Greenseniors

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.

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.

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 Seniors/Small Homes: The Small House Movement

That's right, there is such a thing as the small house movement, kindled from the desire of people of all ages, from many walks of life, to live more gently on the earth.  We can only bring you a few highlights of this movement today, and as time goes on, we can share how green seniors participate in this movement.

To start things off, in this photo Greengranny (center) and her husband (the photographer) are hosting a dinner party for three guests in their 23-foot travel trailer, a part-time home that doesn't move.  Greengranny (Joyce) has written several posts in her blog www.greengranny.org about her life in this small home.

Little House on a Small Planet (Shay Salomon; The Lyons Press; 2006; 265 pages) describes a wide variety of small homes and the people who live in them.  Many photographs, including 14 pages in full color, bring this volume to life, highlighting the diversity and creativity that is possible.  Shay and her photographer Nigel Valdez visited more than a hundred unique homes is researching this book.  The owners span all age groups.

A different approach is taken in Put Your Life On a Diet - Lessons Learned from Living in 140 Square Feet by Gregory Paul Johnson (Gibbs Smith; 2008; 144 pages).  It's a slim paperback with a how-to approach on downsizing ones dwelling and ones consumption in general.  The last chapter, "Resources for Simple Living," includes books, communities, education and workshops, designers and builders, publications, small house plans (websites), and online tools for smaller living. 

Gregory says of living in his very small home:

"I find that I am still using about two thousand square feet of space, just as I had in the past.  The difference is that the other 1,860 square feet that comprise my office, the gym, the laundromat, restaurants, and other spaces are not mine to maintain anymore--they are shared with others."

Seniors, even the green ones, may not wish to copy what Gregory and other young people do so easily--crawl up ladders to sleeping lofts or shower only at the gym.  However, there are alternatives for those a bit up in years.  At http://sustain.ca/ one can find "Rapid Rooms" with dimensions of just 4 by 5 meters manufactured for use in the UK.  These small houses, one room plus a bathroom, are designed as handicapped- accessible pre-fab units and could be placed behind a home to accommodate an older relative's needs.

Small homes are "green" by their size alone, requiring less land, less building materials, less furniture, and less energy to heat and cool.  However, the pre-fab home industry is developing a variety of small homes that are so "green" they can be used as off-grid dwellings.  Some of them need no foundation and therefore do not disturb the earth, and can be moved into place by being towed on the highway from the point of manufacture. 

Just how green do you want your small home to go?  It seems as though there are options for everyone's pocketbook, lifestyle, and taste.  If you like the sleek modern look or prefer cottage charm, there are options for you.  If you want to live off-grid in the mountains or in a village hundreds of years old, there are small home options around the world that fit your fantasy.  Most of us just want to find options possible in the communities we live in today, and those options are expanding.

In future posts we hope to show you more examples of how green seniors actually live.  Meanwhile, please contact us if you have an example you'd like to submit with a photograph.  Send your small home examples to joyce@greenseniors.org.  Only send examples that you are willing to have published on this blog, please.

Look for future posts that begin with "Green Seniors/Small Homes" in the title.

 

Hypothermia: A Cold Weather Risk for Older People Including Green Seniors

As Green Seniors strive to lower their heat to save energy and reduce heating bills, they need to be aware of a cold weather risk: hypothermia.  The information below is quoted from the National Institute of Aging (USA).  

Almost everyone knows about winter dangers such as broken bones from falls on icy steps, sidewalks or streets. But cold weather also can cause an important, less obvious danger that can affect older people. Older adults are especially vulnerable to hypothermia, which can be deadly if not treated quickly. The National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has some advice to help older people avoid hypothermia.

Hypothermia occurs when a person's body temperature drops below normal and stays low for a prolonged period of time. With advancing age, the body's ability to endure long periods of exposure to cold is lowered.

Older people also are at risk for hypothermia because their body's response to cold can be diminished by certain illnesses such as diabetes and some medicines, including over-the-counter cold remedies. In addition, older adults may be less active and generate less body heat. As a result, they can develop hypothermia even after exposure to relatively mild cold weather or a small drop in temperature.

The best way to identify someone with hypothermia is to look for confusion or sleepiness, slowed or slurred speech, shivering or stiffness in the arms and legs, weak pulse, poor control over body movements or slow reactions. If you suspect that someone is suffering from the cold and you have a thermometer available, take his or her temperature. If it’s 96 degrees or lower, call 911 for emergency help.

The NIA has information to help you prevent hypothermia. Here are a few tips:

• Wear several layers of loose clothing when it is cold. The layers will trap warm air between them. Tight clothing can keep blood from flowing freely and lead to loss of body heat.
• Wear a hat, scarf, gloves or mittens, and warm clothes when you go outside in cold weather. A significant amount of your body heat can be lost through your head, and hands and feet are the first body parts to get cold.
• To keep warm at home, wear long underwear under your clothes, along with socks and slippers. Use a blanket or afghan to keep legs and shoulders warm and wear a hat or cap indoors.
• Make sure your home is warm enough. Set your thermostat to at least 68 to 70 degrees. Even mildly cool homes with temperatures from 60 to 65 degrees can trigger hypothermia in older people.
• Check with your doctor to see if any medications (prescription or over the counter) you are taking may increase your risk for hypothermia.

