Greenseniors

Welcome to Green Seniors

The static "welcome" post below is followed by many more you can look up using categories in the left column.  The Green Seniors site and Joyce's personal writing as Greengranny contain many posts on gardening (urban, organic-inclined, etc), permaculture, and sustainable agriculture that are relevant to hunger.

Comments are welcomed on all posts and come into Joyce's email inbasket at once.  You may also write her directly at [email protected]. 

While we are not adding new posts to this site at the present time, we will continue to safeguard and maintain its contents for the future.

If you want to check up on Greengranny's personal blog, go to www.greengranny.org.

Thanks for all you do,

                                   Green Seniors                                           

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Green Seniors is based on the belief that there are thousands of people in the world who care about the natural environment, have some time to spare, and want to do something to try and fix the problems that we have created.

We know that global warming is real; it has been made far worse by greenhouse gases building up in Earth's atmosphere; and the burning of fossil fuels, the loss of our forests and many other human activities are causing this.  Carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, stays in the atmosphere for up to 200 years.  Right now the oceans and soil are absorbing much of the excess carbon, but in a couple of decades these "sinks" will be full, and we will still be pumping ever more carbon into the atmosphere. Other gases like methane and nitrous oxide are making the problem even worse, and it will get worse...

The people of Earth must do everything they can, as soon as possible, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and help nature to protect us from the consequences.  Every nation. Every state or city. Every village. Every home. Every person.

Dennis Keeney: Finding Green Activism in Retirement

Dennis Keeney had plenty of laurels to rest on when he retired at the end of 1999 as the first director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture located in Ames, Iowa.  He worked with farmers within the state to bring a new vision to agriculture that continues to gain momentum to this day.  As an emeritus professor at Iowa State University, he could have kept busy in retirement with academic pursuits.  He chose to add something new to his areas of expertise.

With the various misinformation campaigns continuing to erode the confidence of the general public in science and scientists, it is easy to despair over how to communicate effectively the urgency of global warming.  The current economic recession pushes the issue to the back burner, or worse. 

On Saturday, April 3, 2010, a feature column appeared on the Opinion page of the Ames Tribune by Dr. Keeney.  Entitled "Will the world have to reach boiling before we react?" the article related the metaphor of the frog in water being slowly heated.  The frog does not perceive the threat that comes slowly and does not jump out when the water gets too hot, but dies. 

The article adeptly addressed the themes of global warming skepticism going through people's minds of late, such as confusing weather with climate change.  The nation had a cold winter, and many people concluded the warnings of warming are simply hype. 

As a capsule of the challenge of human-caused dramatic increases in greenhouse gases, this article is unsurpassed in clarity for the general audience.  Many of you Green Seniors out there might like to keep it handy for use when discussing the issue with others.  Dennis Keeney and the Ames Tribune have given permission to use his article on this site.  I hope to post the entire article in the near future.  For the time being, readers of this blog will have to seek out the Ames Tribune April 3, 2010 edition on page B2.

Meanwhile, another article by Dennis Keeney appeared in the May 1, 2010 edition of the Ames Tribune.  For this article, Dennis researched what really happens to trash in our town, especially e-waste.  Is your e-waste, full of toxic substances, being properly disposed of by your recycling company or charitable organization?  One can't be sure without asking probing questions and running down the facts.  This is a significant help to our community.  Thanks also to the Ames Tribune for publishing the work. 

Dennis, you retired 10 years ago, but you have a talent the world needs now more than ever.  Please continue to write and to be published ever more widely.  Thank you from Green Seniors.

Expressing the Unthinkable, in Verse

Many seniors remember living much of their life with a feeling of optimism regarding the future, where humans and the societies they live in undergo continual improvement.  Now, even the most optimistic among us contemplate future scenarios not thought possible till recently. 

Green Senior Bob Lane has written some verses that put into words what many of us are feeling but for various reasons, do not wish to express.  Bob is a retired professor who started the website "Gray is Green" and founded the National Senior Conservation Corps that now has 80 retirement homes involved in becoming more sustainable.  

Bob was featured as a Green Senior Hero and his website is listed in the right column as a favorite link of Green Seniors.

