Cyclist Takes Bed Along in Homemade Trailer (Oct, 1940)
I am siked! Stoked! Wack! I don’t know. But I’m pretty pumped. We are at this crossroads in our life, our economy, etc etc and all that yucky stuff, where we can really do anything we want. WHAT HAVE WE GOT TO LOSE? Very little really.
This picture is maybe the third thing to really get me pumped this year so far. First was reading Swimming to Antarctica by Lynne Cox. I mean, she has to be the coolest most inspiring person. Like really UP THERE with Gandhi or Dr. King or Obama, you know? She has been swimming her whole life. She swam the Bering Strait! No wetsuit, no special warming nothing, she just swam it in her bathing suit. Not only that, she swam from the USA to the Soviet Union DURING THE COLD WAR. How powerful and inspiring is that? Not only was she swimming in like 40° water, but she was swimming for diplomacy. And swimming the Bering Strait wasn’t her only or biggest accomplishment, she has set all kinds of world records and swam in all kinds of places where no one ever has. In short, read her book! Buy it or get it at the library or borrow mine. It is very important.
So that was the first thing. The second thing isn’t as specific. It is a more general concept, or a movement really. L has been getting pretty deep into the idea of permaculture (to over generalize and state the obvious). She has been an incredible wealth of knowledge and keeps sharing these mind-blowing things that people are doing. Like “…there is this farm run by two ladies near santa cruz and they deliver the CSA on bike.” Whoa! Right? And that is only the tip of the iceberg. There is a quote that maybe typifies the second thing.
…cooking, sewing, washing, cleaning, reading, gardening, fixing, writing, drawing, crafting. woman’s work? perhaps. but i think its better than lining the pockets of someone else, working for basically nothing (for what end or purpose), probably harming the earth more (we have 30 less environment impact by me not working). this work i do at home benefits us, not some unknown corp exec and doesnt pollute the earth.
We have made the choice to live off of one salary (and my husband works only four days a week) and that means that we will always be poor. one car, less “stuff”, nothing new for years, but much more happier. that means we get to see and be part of her milestones, hear each new word uttered and each new task mastered.
– permaculture of family
It is about making a choice, deciding what you want to live for or to work towards. This may be a painfully obvious and juvenile concept, but I feel like I’m realizing its meaning fully for the first time.
The third thing is, as I have stated, this image from the October 1940 issue of Popular Science. Chet Jr. traveled 1,200 miles in 14 days funding his trip by selling post cards? WHAT? Are you kidding? That is very awesome. AND he made that awesome trailer to sleep in? Can I do that please? But seriously, what is stopping us from living out our dreams and doing very cool things like Chet Jr.?
So for 2009, a year of “change”, I am resolved to really think through what I want to accomplish in my life and start doing it.
JINX!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
That’s what you get for sharing with me
SO COOL HOW THIS HAPPENED. I am jumping on the wagon, too…
“on the wagon“in the trailer
I thought of Wendell Berry when I read this, Matthew. I’ll just post his thing here, cause it’s so good, too. I think I like the way we are moving beyond the women and men working together on more ‘household duties’ because that’s always what has been to going back to it because that’s what is sustainable and what will benefit all… households apply to all households here, i think.…
“The modern household is the place where the consumptive couple do their consuming. Nothing productive is done there. Such work as is done there is done at the expense of the resident couple or family, and to the profit of suppliers of energy and household technology. For entertainment, the inmates consume television or purchase other consumable diversion elsewhere.
There are, however, still some married couples who understand themselves as belonging to their marriage, to each other, and to their children. What they have they have in common, and so, to them, helping each other does not seem merely to damage their ability to compete against each other. To them, “mine†is not so powerful or necessary a pronoun as “ours.â€
This sort of marriage usually has at its heart a household that is to some extent productive. The couple, that is, makes around itself a household economy that involves the work of both wife and husband, that gives them a measure of economic independence and self-employment, a measure of freedom, as well as a common ground and a common satisfaction. Such a household economy may employ the disciplines and skills of housewifery, of carpentry and other trades of building and maintenance, of gardening and other branches of subsistence agriculture, and even of woodlot management and wood-cutting. It may also involve a “cottage industry†of some kind, such as a small literary enterprise.” –WB
It’s almost like a too-good-to-be-true secret: setbacks are opportunities, open doors to the life you want to live, the person you feel yourself to be. My car broke down last night and I am, though nervous a little, so excited about finally being carless.