We won, twice over!

Earlier this week the Better Half joined us at a fundraiser -- Local Streams: Art Benefit & Live Music for WaterLegacy, in the Black Dog Cafe in St. Paul's Lowertown. Many of the works presented were offered through silent auctions. We were fortunate enough to have the winning bids on two items, a basket woven from split wood and the print shown below. Actually, this probably means that we were a three-time winner since WaterLegacy benefited as well as the artists. Four times if we lump together and count as one the future pleasure we'll get from seeing and using our acquisitions.

The basket will hold our fresh apples, or, perhaps a fresh loaf of our bread (photos later). The print will help raise our spirits and remind us that our attitude controls much of how we feel about life. We were really pleased to participate in an opportunity to support both local artists and a valuable environmental organization. In fact, we'd like to see more of this kind of fundraiser. We were told it was reasonably successful for both artists and WaterLegacy so there's some incentive and we still have a little wall and counter space available should we make any more acquisitions.

Talking with some of the folks at WaterLegacy reminded us to go back and check some of the basic concepts Donella Meadows wrote, in February 1995, regarding sustainability. We haven't foregone the prospect of helping to move our society to a sustainable basis. That's just one of our many character flaws. Anyhow, Meadows borrowed heavily from Herman Daly and proposed this:

"In my own mind I supplement that official definition of sustainability with Herman Daly’s clear and undeniable explication of what it means in physical terms:

1. Renewable resources shall not be used faster than they can regenerate.

2. Pollution and wastes shall not be put into the environment faster than the environment can recycle them or render them harmless.

3. Nonrenewable resources shall not be used faster than renewable substitutes (used sustainably) can be develo ped.

By those conditions there’s not a nation, a company, a city, a farm, or a household on earth that is sustainable. Virtually every major fishery in the world violates condition 1. The world economy as a whole is violating condition 2 by putting out carbon dioxide 60-80% faster than the atmosphere can recycle it. But to make things worse, I would add two more sustainability conditions that I think are obvious.

4. The human population and the physical capital plant have to be kept at levels low enough to allow the first 3 conditions to be met.

5. The previous 4 conditions have to be met through processes that are democratic and equitable enough that people will stand for them."

Meadows was one of the principal authors of Limits to Growth many years ago. Thirty years later, she was one of the principal authors of an Update.

• Sea level has risen 10–20 cm since 1900. Most non-polar glaciers are retreating, and the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice is decreasing in summer.
• In 1998 more than 45 percent of the globe’s people had to live on incomes averaging $2 a day or less. Meanwhile, the richest one- fifth of the world’s population has 85 percent of the global GNP. And the gap between rich and poor is widening.
• In 2002, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN estimated that 75 percent of the world’s oceanic fisheries were fished at or beyond capacity. The North Atlantic cod fishery, fished sustainably for hundreds of years, has collapsed, and the species may have been pushed to biological extinction.
• The first global assessment of soil loss, based on studies of hundreds of experts, found that 38 percent, or nearly 1.4 billion acres, of currently used agricultural land has been degraded.
• Fifty-four nations experienced declines in per capita GDP for more than a decade during the period 1990–2001.

As a Christmas present to ourselves, we would do well to pay more attention to those who have demonstrated a track record of being basically correct in their judgements. This does not include any who have, ever, driven one or more casinos into bankruptcy.

The Work of Happiness

By May Sarton

I thought of happiness, how it is woven

Out of the silence in the empty house each day

And how it is not sudden and it is not given

But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.

No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark

Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.

No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,

But the tree is lifted by this inward work

And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours

And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:

The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,

White curtains softly and continually blown

As the free air moves quietly about the room;

A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall—

These are the dear familiar gods of home,

And here the work of faith can best be done,

The growing tree is green and musical.

For what is happiness but growth in peace,

The timeless sense of time when furniture

Has stood a life's span in a single place,

And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir

The shining leaves of present happiness?

No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,

But where people have lived in inwardness

The air is charged with blessing and does bless;

Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.