In his poems, Bob explores the question of what happens if the effort to save our habitable planet fails.  How do we deal with the prospect of our own species extinction, not as a distant possibility, but happening within a few generations?  Happening because of what those of us alive today did or failed to do?

This subject is distressing.  If it is too disturbing to you, the poem below may not be suitable reading.  However, sometimes confronting our worst fears makes us more effective at doing what needs to be done.  In that spirit, and with the permission of the author, here is one selection taken from Robert E. Lane's "If Conservation Fails: Explorations in Verse on Human Extinction." 

ELEGY FOR A TRANSIENT SPECIES

Farewell to thought of living and to death.

To neither life nor death can we aspire.

Being, itself, has vanished with our breath.

No longer dark puts out the light – for both expire.

 

Mind lost its way when habitats were closed:

As drowning waters changed the coast’s frontier,

And once-lush land by deserts are foreclosed,

And carbon gas corrupts the atmosphere.

 

All beauty is unseen from this time hence!

The poetry of Milton speaks to none.

The gift of books is not the gift of sense –

But food for termites who have overrun.

 

The world survives and follows up its plan.

But Homo Sapiens has joined the crew

Of evolved species that outlived their span.

So other species flourish where we grew.

 

We vanished with a whimpering, un-blest.

Who follows now the vagrant human quest?

We’ve written “Finis” to the Age of Man.

Greengranny sounds off on the failures of 2009 and challenges for 2010

To start off the new year for Green Seniors, Greengranny has a post on her view of the state of the world.  Please read it at www.greengranny.org or scroll down a ways and click on the button in the left column for Greengranny.org - "Making the Most of My Time."

Keeping Up Appearances, part 2

Keith did a masterful exposition of the subject in his original post on Keeping Up Appearances. I'm simply chiming in with a few observations of my own from the USA, that have floated back to the surface following Keith's reminder.

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When it comes to single family homes on city or suburban lots, the choice of landscape is made by the owners.  People who find a large expanse of grass dotted with a few evergreens appealing tend to buy homes where that landscape is the norm.  In the older neighborhoods, there is a lot more variety and surely much more tolerance for unusual styles as well as natural settings.  Keeping up appearances gives way to enjoying one's own yard as one pleases.

For home landscapes and gardens that work with nature instead of against it, look in the older areas of towns.  For the best views, ride a bicycle slowly down these streets during spring and you likely will see residents working in their own yards, not to keep up appearances, but to enjoy the outdoors and create their labor of love with the soil.  There is no public garden that can compete with the ingenuity and visual delights created by a resident home gardener with only modest funds to apply.  Without outside help to move earth, build walks and walls, buy expensive exotic plants, or install an irrigation system, these gardeners take their cue from nature.  The result is a happy collaboration.  No leaf blowers necessary.

In the USA there are far too many churches, schools, office buildings and light industrial buildings sited on large lots or even acreages, that still use the grass-and-token-tree landscaping mode.  These expanses seem to have no function and give no particular viewing pleasure, other than keeping a conventional appearance -- using land and space itself as an enhancement to status.  Cheap land and cheap gasoline have combined with a lack of valuing nature to achieve this look.  There are glimmers of change, however. 

It's not easy to restore land to its original ecosystem, including the nearly-extinct tallgrass prairie of the Middle West.  However, it is being done more frequently.  This is where the resources of a public or privately endowed garden or park are useful, to acquire numerous parcels of land and restore a contiguous expanse to natural prairie or other ecosystem.  Even preserved or reestablished prairie remnants matter, as symbolic reminders of what nature provided and we have replaced with corn and soybeans, homes and concrete.

An easier method to escape the grass-and-leaf-blower syndrome is to leave some land "in the rough", unmowed, removing only the truly noxious weeds and invasive tree starts. This step alone has many benefits in reducing labor, power tools, and chemical fertilizers for upkeep, and adding cover for birds and other small animals.  In time it becomes far more diverse and interesting to view than mowed grass, especially if helped along with seedings of prairie wildflowers. 

