Thanks for sharing my post, Sarah. It's good to be back in touch and hear from you and many others. I've ordered The Transition Handbook your recommended. I don't know how long it will take to get here so I've been exploring it online. Hopkin's has such a upbeat approach, inviting us to positively and passionately paint a mental picture, a clear vision, of what a powered-down future would look like. I love the snapshots of what he presents:
- The return of nature to our lives, lots of wild countryside, ecovillages and small cities with lots of arts, educational, and artistic activities
- A simpler life with more time with family and loved ones
- Life where people and nature blend into and are attuned to one another
- A world without pollution and waste
- Communities working for the same values and vision where you can have truthful conversations and people instead of retreating if we don't automatically agree
- A quieter, sweeter smelling world, filled with bird songs and laughter, lit with soft sunshine through lush leaves, starlight nights, moon shadows on the lawn.
But, Sarah, there's a problem with these inviting visions.
That describes the world we've had here in Katani Falls. That's the world we saved and rebuilt., the world I moved to ... the world we're losing.
This weekend was a reminder. We enjoyed two beautiful Indian Summer days. The air was crystal clear and crisp. We've been hoping to make it to October before turning on the pellet stove at night, so we threw open all the windows both days and let the forest in to warm the house. The vanilla fragrance of the Jeffrey pines filled rooms with a fresh vibrancy. Gentle mountain breezes stirred the curtains along the window frames. We could hear the ducks calling on the pond and the red wing black birds singing their evensons before the crickets began their serenade and we closed up the house to keep it warm through the night.
But being able to savor such blessings is growing rare these days.
The food supply in the nation is so challenged that agribusiness in the central valley is using every more powerful chemicals to produce higher yields. So we have pollution here now, in this remote forest. Most days, especially in the summer, a brown haze seeps down the canyon between the giant east-west mountain ranges that cradle our village. Lately there's been an epidemic of allergies and asthma too. Our daughter, Chelsea, has developed asthma. I thought I was protecting my kids from things like by leaving the city. But no, she carrying an inhaler to school, as do half her friends, and, of course, we have to close up the house and keep her indoors as much as possible.
Also... the state and federal government is so strapped for cash that they're leasing out the forest land to industries. Though there's nothing in the immediate area yet, from 7 AM to 7 PM logging and excavation trucks go roaring through the main road through town en route to sites deeper in the forest. There's talk afoot of leasing land nearby for a lumber mill.
I'm sorry. I said I was going to share the good things! I will, I promise. Everyone who's read Sitting with the Enemy must be wondering what on earth happened to the bold and daring mavericks we were then. Well, like Hopkins, who was only 37 when he wrote Transition Towns, we were young and idealistic then. The community we reclaimed and rebuilt together was truly magical. It's hard to look back now and realize just how much we've let slip away.
It started around 2008 after the economy began contracting. Gradually our lives have gotten more complicated again, like when we were in the city. Isn't that ironic?
Not just for Mark and I, but for all of us - Gloria and Ned, Megan and Ryan, Suzanne, Lee and Lorraine. (I hope to provide a little Then and Now summary of everyone soon, so everyone will know who I'm talking about and can catch up on who's who up here.) We're become got too busy coping individually to look at what we could and should still be doing collectively.
For example, you may remember, Mark and I used the money we made from selling our home in LA and the money we were spending on private schools for Jason and Chelsea, to buy our home here and to start a Health Clinic. The clinic started out in a rented house while Mark established himself as a Family Physician. Then, with Lee Mather's help, he bought a house near the village and got the variances and permits to remodel it into a fully functioning clinic with a telemedicine wing! All that time, as planned, I was busy doing teleseminars for sales organizations via the Internet.
That's a good part of our story. It's been wonderful to have medical care right here in our village. No more driving an hour to see a doctor. Even in emergencies patients can be stabilized at the clinic while waiting to be airlifted out by helicopter. Thank goodness we've got this local resource now.
But as you can imagine, establishing the clinic took a lot of time and energy ... and all our money. With the economy contracting, we've been really pinched financially. Fewer companies wanted to pay for my teleseminars. They can get a facsimile of what I was offering for free on YouTube. Believe it or not, someone actually put up an entire video of my most popular seminar! I got it taken down, but another one was up again in no time. Second, insurance payments for medical care kept going down. Doctors in cities and at HMO's can make up for these losses by seeing more patients in a day, but with less than 3,000 people up here, volume isn't an option for Mark. That would conflict with his standards of care anyway. He makes do with whatever payment people have and sometimes that's in trade or barter. So a couple years ago I started helping out full-time at the clinic sans salary of course.
