Bridge. It was so hot and dry and yellow it was like driving through a dried out Van Gogh painting. By contrast, the hills felt incredibly lush, weirdly so to some extent, a little micro-climate enabling a European fantasy on the edge of the aridlands. We ended up grabbing a punnet of strawberries from the Beeremberg strawberry farm and then eating tea at Grumpy's microbrewery and pizza joint near Hahndorf. Here are some pics.


Perusing the brochure at Stirling Organic.


Delicious spicy tahini, babaganoush and tabouli sandwich at Stirling Organic.


Hello, Murray!


Cheeseless wood oven pizza, strawberries and a pint of Tomcat at Grumpy's Microbrewery.

31. Make a zine or a blog or both about this DONE

We're done! That's it.

Follow-up posts on the 31 things started but not complete to follow, at a more leisurely pace. Meanwhile thanks so much for everyone whose taken an interest, offered advice or otherwise encouraged us. See you soon!
xx Cass and John.

STOP PRESS!!!
John became an uncle to Jessica Ellen, two weeks earlier than expected, on the night before the Fairyfloss show!!!
Welcome little niece!

Australia Day/Survival Day - have a nice one and a catchup with us!

The end of the month of January is approaching rapidly! We've scheduled the rest of the 31 Things in our dairies and we probably will finish all of them by the 31st, but we'll have to do some of the posting in February.


Scheduling in the shed.

Meanwhile here's a photo montage/summary of some of the latest and not so latest "Things" we've been doing.

Take it away #3 Make Gift for Anne's Baby!
John's sister Anne is having a baby next month (gender to be a surprise), and my sister Alison is having a girl in early June. So we're both going to have niblings, or nieflings, as we found out the kids of your siblings are also called!

Anne had a baby shower the other week and John and I made baby pants for our gift on my Granny's old Singer. It was the first time I'd used it and I fell in love with the idea of this link to my grandmother, who used to make a lot of our clothes on this same sewing machine when we were kids. John's paternal grandmother was actually a seamstress, and he knew how to work the machine and do the tricky bits. I love this idea of the two grandchildren of these two wonderful women who never met, sewing clothes for their great-grandchildren (our nieflings!). We made a little pair of summer tartan trousers for Anne's baby, and we'll return to the Singer to make something warm for Alison's baby in winter.

We'll also make some other stuff, I hope. I've been dagging around pretty much exclusively in op-shop clothes for the last five or six years because of the sweat shop issue, so the idea of making pretty things that really fit is wonderful. For some reason I really want to do some homemade knickers as well. I figure if you can sew your own underpants you can sew anything.


And so does Lars.


John tracing the pattern with his Nanna's tailor's chalk.


The Singer in action.


Baby pants! (Minus draw-string).

Next up was John's haircut which Maja offered to do back on the walk up Mt Lofty (the first of our 31 Things). On the same day, we also accidentally went to the Wayville Showground farmer's market, because we thought it was on the list, but we'd scrapped it in favour of the Compost Screw.

We thought we might pick one up there, as the guy we know who sells them lives far from town. Instead we came away with a tray of tomatoes, some garlic, the crazy Omega-3, super-weed, purslane (that we had just learned about from Joel on the Little House blog), and some basil from the Food Forest stall. John spoke to Anne-Marie Brookman of the Food Forest and got the ball rolling on the Book Permaculture Course challenge. Unfortunately we've apparently underestimated the cost of the 10 day course by about 50%, but we've started a little savings fund to try to afford it by April.

Here are some pics from the market.


We made some oven-dried "sun dried" tomatoes with this tray of beauties (ironically you need three days of consecutive heatwave to dry them properly outside, and it was cool). The recipe was from Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.


Maja and John looking a bit cool at the Farmer's Market.


Food Forest garlic, on top of sundried tomato pesto.


This is purslane! ($2 at the Wayville Farmer's Market)


And this is purslane ($10 from Banner Hardware) - but can you eat this kind?


We think this is also purslane, growing in our street as a weed. We wouldn't want to eat this one as it's growing beside the road and might be polluted, but it's nice to know it's there.

And here is John's haircut. We couldn't get hairdressing scissors anywhere, but finally found some at a $2 Shop when we had given up and set off for home.


Success!

We went back. If John was nervous you couldn't really tell.


I'm the god'arn Batman!


The "bobbed" stage where Maja admitted she mostly cut girls' hair.


Very suave, Willanski, very suave.

Somewhere among the Rudd calling and visiting, John made pesto. The garden basil has gone from abundant to scarce after the heatwave, so we substituted it for Food Forest basil from the Farmer's Market. John used yeast instead of cheese in the pesto. It was chunky and delicious!


Calling Rudd.