Preferences on landscapes are shaped by childhood experiences with nature.  For large numbers of people today, the link with nature is broken -- and not just for city kids.  Today's industrial farms are as sterile.  Too many people have no memories of wading in the brook chasing minnows, building a fort in the thicket, eating wild berries, or hearing the song of the meadowlark.  What they have never experienced, they do not miss, they do not value.

"Keeping up appearances" is the only rationale many people have for dealing with their home landscapes.  They do what is expected and what brings the "proper" degree of status.  In upscale neighborhoods, that will be professional landscaping maintained by professional gardners, not for the family to enjoy, but for the neighbors to see.  

We can find ways of changing what the community values in landscaping for both commercial and residential properties -- we can create a new norm.  And while we're at it, let's give young people more opportunities to experience nature on a daily basis close to home.   

Keeping Up Appearances

Green Seniors notes that there are many ways societies 'keep up appearances' with respect to making anything natural within range of homes and offices conform to a certain standard of taste and tidyness.  Keith Farnish wrote the essay on this topic, below.  Joyce says she is eager to share her own thoughts on the subject soon.  Does Keith's perspective start you thinking about these happenings where you live?  Feel free to post comments or send in your own views.

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“When the grass in the park no longer gets cut, you know civilization is in trouble.” So said a friend to me last year. I have to admit that I was sceptical at the time; surely something so apparently trivial couldn’t be shot through with such significance, could it? When you scratch at the veneer of modern society, though, you quickly realise how significant something as grass cutting really is.

Let’s consider a few related questions: Why do people keep their lawns neat when their domestic circumstances may be anything but? Why do councils send out workers with blowers to keep the paths clear of a few leaves? Why to private firms employ gardeners to trim any surrounding greenery to within an inch of its life?

Ask these questions and you will no doubt get a variety of different answers, but it does seem a little obsessive. We all like to keep things tidy from time to time, and some of us are a lot more fastidious than others – but to take you to the homes of some of the hardest working campaigners I know would be to introduce you to some of the kinds of places that feature on those reality TV shows that insist that we must declutter our lives in order to make sense of them. Some people get along perfectly well with clutter, but the thing about clutter is it shows up reality: the open notebooks, the half-read books, the tools that haven’t been put away, the ingredients that won’t squeeze into the cupboard – not quite windows on the soul, but certainly a peek into the lives of the people who use these things.

So why are some people, and more significantly, most organisations and businesses, so obsessed with ensuring nothing is out of place? Because they have an image to maintain, and not just their own. This image is one of order, control, linearity, domination...all characteristics of a civilized society that is at the peak of its powers. The image says “Everything is alright”, “Carry on as normal”, “Nothing to see here” (except a neatly trimmed hedge and some hanging baskets).

But what if the image and the messages are actually characteristics of a society that is desperately trying to mask the turbulence, powerlessness and lack of confidence that comes from constantly fighting back the basest instincts of humanity: the need to express ourselves in whatever way makes us feel most alive, most human?

Not surprisingly, image is also maintained by the application of rules; and there are an awful lot of them affecting whatever you do.  Some rules exist because they express what is immutable, unchanging – we call this Natural Law. Other rules reflect common decency and human rights – we call this Common Law. Most rules, however, merely exist to maintain the status quo and ensure humans follow a single path; the one that is spelled out in words like “progress”, “growth” and “advancement”, but which simply prevents us from living in any way that does not confirm to the existing consumption dominated lifestyle.

Civilizations throughout history have succeeded by maintaining an image, even if maintaining that image comes at the cost of liberty, imagination, equality, and the connection with wild nature that so many of us have forgotten about. The lawns of the municipal park are kept mowed, edged, sprayed, watered and weeded because nature must be seen to be controlled. But what kind of a society do we have when it is being sustained by so many cheap conjuror’s tricks?

As you watch the chap riding his mower across the green desert that is your local bit of “nature”, or the council worker spraying Glyphosate on the footpath, or the window cleaner making sure the glass of the office block sparkles in the setting sun, it’s worth considering whether we really want to live in a society that is so obsessed by image – especially when the basics like clean water, clean air, real community and a stable climate are in such short supply.