Yes, you're right. My mother - the ex-super mom-extraordinaire - just hates that. She was so pleased I was finally at home full-time with my kids like a "good mom." But now not only am I not at home, she says, I'm wasting my education. That's part of the problem, isn't it? Thinking nothing has value that you don't pay money for. That you don't have value if you're not paid for what you do. But I find I prefer volunteering to charging people, because you don't have to do anything you don't want to do and people seem to sense that and are more appreciative. There is still so much we need money for, though: the utilities, the medications, and all the other products and services our household and the clinic get from other people who charge us.
Gloria volunteers at the clinic now too. Even though she's hasn't had a recurrence of the breast cancer that drove her to a retreat here from the stress of the city, she never regained the stamina, or frankly the desire, to travel long-distances for speaking gigs like she did when we were buddies out on the speaking circuit. Working with her everyday has been great too, because we really needed her help.
In its own way, every one's story is similar to ours. We haven't really grown apart. We've just drifted off into a kind of treading-water-to-stay-afloat-stupor. We've all been scrambling. (You'll see what I mean in the Then and Now Updates I hope to do soon.) Also I have to admit, we've grown complacent, taking what we had for granted. Assuming we could have the best of both worlds, enjoying our paradise up here while living off the bounty of a huge city only an hour away.
In many ways, you could say we have an advantage though. You know that line from Sitting with the Enemy, "you can't miss what you don't remember." Well, we remember how life can be. And at least no one here is siphoning off gas from each others' cars or stealing solar panels off roofs to sell on E-Bay like is happening in the city. But we need to wake up ... quickly. Or is it too late? I hope not.
I'm going have our friends over for one of those once ubiquitous, but now rare, potluck nights and invite everyone to do one of Hopkin's envisioning activities. I need to talk to Mark first, of course, but I'll let you know how it goes.
With hope,
Rose
To read Sarah's reply, TO LEAVE A COMMENT FOR ROSE, or to read other's comment, click on comments.
If you're just joining Rose's story, you can catch up by reading Chapter 1 under Labels.
(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Chaper 1: From the Not Too Distant Future
Hi, Sarah, it's Rose, from your novel. I just found your blog. I'm sure you remember me. I moved from LA to a small mountain village called Katani Falls where I stumbled into the healing power of nature and having true community in our lives. It was a paradise lost re-found.
But, Sarah, things have changed here dramatically. Our village is facing problems other cities and towns everywhere may be encountering all too soon, circumstances Mark and I never dreamed would befall us.
I can't begin to tell you everything that's happened in just one message, but from what I found on your blog, I think you may have an inking of what we're dealing with. I hope we can discuss the ramifications of these events as we're struggling to get a handle on our future, wondering if being able to influence our future is something we'll alll be losing.
It all started slowly here. When Mark and I moved from LA with our two children this was the best of all worlds. We had the blessings of nature and a simple way of life, all within easy reach of a major metropolitan area with every modern convenience. We had 6-day-a-week mail delivery, high-speed Internet, home delivery of the LA Times, and gasoline was cheap enough people here thought nothing of running into the city whenever they wanted or needed to for food, supplies, entertainment, and top notch specialty medical care. Lots of folks lived in the city during the week and drove up here for weekends in their cabin to relax and recharge.
Well, all that has changed. As you remember, though we're not really far from LA, we're quite remote, deep in a forest accessible only by one windy and treacherous road. So, first we lost our home delivery of the newspaper. Instead we picked up the paper at the Country Store in the village each morning. Then we lost daily delivery to the store too. So we subscribed by mail and read the news the next morning.
But the postal service was next. Whereas we had six day delivery for years, it was cut to five days, then to two hours in the afternoon three days a week, then to the sporadic service we have now. There are weeks when no mail is delivered at all. The private mail services used to come in everyday, too. but now who knows when or if they'll deliver here. Some things we order are sent back as undeliverable.
