A Farm on Every Block

As I wander around my central Washington, DC neighborhoods, I pass by empty lots on nearly every other block. Sometimes, these are where houses once fell victim to fires, uncompleted construction projects, or general disrepair, and sometimes where property owners have held onto them in the hopes that they can eventually turn a profit on a sale or development. Whatever the reason, my city is full of empty lots.

Aside from often being eyesores and open to unsafe activities, these are simply unproductive lands. While DC is a small place, it has a huge number of vacant properties and lots. (There’s even at least one blog dedicated to identifying the city’s vacant properties.) And that huge number adds up to a significant land area. I’ll do some research and report back some calculations, but if there are two empty lots within each square block in DC, and the average lot is 13 by 40 feet, that means that there is about 7,165,600 square feet, or 164.5 acres, of unused land throughout the District. if this were a single piece of land, that would mean that the District could sustain a farm larger than half of the farms in the U.S.! Again, I’ll do some research and come up with some firmer estimates.

What am I getting at? For starters, why can’t residents put this unused land to use? We’re still in the middle of a nasty economic situation, and people everywhere are cutting their budgets and living more frugally. Home and community gardens are just one form of this belt-tightening. Seed suppliers everywhere report that their seed stocks have sold out early for the past two years. It’s now just as common for people to plant basil and tomatoes in the front yard or window box as it is to plant a daisy or shrub. Community gardens have record demand. And, DC is right in the middle of this gardening wave.

Here’s the proposition: Let individuals, community organizations, schools, or other non-profit groups use empty lots to grow food. The garden tenants will receive the rights to use the lot to grow food, but not make profit, for so long as the lot is unused. The property owner, in return, receives a tax break from the District government and would retain the right to develop the lot, with fair notice to the gardeners. People get food and a chance to get their hands dirty, neighborhoods have a new form of social capital, city officials return land to active use (potentially stemming property devaluation and criminal activity), and property owners get a tax break. Everyone wins.

I’m ever-mindful of a wonderful community asset in LeDroit Park, the Common Good City Farm. This urban farm, which I am proud to be associated with, has reclaimed an empty lot, provides healthy produce for its neighbors, creates a point of pride in the area, and is working to ease a range of health, social, and justice problems. Gardens can do amazing things, and DC could have one on nearly every block. Just think about it.

Tags: community, food, gardens, ideas, urban farming

How much information is enough?

[Originally posted at The SufficiencyProject.net]

Just because we have easy access to fast internet connections, Google, and an information-driven and information-obsessed economy, does not mean that we, each of us, need to be the nexus for all of it.

• How long do you take to read a book, article, or newspaper?
• Do you ever stop and think about the book, chapter, page, or sentence that you just read?
• Do you ever find yourself not remembering what you’ve just read?
• Does reading ever feel like work?

A few thoughts on information-absorption versus meaningful reading:

• There is more information produced every single day than you possibly absorb in a lifetime.
• Information is cheap and abundant and your time and attention are precious and scarce.
• Ask yourself if what you are paying attention to/reading/watching is worth your time. If it is, then do it more slowly. If it is not, then stop.
• Information is not meaning or wisdom.

My challenge to you today: Consider your information intake. If you have an RSS feeder with more than 5 feeds, choose only one to read this week. If you are reading more than one book or magazine, choose only one, read it at half your present speed, and read only 10 pages per day. If you watch television or movies (or YouTube), choose only one show or one movie for this week.  If you use each of these media sources, choose one per day. Think about what you’re going to give your attention to, and afterward consider what you did give your attention to.

Tags: attention, limits, meaning, reading

You don’t need…

You don’t need…

• Permission
• More books, more sources, more information
• Another day to think it over
• More brain power
• To have had a better upbringing, richer parents, more privilege
• A degree from a better school, or even a higher degree
• To wait until the kids are grown up, or until your spouse gets on board
• More ideas
• People to like you, your idea, or your work
• To keep revising, perfecting and polishing
• Another meeting, another study, or buy-in from another stakeholder
• More resources
• More glory
• Fewer obstacles
• Financial security
• More supportive friends, family, coworkers, supporters, clients, customers, or other audiences
• [insert alternate reason here]

What do need is to get your ideas onto paper, into a plan, and out the door as soon as possible.  Every single item on this list might be nice and might help. But, more often than not we create excuses out of every corner of the imperfect world. If only the world, the circumstances were just so, then I’d do my big crazy idea. If the world were perfect, we wouldn’t need your idea, and if the world were perfect you probably wouldn’t have come up with it in the first place.

So, stop wishing things were better, and start making it happen. Break it down into small pieces and move it out the door. That’s the only way anyone has ever done it.

Some of my favorite resources for the job:

• The 99 Percent (Also, check out the book Making Ideas Happen, by Scott Belsky, founder of The 99 Percent and Behance.)
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, by Seth Godin (Also, check out Seth’s blog.)
• Zen Habits (An invaluable blog by Leo Babauta that helps you build disciplines into your life to simplify and be more successful.)

Tags: action, excuses, ideas, leo babauta, scott belsky, seth godin

So it begins…the Sufficiency Project

It happened in the most ordinary location. I was pleasantly trolling the aisles at the grocery store when the pre-sliced beets smacked me upside the head.

Well, not literally.

But, I was pulled out of a grocery trance when the sliced beets in the produce section grabbed my attention. Like a bolt: Who needs their beets pre-sliced and pre-packaged? And refrigerated nonetheless. The beets were grown, harvested, processed, sliced, packaged, shipped, and stocked all before they landed the front row seat on the top shelf where I came across them. Funny, because I was just walking through a neighborhood community garden a few days earlier where I talked with some folks who planted their beets, and who would grow, harvest, and eat themselves or share with their neighbors. The difference between the beets at the store and those in the ground down the street is huge.