The Backyard Garden: Symbolic Gesture? Or Perhaps Much More

Green Seniors don't necessarily have green thumbs when it comes to growing plants, yet many of them tend gardens, large and small, as a hobby and as a lifestyle choice. For some, it may be a financial necessity as well.

The modern environmental movement has witnessed a revival of backyard gardening that has only intensified as concern about global warming grows.  For people who have a bit of sunny soil and some time to spare, growing food is a countermeasure they can afford, using resouces already available.

New methods of gardening such as raised beds, no-dig, and permaculture offer seniors options for growing food that match the available space and accommodate the physical limitations some seniors may have.  These types of gardening have been explored in earlier posts to this blog.  A food garden does not require acreage and special machines, or backbreaking work in the sun, as many seniors recall from their youth.

Greengranny's blog, a companion site to Green Seniors, tells about her experiences in starting a small vegetable garden in her backyard at age 65.  Greengranny was inspired by other seniors already accomplished at backyard gardening, by articles by environmental activist Keith Farnish, and by books such as: "The Urban Homestead - Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City" by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, "The Self Sufficiency Handbook" by Alan and Gill Bridgewater, and "The Backyard Homestead" edited by Carleen Madigan.  These books are overflowing with ideas for sustainable living.  

Striving towards sustainable living in urban environments has its critics. 

We can't possibly grow all the food calories we need for year-round sustenance that way; that much is true for most city-dwellers.  Well then, is it only a symbolic gesture, a feel-good deed that does little when all is said and done?  We don't think so and here is why.

1.  It provides some fresh food during summer and fall months that otherwise would need to be shipped long distances and often is grown in areas of irrigation with dwindling groundwater or mountain snow-melt.  Displacing just a few percent of such crops would make it uneconomical to irrigate the more marginal land, which would be of value to the natural environment.

2.  It provides a widely dispersed base of food growing which could be ramped up in case of food supply disruptions in areas producing most commercial foods, by local people with little outside assistance.  This is especially true for those who maintain home organic gardens and collect seeds year to year.  Even a small increase in locally grown food could counter commercial crop losses from areas hit by increasingly extreme and bizarre weather events. 

3.  Home gardening preserves essential knowledge for survival and helps pass this knowledge on from generation to generation.  Children can participate in gardening as well as in the preparation and consumption of foods that are much healthier than manufactured foods high in fat and salt and often lacking in nutrients, unless added back in artificially. Web sites like that of Sharon Astyk can be excellent guides to learning.

4. Home gardeners are an excellent resource for continuing the cultivation of vintage varieties of food plants, helping insure the survival of genetic diversity of our food plants.  There are not all that many plant species capable of providing humans with a substantial amount of nutrition, and we need to continue growing every one of them, to sustain the genetic lines that are the legacy of ten thousand years of plant domestication.  Genetic homogeneity of food crops makes the food supply more vulnerable to pests and plant diseases.

5. Home gardeners can more easily get along without pesticides -- for example, by picking Japanese beetles off of plants rather than spraying them, and relocating slugs to wild areas.  Home gardens with a variety of plants at varying stages of growth attract pollinating insects to their flowers and make the urban garden a refuge for these essential insects.

6.  Mental and physical health and well-being are enhanced by home gardening. This alone might easily justify engaging in small scale gardening. 

7.  Home gardening may cost a little to start up, but it returns great value for the investment.  Many families that could not afford organic produce from the farmer's market can afford to grow gardens.

8.  As small surpluses develop in home garden produce, it leads to learning storage and preservation methods that extend the benefit beyond the growing season.  Berries can be frozen a few handfuls at a time.  Small batches of tomato sauce or applesauce can be frozen with little extra trouble.  Some items can be dried, and root crops may be stored in a cool dry basement nook.

9. Home gardens lead to community sharing.  Neighbors share their surplus with friends and neighbors.  Even if each gardener has only one crop sufficient to share, by swapping with each other they maximize their variety and the use of available food.  Everyone in America has seen the fruit tree with the fruit on the ground rotting, unharvested, because no one had the time or inclination to do so.

10.  Most home gardening is recreation that is beneficial rather than harmful to the environment and thus may displace less helpful ways of spending one's time. 