Because heating costs are high, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has funds to help low-income families pay their heating bills. For more information, contact the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (1-866-674-6327) or the Eldercare Locator (1-800-677-1116).

The NIA has free information about hypothermia. To order the fact sheet, Hypothermia: A Cold Weather Hazard, or the brochure, Stay Safe in Cold Weather, call toll free 1-800-222-2225. Hipotermia: El Peligro de las Bajas Temperaturasis also available. These and other free publications on healthy aging can be downloaded from the NIA Web site at www.nia.nih.gov.

GREEN SENIORS are keeping warm during cold weather in various ways.  Some are able to close off the room they are in from the rest of their house and heat that room to a safe and comfortable level.  Some stay warm at night with electric blankets or electric mattress pads.  They find that they can turn down the heat, reduce total energy used for heating, and yet remain comfortable.  

If you are experimenting with your household heat source and trying to find more energy efficient means to stay warm, do it with great care.  People have burned their homes down when an animal knocked over a portable electric heater.  If you have any medical conditions such as diabetes, be sure to consult your doctor about safe ways for you to keep warm. 

Green Seniors co-founder Joyce has a common condition, Raynauds, in which blood vessels in her hands and feet sometimes react to cold by constricting, making them feel very cold or even turn white.  This is not hypothermia because the core body temperature is maintained, but it is still a reaction that she must avoid if possible.  If this occurs outdoors, it could easily lead to frostbite.  The more a Raynauds person experiences the constriction response, the more likely it will become frequent and severe.

The same tips given by the NIA to prevent hypothermia help Joyce prevent her fingers and toes from turning white and feeling icy.  During cold months she needs to move about at frequent intervals, since exercise is the best antidote for her.  If she wishes to sit and read, it's usually on the bed, wrapped in an afghan, with a microwave heat pack near her feet.  Needless to say, she dresses in layered clothing and wool socks even in the house.  Though she's had the condition most of her life, she is glad that there are ways to stay warm without using huge amounts of energy.         

 

 

 

Seniors Are Needed As Educators

What is the difference between education, learning and schooling? Some of you may be familiar with the writing of John Taylor Gatto; some of you may have had very bad, or very good experiences at school, college or university; some of you may have managed to buck the trend and turned out far better than the school system expected you to, or simply contrary to the way the system hoped you would.

You have probably worked it out by now: there is very little difference between Education and Learning – they are just two sides of the same mutually beneficial process; Schooling on the other hand is a deliberate, institutionalised methodology to create civilized workers that form part of the industrial economy. Education and learning, in this process, is a side effect – not the main intention. This is one of the most serious problems we face in the coming decades: a population who have only been equipped with the skills necessary to be part of the economy are unlikely to be equipped with the skills necessary to grow their own food, construct a simple shelter, repair household items, make clothing, cook meals from raw ingredients and live together as cooperative beings rather than isolated economic units – we have an entire generation unable to do anything useful for themselves. And it is getting worse.

Last month “The Unsuitablog” ran a series of articles about the intrusion of commerce into schools: it is becoming increasingly clear that the role of schools is for the benefit of an economy that values material wealth over human need. It is becoming increasingly clear that the world needs the experience, and the determination of those people – the older generations – to educate those who have missed out on the kinds of skills that really matter. The current generation is lost without previous generations to help them out.

Not only can Green Seniors take the lead in directly protecting the natural environment; we can also take the lead in being educators for society’s Lost Generation. Getting back in touch with younger generations is more important that it has ever been.

Green Seniors, do you know how your pension funds are invested?

As Green Seniors become increasingly aware of the stresses placed upon all of Earth's resources by today's high-consumption society, the last thing they want is to be an unwitting participant via any pension fund they might have.  Retirement funds are supposed to be invested conservatively: retirees want the money that was put aside for old age to be secure for the time when their minds are no longer sharp, to be free from financial concerns.  Yet, it is not wise during these trying times to take for granted that pension fund managers are making investments that are ethical and proper -- indeed, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that pension fund investments are no more ethical than any other corporate activity.   

A headline in an American newspaper today read: "Pensions drive up oil."  The weakness of the US Dollar prompts investors to buy commodities, such as oil or corn futures, as an inflation hedge.  In other words, they are betting that they can sell the futures at a later time for more money than they paid.  When investors with huge sums of money, such as pension funds, trade in commodities, they can then be accused of driving up the price (and helping fear of inflation become a self-fulling prophecy).  So far, it has worked extremely well for the them.

Some people claim pension funds and other large speculators shouldn't be allowed to do this, while others say the weak economy forces them into it.  That relates back to the rising US national debt, in particular, and to financial bail-outs by the Federal government such as the sub-prime mortgage fiasco.   