Break for dinner.


Calling Wong.

As a sort of 31 Things spin-off, we helped John's brother Dave and sister-in-law Candice start a potted garden in their courtyard. Dave wrote about it on his blog too. I think the figure of us growing 70-80% of our own food is too generous, but I wonder how much we do grow?


John brought the permaculture book along.(the earth users guide to permaculture)


Parsely, capsicum, lemon grass, chives and cherry tomato for the food plants, and native grasses, native rosemary and something else native with pink flowers for the rest.


Willanski Bros.

Then Dave dropped us in Medindie where we visited Jules and her kids Raphie and Indigo. Jules gave us some worm poo for the garden (and worm wee). We think our fruiting plants might be a bit undernourished, so some of this worm compost might help them fruit if it's not too late in the season.


Worm wee, mmm!


An appropriate doggy-bag gleaned from the supply at our local park for the worm poo.


Our hosts having a story.

We're on a sort of daily schedule at the moment.
Next day we made bread with Anna.


Adding the oil.


Consulting the bread cook book. (The Peter Berley Modern Vegetarian Cookbook).


Kneading.


Several hours later (note sun has set) - bread! We took some to a house party that night.

On the bread-making day we also found some soap made from glycerine, which we've been looking for because it doesn't contain palm oil. We were really pleased as we've been trying to avoid palm oil, because of the issues with deforestation and orangutan populations. This turkish-delight style number came from a shop off the Parade that Rapsodie from our Sustainable Communities group mentioned. I'll note the name next time I go down the street.


Note the shower timer still in use. Have we been using it? John has more than I have, but I tend to start the shower timer and not get out immediately when it runs out. Still, when my showers go overtime, they feel illicit, rather than standard, and they're shorter than before we got it.

Yesterday we got a photo-electric smoke alarm from the post office. Actually we got four, and rejected two of the conventional sort. In a weird coincidence (Emeera, did you tell him you'd had a premonition?!), Harry, our landlord arrived unexpectedly to install some of the regular kind that he had brought with him (thereby fullfilling the Call Harry about rotten wood challenge, as well). He was very understanding about us not wanting the radioactive kind and even gave us some money to buy the sort we wanted, as well as one for Anna and Lily's place.

I took a bus back to the post office I used to go to when I lived in the city, because our local one had run out of smoke alarms, and returned triumphantly with the last two they had. Then John rang up from his parents' place to say his Dad, George, had picked us up a couple from a different post office. So now each house has two photo-electric smoke alarms. George is going to take our old ones, and some batteries that have been sitting on top of the fridge for about five years, to his work's hazardous waste bin.


The new ones. And they only cost ten bucks each!

That's it for now. We're both getting ready for our Fringe shows, I've given away uni for this and last week, due to Rudd and getting my photos ready, and we have been doing various other of the 31 Things that we don't have photos of.

I've predominantly been reading a book called "Choosing Eden" that Dave told us he'd got free with an issue of Gardening Australia. Basically it's a first-person account of a couple in their fifties who have packed up their comfortable Sydney life to start a permaculture farm in the NSW countryside, because of Peak Oil.

We're gearing up to write a big Peak Oil post, and because there's not enough time left in January to do it and some of the other posts justice we're going to extend the blog out into February and beyond. We're not sure if we'll continue blogging about new projects after we've reported on all the 31 Things - maybe!

We're booked in for our massage on Friday, and will have at least started or tee'd up all of the "Things" by Sunday, the 31st day of January. Except possibly "Go to an escapist movie"! We wanted to see "Where the Wild Things Are", but it looks as if we've missed it. "Avatar" was recommended (thanks Trina!), but Anna said the camera motion made her sick. I have a bizarre urge to see "The Road", which could not be classified escapist by any stretch of anyone's imagination. (Unless in that way where you realise that your fears for the future aren't as horrible as someone else's dystopia. )

Lastly, a friend of John's parents told us today that my polemic letter about Rudd avoiding the climate change question made it into the Advertiser yesterday! "Catastrophe awaits"!

Rudd winked at us

Kevin Rudd has been taking up a lot of our time as of late. We attended a community cabinet last Wednesday. It was held in the South Australian electorate of Sturt, a marginal electorate that includes our suburb Norwood.

We dressed up and I shaved because we figured that we would have more of a chance to ask a question. We had been pre-briefed by Anna that we would have to have a clean cut look to be picked to ask a question.


Shoes and hair are always the activist giveaways. These sneakers were swapped for a sensible black pair.



Cass' op-shop outfit.



Young Labor.

When we arrived the cops ushered us up to the building where there was a metal detector and registration. Not having pre-registered we were placed on a bench marked "Group W" (not really) while they did a police check. Once they had established we were not wanted criminals they gave us each a button marked "CC10" and sent us into the main hall.


