making home
sastyk | September 21, 2012So I know that some contributors and book giveaway winners are still waiting for their copy of _Making Home_ and I offer you profuse apologies. When I was out of town and a friend really wanted to sell copies at an event, Eric gave her some books. Actually, all the books. He didn't realize there weren't more. In the meantime, she didn't sell all of them but for reasons involving complicated personal things hasn't been able to get them back to me. They will re-arrive this weekend, and go out in the mail early next week. Again, apologies for keeping you waiting.
As a form of contrition…
sastyk | August 23, 2012M. is back with her view from how the class is going - after an amazingly brief pause to give birth to a new baby!
o my week 4 update was simply labor, labor and more labor. We finally had the baby! We are home and healthy. And I get to brag that he was born in a bathtub (it was a water birth)! Do you think he will appreciate that when he's twelve? After another sleepy week off, I am back with week 6.
The class has been slowly zeroing in on brainstorming solutions to some of the more mundane issues of low power living. Things like sustainable rat population control, stockpiling toilet…
sastyk | July 19, 2012M.'s latest update (see the first post for her bio) on what it is like to take the class. It is funny - I always worry I'm not providing enough reading material for people. Apparently that may not be a critical issue ;-).
This class is very different from any other I've taken. There are a lot of suggested readings, let's just say many of them have been posts from Sharon's blog and we know how long those can be! But there's also the class discussion, which is online. That alone is new to me, I've never taken an online class before.
Something I'm noticing every time I read through the…
sastyk | July 3, 2012
In honor of Making Home, my new book on Adapting-In-Place which comes out in August, New Society has offered to sponsor a spot in my Adapting-in-Place class that starts tomorrow. In exchange for a sponsored spot for a low-income participant who couldn't otherwise afford to take the class, New Society will ask for a weekly blog post on what the class is doing, what it is like and what you are thinking about. I'll post them at my site, and they will also appear on the NS blog. I already have one blogger doing this, but I have one more space (sorry, only one). Email me at jewishfarmer@…
sastyk | June 22, 2012Well, since the Rio Summit failed to save the world (again), and we're slipping back into economic crisis, and _Making Home_ my book on Adapting-in-Place comes out in August, it seems like the right time to teach my AIP class again. It helps to renew my sense of purpose as well - there's nothing like sitting down and sorting out all the work we're doing to get ready for the world we actually are emerging into again to feel a sense of excitement and purpose about it.
The class will start on American Independence Day, July 4, and we'll declare our independence from corporations and the fear…
sastyk | October 12, 2011Lots of stuff to update you all on. First, the family expansion project - still nothing new. After three months of waiting, we've decided to expand our looking in a few different ways - our county just doesn't have a placement, and after all the work of getting ready, we're anxious to get one.
Meanwhile, I'm powering through the Adapting-In-Place Manual, and it will be out next spring. Here's a preview of the Cover:
Making Home Cover.pdf
I'm also getting ready for the ASPO-USA conference - where I'm going to be sharing a hotel room with Nicole Foss. We're going to have a late night…
sastyk | September 12, 2011As I begin the final push on _Making Home_ my book on Adapting in Place (out next spring), Aaron and I will be offering the first ever "Advanced AIP Class" running from Tuesday, September 20 to October 25th. The class will build on the basic Adapting-In-Place skills that we've been talking about all these years in my classes, the blogs, etc... - triaging your situation, thinking about scenarios, and building both personal and community resilience, but this class moves beyond the basics into the larger question of how to make a life that both provides you some insulation from tough times, but…
sastyk | August 22, 2011One of the peculiarities of the white race's presence in America is how little intention has been applied to it. As a people, wherever we have been, we have never really intended to be. The continent is said to have been discovered by an Italian who was on his way to India. The earliest explorers were looking for gold, which as, after an early streak of luck in Mexico, always somewhere farther on. Consquests, and foundings were incidental to this search - which did not, and could not, end until the continent was finally laid open in a orgy of goldseekin in the middle of the last century…
sastyk | August 18, 2011Just to keep you all updated, we learned yesterday that the children's social worker has decided to separate the children, and place them in three homes. Two will stay with the current foster mother, one with one home, and they are seeking a home for one child and the newborn. Since we will take larger groups than two and there are very few homes that take three or four, we are not candidates to take any of the kids.
I admit, I'm relieved not to have to make a decision about taking these kids - it isn't the numbers, so much as the ages - I realized about myself that while I would happily…
sastyk | March 12, 2010First of all, I present to you, the cover for my new book (not yet finished, but it will be really soon) forthcoming this fall. I didn't think it was possible that they could come up with something prettier than the cover for Independence Days (which you can see on the sidebar), but I think they did.
I admit, I'm pretty impressed by it! Plus it fulfills the maxim that all my covers must have food on them, whether the books are about food or not.
Second of all, if you want to see someone's impression of me headlocking a fellow science blogger in a free-for-all, I'm in panel three of this…