Ebbing the Blog

SUBHEAD: On reducing time sitting in front of a computer hoping to change the world.

By Juan Wilson on 10 May 2014 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2014/05/ebbing-blog.html)


Image above: Bounty of the day from our yard on September 16, 2013. Two eggs, two avocados, a papaya and a basket of macadamia nuts. Since then we added a few more chickens, built a raised bed garden, and began growing a small food forest in the woods at the side of our house. Photo by Juan Wilson.

If you are a regular, or even infrequent, reader of this website you may have noticed that the frequency of posts has been reducing for some time. The peak year for the number of posts was 2010 with 1118 posts. At the time there were five contributing editors that included David Ward, Brad Parsons and Jonathan Jay. Now there are only the founding editors, myself and my wife Linda Pascatore.

Since 2008 there have been 5,010 previous articles posted through (islandbreath.blogspot.com) into (www.islandbreath.org). I discount that number by 20 because the first twenty articles are merely lists of previous articles in the previous format of IslandBreath that began in january of 2004.

So the 5,000 article odometer really rolls over in 10 more posts. I am considering quitting regular daily posting then. This kind of site that aggregates news, opinions, and ideas does best with daily refreshing. I don't think I want to continue spending as much daily time to the effort as I have in the past.

This is for more than the reason reason of the time needed to produce and collect new material. Another reason is that in the 5,000 posts to date is just about everything we have needed to say. There is and an old saying about delivering a message properly:

Tell them what you're going to say.
Say it.
Then tell them what it is you said.

Well, I think we've done that here. It kind of boils down to:

Peak Everything
Self-Delusion
Climate Change
Collapse
Alternative Energy
De-Industrialize
Self Reliance
Sustainability
Permaculture

Rinse and repeat.

 We have written some of it, but over the years we have heavily relied on other voices to fill out the picture: the likes of James Kunstler, John Michael Greer, Charles Hugh Smith, Dmitry Orlov, Guy McPherson, Nicole Foss, Gail Tverberg, Sharon Astyk, and Carolyn Baker among many others.

These sources have seen into the future clearly. Sometimes that have used a telescope that makes things look closer than they are; but in general they have seen accurately what we are facing now.

It will take a lot of work to get through it - a lot of it physical work. Maintenance and repair will be daily tasks for us all. 

At the beginning of this month I wrote Kicking the KIUC habit and pointed out.

It's like sailing a boat, instead of driving a car. Trim the sails, check the sky, feel the waves. You're closer to the source of power - and responsible for it. Therefore, you have to be more careful with the use of power. It's on you!

As we increase our self-reliance I realize that it really becomes a full time job. And that's how it was for thousands of years before agriculture and industrialization. And so it will be again.

I hope to spend more time in our gardens trying to make healthy food as well as trying to make the place around us thrive with plants, insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and even the occasional mammal.

I'll keep working on the site to keep it useful, but more time needs to be spent elsewhere.

Well, you get the picture...

And if you don't it is probably too late to begin trying.



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