Cass nervously awaits the Cabinet's arrival.

The proceedings inside were very well attended and lot more informal than I was expecting. Not only by the 200 strong public section but by 10 ministers representing the front bench. I was expecting a more round table kind of thing but it was more of a panel talk with Kevin Rudd presiding.


Presiding...

Kevin Rudd himself picked audience members to ask their questions and there was a sea of raised hands. Cass did some strategic eye-catching and was horrified to find herself winked at by Kev, but thrilled to be up next. The whole thing was on the fly, so we'd only had time to work out a question on the bus on the way there. It was based on the FoE action call-out, but as Cass said in her letter to the editor, below, he never really answered.

I asked him if he would bring an emissions reduction target to the Copenhagen Accord of 45% by 2020, to avoid catastrophic climate change, which the head of the IPCC has said we only have until 2012 to achieve.

Kevin Rudd's response, though lengthy and designed to pacify, was, in essence, a cool "No."

The message was clear. Climate scientists and half the world's nations agree that warming must be kept below 1.5 degrees celcius, and 350 CO2 ppm, but the Prime Minister talked about 2 degrees and 450 ppm.

How he plans to meet even these irrelevant targets is a mystery, given that he went on to explain his plans to "do no more than other countries."

This line is a cop-out that will see Adelaide fry and the Pacific Islands deluged.

Based on current assessments of country promises, the 2020 targets will head us towards 3.5-4 degrees warming, which would be a catastrophe.

Several other attendees came up afterwards and expressed their disappointment at the PM's response.


The blur that is Kevin Rudd dodging the issue.

After Cass asked her question I felt inspired and a lot more confident to ask one. I wanted to take him to task for not answering properly and follow on into an question about clean energy technology. I started to leave my hand up obviously and was soon winked at in a "you're next" way, until he saw me saying something to Cass (we were sitting seperately) and so refused to make eye contact with me again until the meeting was over. I felt very proud of Cass for asking her question and very disappointed in the wishy-washy answer as many other people seemed to be judging by the people who came up after.

After the main question time was over some people had pre-booked to talk to individual ministers but we were set to go to town to do another thing on the list of 31, number 23. go to an escapist movie. Unfortunately we couldn't make it as the community cabinet ran over time.


Made it! Almost. The way out was patrolled by nervous police, and was a less than ideal place to roll an ankle.


Celebratory beer at the Cranker. The only time we have ever been overdressed for a venue.

PS From Cass -
Here's how we went calling Rudd and Wong.

John called on Tuesday, but Rudd's secretary was pretty short. She let him finish, but advised, "I've got phone calls and work galore today, everyone's calling about this, so put it in writing."

The phone was off the hook when it was my turn to call on Tuesday night, so on Wednesday morning I tried again. Rudd's secretary was still having a bad week. I asked if I could read her out a message I'd written and she let me get a certain way in, even noting down the figure of 45% (as if she'd heard it before), before cutting me off with, "So it's a climate change issue, well I can certainly pass that on for you Cassie, bye bye." I agreed.

Following this I revised my cheat-sheet to make it more succinct, so that I could make sure Penny Wong's office took down the points I really wanted to make.

The person at Wong's office told John to send an email instead. I was told the same thing, but with the option to proceed.
"To be honest the best way is for you to send an email, but I can take down a message as well if you like."
"Would you mind? It's just a couple of points."
I read out my little spiel and thanked the secretary for taking it down.

After the Rudd winking incident I adapted the FoE pro-forma letter to include the community cabinet question and response and sent it to the Advertiser. It hasn't appeared, but in checking for it on Thursday I noticed a short article about Rudd possibly talking to the Greens about their plan to get a greener version of his ETS scheme through the Senate. Onya Kev!

12a. Let's call Rudd!

Following on from John's post yesterday. In the face of frustration at our leaders' half-arsed job on climate change, it is empowering to do what you can at home, where you have control over your immediate actions and can change the world for the better from the backyard out.

I believe that taking political action is equally important and empowering.

I know that there's a cynicism that goes along with the idea of engaging with political processes ("it won't change anything"). There's also the intimidation of not knowing what to say, or all the facts, or at the idea of criticising authority. Somehow it's easier to believe that we have no personal power over the huge global issues, and to knuckle down to making our own lives ethical and sustainable, than to agitate for change.

There are many good reasons people avoid political activity - from our cultural backgrounds, to the disappointment we feel if we push, but don't see immediate results (as opposed to, say, the satisfaction of rigging up a greywater system this weekend, here, now). Maybe we want our leaders to do the right thing without being told. Maybe they've encouraged us to hand over our power to them - after all, if we don't complain, they can do exactly what they want. Or maybe we feel abandoned and alienated from politics and prefer to make our own way.