The company that supplied our high speed Internet and cable has stopped serving this area. Like the post office they're dropping certain service areas. We have dial-up now through a server set up by a local resident in his home. That's why, fortunately, I can still get e-mail and surf the web. The monthly fee is a lot higher though and many people can't afford to subscribe, so the fees keep going up for those who can still pay.
You may remember there was a gas station here. Well, it's closed now. It was running over $200,000 to fill their tanks and not enough people could afford to buy gas at a price that would cover their costs. Now we're having trouble with the electricity too. We're at the end of the grid, so whenever there is a overload in LA due to heavy usage during the scorching heat they've had this summer, the power is cut to outlying areas to avoid a mass blackouts in the city. Mark and I have a propane generator that keeps the lights, the frig, Mark's clinic, and the computers running, but last month it cost us $2000 to fill the propane tank. Many people don't have generators or can't afford to fill them, in which case the propane company has removed their tanks. Now, winter is coming.
The worst part, Sarah, is that a lot of people have left and more are leaving. The big exodus began after gasoline passed $5.00 a gallon awhile back. Some people were able to sell their homes when they decided they needed to be closer to the city, or didn't want the cost of driving to a second home any more. But for a lot of folks the value of their homes fell below their mortgage, so there have been a lot of short sales and foreclosures. Some people are just walking away from their homes. The banks can't sell or rent these houses either, because there just aren't many people who want to live so far from everything. A lot of houses are vacant and deteriorating.
The embattled hotel property you may remember so well is vacant now too. The town council tried to buy it for community activities or rental units, but with so many fewer people living here there weren't the funds to acquire it, even at a rock-bottom price. Rumors are flying that the mortgage company will be tearing it down to sell for scrap. I just can't believe that! After all the battles we had to reach agreement about developing it!
Those of us who are still here, well, we are back to two waring camps again now. Generally those who own the homes and have a lot of money still think everything that's happening is just temporary and that "the market" will recover. They are doing everything they can to keep the water allocations to residents low so they can preserve the golf course and keep the clubhouse open to "protect property values." Everyone else is petrified that they'll be next to lose their homes and they're just trying to figure out what to do. "We're trapped in paradise," one of my neighbors told me the other day. Her husband just lost his job in town and they're trying to live off the proceeds from what she's selling on e-bay. In fact she's selling on commission for other folks here who are cashing in on whatever they have of value that they don't need.
Of course those who are feeling desperate don't have the time or emotional energy to get involved in the local government, so the council is run by those who think things will get better soon, mostly real estate agents who bought up as much distressed property as they could afford and are just sitting on it. The council has imposed a steep "water tax" to cover community services, but lately they're having a hard time collecting. If they foreclose on those who can't pay, then thing will be even worse, so they're just ignoring delinquencies now.
I hate to be the barer of such disturbing news, but I feel compelled to tell you about it and I hope you'll post it on your blog. From everything I've been reading there I have a much better understand what's going on in our country. Mark and I downloaded End of Suburbia and What a Way to Go from the web (it took all night) and I can see there's nothing temporary about what's happening. It will only get worse for us here, but I hope others in their larger, less-remote communities will heed the early warning signs we overlooked and have time to make better preparations than we have. I think their challenges will different but equally difficult.
Not everything is bad here, though. There are hopeful things to share too. I will post again soon and catch you up on the effect all this is having on our lives and our friends, many of whom you will remember.
So glad to have found you. As you say ...
Blessings of Nature. It remains a daily salvation.
Rose
To see Sarah's reply, make a comment, and read other comments click on "comments" below.
(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008
But, Sarah, things have changed here dramatically. Our village is facing problems other cities and towns everywhere may be encountering all too soon, circumstances Mark and I never dreamed would befall us.
I can't begin to tell you everything that's happened in just one message, but from what I found on your blog, I think you may have an inking of what we're dealing with. I hope we can discuss the ramifications of these events as we're struggling to get a handle on our future, wondering if being able to influence our future is something we'll alll be losing.
It all started slowly here. When Mark and I moved from LA with our two children this was the best of all worlds. We had the blessings of nature and a simple way of life, all within easy reach of a major metropolitan area with every modern convenience. We had 6-day-a-week mail delivery, high-speed Internet, home delivery of the LA Times, and gasoline was cheap enough people here thought nothing of running into the city whenever they wanted or needed to for food, supplies, entertainment, and top notch specialty medical care. Lots of folks lived in the city during the week and drove up here for weekends in their cabin to relax and recharge.