We are sure you can think of even more reasons, but these ten would seem to make a pretty convincing case for utilising the space you have in a far more constructive way than for which it may currently be used.

Globalchange: A Resource For Understanding The New Reality

Global warming was supposed to be a threat to our grandchildren.  Now the science tells us it is underway and has been for decades--while we burned increasing quantities of fossil fuel.  It is changing our world in many ways, and unless we act now, catastrophe lies ahead, if not for us, then surely for our children's generation.  It isn't only about our grandchildren anymore. 

A new report has been published about the impact of global warming on the United States and the probable impacts by 2050 and 2100 under two scenarios of emissions levels.  This report explains what is happening region by region, in details everyone can understand.  You can access this information at www.globalchange.gov.  At this site you may directly view information in the report, print specific pages of the report, or download the entire report as a pdf file. 

Under "Resources" you will find a photo gallery that you may download and use in your environmental campaign work.  We like this image of earth, a reminder of what we stand to lose if we are unable to make the necessary changes in energy, natural resources, and pollution.

This site is in the resources listed in the right hand column of this web page. 

Green Hero...Morag Parnell

Green Seniors began as an idea nearly three years ago, which seems like a long time when you consider the amount of Amazonion and Indonesian rainforest that has been removed in that time; the number of frog species that have become extinct; the rate at which the marine ecosystem has changed...and that is not even taking into account the direct effects of climate change. As a very eminent climate scientist recently stated: "By the time we see the real impacts of climate change, it will be too late to do anything about them".

So much change and so little time. Which makes you wonder what must be going through the mind of our latest Green Hero, Morag Parnell from West Lothian, Scotland, who has been campaigning on environmental issues for the last 37 years. It was upon reading the Club of Rome's 1972 report, "The Limits to Growth" that Morag decided that she needed to act, so spent much of the 1970s and 1980s campaigning on many issues including nuclear weapons, exposures to asbestos, and industrial chemicals in local microelectromics and clothing factories. In 1990, she joined the Women's Environmental Network in order to work on her key interest as a medical doctor -- the impact of toxic chemicals on the environment and in all aspects of human life.

Morag says: "Climate change is the most urgent and publicly acknowledged campaign. However, I think it is difficult to disassociate the many other aspects of what threatens us  from this. They are all related. In particular, our campaigning against the effects of exposures to toxic chemicals has a particularly strong link to climate change. Most of the suspect substances are derived from fossil fuels- mainly petroleum. While climate change is concerned about pollution of our external environment , our health campaigns are concerned about our internal pollution -- largely from the same sources. And our internal pollution is killing and maiming millions worldwide now."

Her 82 years shows no sign of slowing her down, and she continues to lobby heavily in the Scottish Parliament and campaign widely.

We asked Dr Parnell a few questions, which she kindly answered:

What motivates you to keep campaigning?

I think that everyone has the right to live in a clean and uncontaminated environment.

What makes toxic chemicals in the environment such an important subject?

Most, if not all, of the illnesses caused by exposures to such substances are preventable. Most of the substances are synthetics and were invented by human beings who are perfectly capable of inventing substances that do not kill or maim.

Do you consider your work to have been successful and, if so, in what ways?

I think what we have done in the communities has been well supported. Most "ordinary" people are receptive -- they already have some knowledge or have suspicions about this topic -- they know someone who has, or have themselves experienced adverse health effects from what they suspect may have been environmental or occupational exposures. In the political arena we have had a small amount of success, but still a very long way to go before real primary prevention and precautionary action are accepted as public policy.

What advice do you have for people who don't think it is worth trying to make a difference?

Never give up. It is only by the small cumulative efforts of people like us that differences are made!

Thank you, Morag, our latest Green Hero.

If you know someone who you think should be a Green Hero, please write to us at [email protected] and we will contact you to find out more.

Green Seniors revisits the Great Old Broads for Wilderness

Green Seniors helps seniors take action and find networks.  We're about planting the seeds of new ideas, of motivating and encouraging, of building communications among diverse environmental entities.  We're not an organization "on the ground" so to speak.  But it takes organizations whose members engage with the earth itself, to tackle certain missions.  "Great Old Broads for Wilderness" is one of those organizations.