Here's a confronting realisation - we do have power. Weird as it might sound, if we're going to give things our best shot on the home front, if we're ticking all the boxes for sustainable behaviour in our lives and communities, why not have a go on the political front as well? I see political engagement as part of a suite of positive behaviours - insulate the house, tick, bucket in the shower, tick, go to the farmer's market, tick, letter to the PM, tick.

I mentioned cultural reasons that people steer clear of politics. For people from cultural backgrounds that have a history of state persecution, taking political action can seem incredibly foolish and dangerous. In this regard I know I'm lucky - I grew up being taken to peaceful demonstrations, so the culture feels more familiar to me.

Even so I get intimidated by the thought of calling Kevin Rudd today (or rather, his secretary). I'll feel stupid, it's embarrassing, maybe it's not really "allowed".... And the worst self-inhibitor - it won't do any good. On the other hand, when I save water, recycle, buy my clothes from op-shops, or even write this blog, I don't tell myself that it won't do any good. I think positive things like "that's one more bucket of water for the Murray".

It will help. Slowly. The more people who push at the door will force it to give way.

I was thinking about my Grandmother this morning, and how she told me once about a demonstration against changes in the education system she went to in Sydney. She must have been in her late 70s at the time, and she said how excited she was to go to her first demo.

Check out this photo from 350.org of an Iraqi girl who took part in the global climate protests leading up to Copenhagen last year.

"I'm thinking particularly of that one of the lone girl in Iraq, standing by herself at the Ishtar Gate in Babylon. She walked through security check point after security check point to take that photo, even after her friends went home because they were (rightfully) too afraid to continue."

And here are me and John in the same action, a tiny thumbnail of solidarity among the millions of people who have joined the climate justice movement. It's much harder and less effective to act alone than it is to join an existing movement. If you're interested, there are plenty of groups to join up to online - this just means following along on their websites, or signing their petitions, or joining in on global actions like the 350.org one above. Or there are local groups like Friends of the Earth, Sustainable Communities or Greenpeace you can become part of, that hold regular meetings and plan events and activities that tie in with the global movement.

There's one final reason to call, and to send a letter to the editor. The climate skeptics, and the big business interests, are organised, and not afraid to make themselves heard. They are the ones writing to the papers, and lobbying the government.

Now that's scary...let's call Rudd!

Step 1
Make a cup of tea while you decide which action you're going to do.
It's a big step to get political for the first time (or even the 500th). If calling seems too intense, an email could be the way to go. On the other hand, if you don't have much time, a phonecall takes a minute or two. If you're in a hurry, use a pro-forma email or letter. If you want to write from a personal point of view, you can draft your own letter. All of these actions help, and while a phone call carries more weight than an email, they all get counted, and passed on. The point is to make contact in some way, today, or as soon as possible.

We're going to join the Friends of the Earth action and call Rudd about his voluntary emissions targets, email Tony Abbott to say we don't agree with his views on climate change, and email members of the Alliance of Island States to tell them we support their position.
We're also going to send a letter to the Advertiser and our local Messenger newspaper.
Everything you need to know to make these calls and emails is here.

Step 2.
Work out what the phone call is going to be about. The phonecall we are making is in response to a callout from Friends of the Earth, as part of a campaign about the targets Kevin Rudd has to bring to a meeting on February 1st, so it has a deadline of ASAP. We're asking him to commit to deep emissions cuts in the Copenhagen Accord. Having a specific ask as part of a coordinated campaign is more effective than a general request to "do something about climate change", to which the response could be, "We are." (If you become a member or follow the big organisations online, you can receive alerts about actions as they come up.)
It's fine to read or ad-lib from a script that you have adapted yourself, or even to read out a pro-forma. When we called Penny Wong's office during Copenhagen, her very helpful secretaries took down everything we said and emailed it to her.

Step 3.
Make the call!

You'll get a secretary, or a switchboard at parliament house, but not the actual politician you're calling. Just ask for their office, and when the secretary answers, ask to leave a message for them.
Give your name and postcode. This proves you are a real person and not the same person from whichever organisation calling over and over. Be friendly. I like to think that the person on the other end is just someone at work, who may well agree with everything I'm saying.

To contact Kevin Rudd's office, call:
(02) 6277 7700

To contact Senator Penny Wong, Minister for Climate Change and Water
(02) 6277 7920

Step 3.
That's it. You've done it!
Tell your friends what you did (via Facebook for example). We made calling Kevin Rudd an event on Facebook during Copenhagen and posted photos of ourselves and friends making the call.

Ok, we're up!
We'll let you know how we went soon!