Well, all that has changed. As you remember, though we're not really far from LA, we're quite remote, deep in a forest accessible only by one windy and treacherous road. So, first we lost our home delivery of the newspaper. Instead we picked up the paper at the Country Store in the village each morning. Then we lost daily delivery to the store too. So we subscribed by mail and read the news the next morning.
But the postal service was next. Whereas we had six day delivery for years, it was cut to five days, then to two hours in the afternoon three days a week, then to the sporadic service we have now. There are weeks when no mail is delivered at all. The private mail services used to come in everyday, too. but now who knows when or if they'll deliver here. Some things we order are sent back as undeliverable.
The company that supplied our high speed Internet and cable has stopped serving this area. Like the post office they're dropping certain service areas. We have dial-up now through a server set up by a local resident in his home. That's why, fortunately, I can still get e-mail and surf the web. The monthly fee is a lot higher though and many people can't afford to subscribe, so the fees keep going up for those who can still pay.
You may remember there was a gas station here. Well, it's closed now. It was running over $200,000 to fill their tanks and not enough people could afford to buy gas at a price that would cover their costs. Now we're having trouble with the electricity too. We're at the end of the grid, so whenever there is a overload in LA due to heavy usage during the scorching heat they've had this summer, the power is cut to outlying areas to avoid a mass blackouts in the city. Mark and I have a propane generator that keeps the lights, the frig, Mark's clinic, and the computers running, but last month it cost us $2000 to fill the propane tank. Many people don't have generators or can't afford to fill them, in which case the propane company has removed their tanks. Now, winter is coming.
The worst part, Sarah, is that a lot of people have left and more are leaving. The big exodus began after gasoline passed $5.00 a gallon awhile back. Some people were able to sell their homes when they decided they needed to be closer to the city, or didn't want the cost of driving to a second home any more. But for a lot of folks the value of their homes fell below their mortgage, so there have been a lot of short sales and foreclosures. Some people are just walking away from their homes. The banks can't sell or rent these houses either, because there just aren't many people who want to live so far from everything. A lot of houses are vacant and deteriorating.
The embattled hotel property you may remember so well is vacant now too. The town council tried to buy it for community activities or rental units, but with so many fewer people living here there weren't the funds to acquire it, even at a rock-bottom price. Rumors are flying that the mortgage company will be tearing it down to sell for scrap. I just can't believe that! After all the battles we had to reach agreement about developing it!
Those of us who are still here, well, we are back to two waring camps again now. Generally those who own the homes and have a lot of money still think everything that's happening is just temporary and that "the market" will recover. They are doing everything they can to keep the water allocations to residents low so they can preserve the golf course and keep the clubhouse open to "protect property values." Everyone else is petrified that they'll be next to lose their homes and they're just trying to figure out what to do. "We're trapped in paradise," one of my neighbors told me the other day. Her husband just lost his job in town and they're trying to live off the proceeds from what she's selling on e-bay. In fact she's selling on commission for other folks here who are cashing in on whatever they have of value that they don't need.
Of course those who are feeling desperate don't have the time or emotional energy to get involved in the local government, so the council is run by those who think things will get better soon, mostly real estate agents who bought up as much distressed property as they could afford and are just sitting on it. The council has imposed a steep "water tax" to cover community services, but lately they're having a hard time collecting. If they foreclose on those who can't pay, then thing will be even worse, so they're just ignoring delinquencies now.
I hate to be the barer of such disturbing news, but I feel compelled to tell you about it and I hope you'll post it on your blog. From everything I've been reading there I have a much better understand what's going on in our country. Mark and I downloaded End of Suburbia and What a Way to Go from the web (it took all night) and I can see there's nothing temporary about what's happening. It will only get worse for us here, but I hope others in their larger, less-remote communities will heed the early warning signs we overlooked and have time to make better preparations than we have. I think their challenges will different but equally difficult.
Not everything is bad here, though. There are hopeful things to share too. I will post again soon and catch you up on the effect all this is having on our lives and our friends, many of whom you will remember.
So glad to have found you. As you say ...
Blessings of Nature. It remains a daily salvation.
Rose
To see Sarah's reply, make a comment, and read other comments click on "comments" below.
(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008
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