When did I (we?) become so disconnected from the basic pieces of my (our) life? Why do I go down to Safeway (or Whole Foods if I’m feeling rich) to buy the beets, the carrots, the milk and eggs – anything and everything – that make my my food supply, when not that long ago my grandparents raised a good portion of their food themselves? What happened in the intervening 50 years that so separated me from the production of my food?

And, getting right down to it, it’s not just food. Every material good that I rely on to form the stuff of my life is made by someone else, and I generally have to buy it.

The thing is that I’ve had a lot of those sliced beet moments, as I suspect you may have also, and they’ve hit me with increasing frequency in recent years. When I indulge these moments, even just a little, two sensations emerge. First, I am overcome by the alienation from actually creating things that is inherent in modern consumer life. Like the lead character in a Dan Brown movie, I am shocked to find the great scandal of our times hidden in plain sight. Then, I usually succumb to guilt that comes from playing along with the game, unable to break free and assert my self-reliance.

This moment – right now -  is where I stop agreeing to just play along and I do something.

How much pre-packaged life do I need to accept? In today’s busy life (mine, to be specific), what are the limits of self-reliance? There is a strong tradition of rugged individualism in this country – pilgrims, pioneers, explorers, and more – who cast off into the frontier and built their lives themselves. Not “worked hard, saved and had a budget so they could get a mortgage, buy a new car, and afford organic food.” No, these were people who literally built everything: they felled the trees that made their houses, they hunted the deer that fed their family, and hand-sewed the clothing that they wore. What happened?

Well, I’m not going to wax nostalgic about the frontier days: they had it rough. But, on the spectrum of self-reliance and sufficiency, there must be middle ground between covered wagons and pre-packaged pre-sliced beets.

That’s where this blog comes in. Instead of enduring the cycle of shock and shame at just how non-self-reliant I am, I’m breaking with it today. Specifically, I’m embarking on a personal exploration to seek out the limits of self-reliance and sufficiency in my life. Instead of just accepting others as the creators of the things in my life, I am reclaiming and exercising my creative power and putting it to use. Bottom line: I want my life to be one of active creation not passive reception and consumption.

What does all that mean? Well, I’m still figuring it out. Right now I’m riding a wave of urgency and just getting going; I’ll have to figure out the details as I go. But, I will lay down some parameters at the outset. I will write here everyday, sharing the changes and plans for revamping my day-to-day life. Some posts might be practical instructions, such as learning how to can vegetables or build furniture. Other posts will be reflect more on the bigger picture. Every entry will connect back to the basic idea of daily, active creation. Unlike other personal projects where the contributor sets out a specific plan for a defined period of time, and publicly challenges themselves to adhere to that plan, this project will be more open-ended and evolutionary. I am not going to be dogmatic about self-reliance and sufficiency. I simply want to explore what it means in the context of my life, what the limits are, and share the progress and lessons with others. I do commit to living a more self-sufficient and reliant life, one step at a time, day by day. I will not pre-judge the outcome, but be open to the journey that goes along with this choice.

Further in regard to being open-ended, I want to stress that I am not using “self-reliance” or “self-sufficiency” in any sense that means removing myself from my community. I know that many people out there use these terms to collectively refer to getting off the grid, preparing for doomsday, or generally disconnecting from society. Well, as frustrated as I am with “society,” I like other people and want to live with and near them. What I want, though, are genuine relationships, strong communities and neighborhoods, and a sense of self-worth and empowerment. What better time to start than now.

Thanks for giving me some time, and please feel to follow along or check in from time to time.

PS – This post was originally published on my website, The Sufficiency Project. Please visit me there for ongoing updates on my progress and writing on self-sufficiency and reliance. Thanks!

Tags: self-sufficiency, sliced beets, sustain me project

The Acknowledgments

I was struck by an interaction my wife and I had this evening. I was cocooned at the desk and she sweetly checked to make sure I was still breathing.

“You’re actually reading the acknowledgments? That’s so cute.”

“I always read them!”

These particular acknowledgments were to Paul Brass, James Coleman, Jon Elster, the Ostroms, Adam Przeworski, and many others, via Margaret Levi’s Of Rule and Revenue. Great book – second time around.

What grabbed me was that I never realized that I do, almost religiously, read the acknowledgments of every political science (and probably sociology) publication – book, article, conference paper, etc. – that I consume. In fact, it may be true that I more consistently pore over the acknowledgments than the conclusions or methods. Is this some political science version of Page 5? Or, is there something deeper on which I can rationalize my quirk?

Part of the acknowledgment-poring is curiosity about who knows whom. Where are the alliances and battle lines drawn? That’s practical. But, part of it is trying to decipher who influenced whom, who is framing the debates, who is whose mentor, and on which giants’ shoulders do we think we stand.

The more I reflect on this habit, the more I’m convinced that it’s an act of tying myself into a community of scholars and ideas, and looking for the linkages and relationships that precede me. Think about it – political science is not a particularly large club. I think that APSA, which hosts the largest meetings, convenes about 3000 annually, and Midwest and the smaller conferences pull in substantially less. When we talk about luminaries in our discipline, there’s a good chance that they aren’t more than 2 degrees (and probably just one) separated from us neophyte apprentices.

When we take the time to compile the list of acknowledgments at the outset (and recognition always comes before the introduction), we aren’t just signaling that we know important people and are trying to claim some of their reflected glory. Rather, we are laying out the intellectual genealogy of our ideas and, in some small but significant way, recognizing that our discipline is indeed a social science.