Certainly there are some complex financial issues at work here that confound the great majority of Seniors -- and the majority of people of any age.  Although corporations have always been about making money, today's multinational corporations are not the same as the ones we grew up with -- they are not our parents' institutions -- humanity is entirely absent from their operating methods.  Pension funds have become huge and impersonal as well. The financial industry does a lot of "creative" work nowadays, but ordinary people -- even those with pensions -- do not seem to be the primary winners.  The Earth and its future generations certainly are not.

Suppose the floods of the American Middle West make me think, "I have some money to invest, so I'll buy corn oil at today's prices and sell it later".  I may only need to put down $8 of my own money to secure the "option" of $100 worth of corn oil.  Furthermore, I won't actually have to take delivery and store the corn oil till I choose to resell it.  It's all just a transaction on paper.   I may sell the option later for $140, making a handsome profit of $40 which I bought with just $8.  Have I produced anything useful to obtain my profit? All I did, really, was keep $100 worth of corn oil off the market till it became more dear (or until the dollars with which people buy it became worth less).

Some people claim commodities trading serves to make prices more stable, avoiding sudden surges and drops, which helps everyone.  This was indeed helpful for while the trading was limited to commodities suppliers and the people who actually were going to use the commodities -- for instance, the wheat farmer and the baker.  Commodities trading as a hedge against inflation by huge investment entities is a rather recent phenomenon. 

Would you feel comfortable being the "middle man" that siphons off wealth while producing nothing of value in the process?   Is your financial security to be ensured by you indirectly engaging in these kinds of dubious financial transactions?  Or would you rather have a little less money but have the peace of mind that neither your pension fund nor other large scale investors could manipulate the markets for the things people, not just those in your home country, but all around the world, must have to survive -- food, water, energy, a healthy environment?  For surely as global population continues to rise while Earth's environment becomes more stressed, trading in these things will only increase.

Green Seniors, it is time to find out where your pension funds really are.

Having A Green Seniors Moment

Take a moment to switch off from the bustle of the overcharged, frenzied world, and you suddenly understand that there is a lot more going on around you, and within you than you could imagine.

Seniors are the subject of so many clichés and stereotypes; some true, some not quite true, and some entirely wrong. This article isn’t about necessarily casting off those stereotypes, as about discovering a bit of reality. Yes, as you get older the synapses do fire more slowly and mental messages do have to find their way round the backroads rather than along the highway. It’s also true that our short-term memories do get poorer as we age – but on the other hand the amount of information we have stored away can be enormous; most of it being little used.

It is the amount of information stored in the heads of seniors, along with the experience and wisdom that accrues over time, that results in the kind of things that can surprise all of us. Ideas may take time, but when ideas do bubble to the surface, the chances are that they are good ones that should be shared. You see, as people age, they build up a retinue of internal filters that screen out the unwanted information; the desire to blurt out 57 varieties of nonsense; the incessant chatter that seems to be an inescapable part of being young – slowing down can be a great thing.

That increased amount of time that seniors are often rich in, is a fertile ground for capturing ideas – really important ideas that could truly make a difference. In the frenzy of modern life it is almost as though we are being asked to ignore ourselves in order to keep moving forwards, not stopping until we reach some unattainable goal: a goal that is a lot further off than the environmental catastrophe just on our doorstep.

So what if we occasionally forget things? So what if our minds aren’t as quick as they once were? Our minds may not be what the culture of ever-escalating consumption finds ideal for its purpose, but with a little time, and a little effort, our minds could be put to a far more important use: having ideas that could change the world for the better.

We think it’s time people had a few more Green Seniors Moments.

Why Should I Care?

Green Seniors has always prided itself in providing materials for people who want to carry out communication work either as part of a group or individually. For this purpose we have now developed an ongoing catalog of these materials as a single page on this web site. You can find this link on the left hand navigation bar as "Downloads and Other Resources".

The latest resource is a new poster we created in response to a reader's request for something she could use in a community hall. Essentially she wanted to know how to answer the simple question, "Why should I care?" This is something we suspect the majority of people -- unlike most of you reading this -- ask themselves whenever they are told they should reduce the amount they drive, buy, use electricity, heat their home and so on.

So why should people care about the future of the planet?

The poster, which you can download as an Adobe PDF file here, points out some of the key reasons, ranging from the scientific to the philosophical:

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Because…

…the climate is changing and humans are the major cause

…animal and plant extinctions are happening faster than at any time in history

…every bucket of seawater contains plastic

…every person contains chemical residues

…the arctic ocean will be ice free in less than a decade

…we have placed our grandchildren in jeopardy

…we have been lured into thinking unsustainable economic growth makes people happier

…we are losing our connection with community, family and everything around us

…we have forgotten that we are part of nature

…we have a choice!

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We think it will have an effect on a great many people.

Please print out the poster and place it wherever you think it might make a difference.