Photo: Veronica Egan, Executive Director of Great Old Broads for Wilderness

A year ago Green Seniors was delighted to learn about Great Old Broads for Wilderness, an organization truly "on the ground," whose members hike out, camp out, and work out in the wilderness repairing damage others have done.  It boasts chapters in various states of the USA involving some 3,500 members, including some men*.

Recently our friends at Great Old Broads for Wilderness were featured in an article in the AARP Bulletin Earth Works: Why Mature Activism May Save the Planet.

Take a look, then pay their website a visit at www.greatoldbroads.org 

Even if wilderness preservation is not the mission for you personally, it will brighten your day just to see what this group is accomplishing and how it is growing.   

Great Old Broads was started 20 years ago.  As a non-profit organization, it now boasts a high degree of sophistication.  In the "About Us" section of their website you'll meet the paid staff who are helping the membership to make a difference. 

Green Seniors featured this group in a post on May 28, 2008 as a part of our promotion of environmental networking. Executive Director Veronica Egan answered some questions put to her by Green Seniors' Keith Farnish.  Green Seniors is thrilled to see this organization growing and thriving, and wishes them continued success.

*Note for non-US readers: "broad" is a colloquial term for a woman.

Meet New Green Senior David Hearne

Last year the urgency of addressing global warming and climate change came home to David Hearne.  He jump-started his activism by taking part in 2008 Climate Ride, a five day, 300 mile bicycle ride from New York City to Washington, DC.  Four of the 100 riders, pictured below and facing the camera, were age 59 or over.  David is on the far right.  On the far left is Jim Rucquoi who was the oldest rider at age 72.  They are on a ferry taking them from Manhattan to Atlantic Heights.

 

David has been kind enough to provide Green Seniors with a detailed commentary on his experience. 

"The two women who initiated and organized the ride did an outstanding job.  We were very well supported and fed, and each night we had guests who spoke to various aspects of climate change or specific actions of theirs to mitigate climate change...."

"As well organized as the ride was, it was the fellow riders that left the biggest impression on me.  Take Alan Tinker of Focus the Nation as an example, who arranged for over 50 congressional meetings with climate riders right after the ride.  Or David Kroodsma who rode solo for 17 months from Palo Alto, CA to the tip of South America to call attention to climate change.  One of the older riders was also one of the lowest carbon footprint riders.  He rode the entire trip carrying all of his gear and a guitar with which he serenaded us at night."

"Some of the riders were well conditioned and some had not ridden very much at all.  But everyone who started, finished with determination.  And I left feeling very good about the next generation of leadership arising.  As typical for an event such as this we began the ride with many different backgrounds and experiences.  But after numerous conversations, both on and off the bike, we arrived in DC all united in a common objective of encouraging more to be done about climate change."

Ride, Baby, Ride!  

"The trip culminated in an exhilarating bike ride down Constitution Avenue, escorted by Capitol Police.  The presidential campaign was well underway with one party rallying around the cry "Drill, Baby, Drill."  We rode up Constitution Avenue declaring "Ride, Baby, Ride!"   

Green Seniors asked David how his sense of urgency about global warming came about.

"I have had a long standing concern about global warming/climate change but until last year not a sense of urgency.  I probably was representative of most Americans in that I really had never tried to understand the issue.  Last summer I received an email from the Rails to Trails Conservancy inviting members to join their team on the inaugural Climate Ride from New York City to Washington, DC.  I became intrigued and signed up.

"Of course, now I had to raise money and I felt compelled to learn more about climate change.  I blogged to my contributors and shared my thoughts which meant a little research.  I explored a variety of websites and read Wally Broecker's book, Fixing Climate.

"A big eye opener was to do a carbon footprint analysis at several of the various on-line sites that have calculators.  I was chastened to realize the size of my personal footprint.  From this two drivers for my sense of urgency arose:

1) data was being collected that indicated climate change could be accelerating; and

2) the data indicated that significant climate change was already inevitable at current emissions levels."

David Hearne summed up his message to all of you, the readers of the Green Seniors website:

"If you care about the world in which your grandchildren will live, take global climate change seriously now and demand action."