Timo McIntosh Arts

Post for Links
artedetimo - 06.17.08 16:25
Wind Power anyone? I looked; not so much wind in the Bay Area. but man Montana and Wyoming should be covered in turbines, or better yet we should see wind farms out in coastal waters instead of those oil rigs... north west coast could produce tons if the map is right. I would invest in that.

Zero Waste
artedetimo - 06.09.08 16:45
If you follow this chronicle you will know that I have been slowly trying to figure out to live without waste and with a small footprint. I've been wondering lately how close I actually am to this goal. HEre's an article on the philosophy of Zero Waste in case it's still a little vague.

In essence zero waste excludes recycling as a viable "non-waste" stream, because it really is a waste stream; just one that doesn't end up at the dump. Zero waste also does not preclude the energy use that is necessary for certain, ah-hem, functions of life. I would say at the core energy use for biological sustenance, social movement, and environmental heating are the only real core requirements we have, but there is a lot of gray area in that. Plus, I think we can have enough energy for entertainment and other no core activity if we manage what we have, but for now most of it all is "waste" in the form of fossilized algae.

So anyway, my efforts to reduce my waste have focused for now on the easily picked fruit. Composting, buying used, reusing, buying local and cutting back. My household rubbish pickup as a result as reduced to to about a third of what it was, but that doesn't include our recycle-bin which continues to be full every two weeks with mainly packaging. Even with my efforts to stop the junk mail, which have been cut to under a third, still comes in and goes out serving no purpose to anyone. We don't buy water bottles, nor soda or canned drinks, or any beverage besides juice anymore, but we still do have plastic bottles coming in and going out after one use. I reuse some of them in the garden as well as I can , but at a point I just have a pile of plastic bottle lying around. Without a productive outlet and no means of getting juice in reusable containers, that is a dead end.

In the kitchen the main source of rubbish is all the plastic packaging bags. There are many less than before, but even buying in bulk and large containers yields once-and-out containers. Cereal box and bags have been on the list, but has taken a while to figure out a solution. I think there are good bulk options, and if we use mason jars, and cloth bags for transport, cereal will produce no rubbish on our end of the consumer chain. I am also working on a way to include all of our table scraps in the compost, but that might take a little effort to avoid rodents and foul smells.

A major source of endless frustration for me, which is mentioned in the linked article is the poorly designed products we are stuck with. It seems like nearly everything that is new is designed to work for a short time, then break, and not be fixed. There are almost no repair parts for just about anything in the house. Our microwave broke, so what could we do? Drop it off at a goodwill E-waste sight, go to Costco and buy a new one. There aren't microwave repair men anywhere, and with the damage it had I doubt it would have been fixable anyway. It was 15 years old, so I would say it got good use, but bringing the new one into the house meant 5 pounds of plastic, foam and cardboard wrapping and packaging that will serve no more use in this world, and a new microwave that will last 5 years if we a re lucky and then need to be tossed out and replaced. Its absurd really. I suppose I could do without a microwave, but when you have a 50 year old electric stove and oven, the energy savings for a year pay off any amount of waste the microwave creates.

Another source of waste I have started augmenting is the laundry. I used to think that more detergent means cleaner clothes, but I started realizing that, first, its not true; if anything you just leave a residue on the clothes, and second, what am I trying to clean out of my clothes? Really, clothes doesn't get all that dirty in the corse of a day unless its stained or something. Everything else comes out easily. I have been using about a third of the detergent I used to use and the clothes is just as clean, and if anything lighter and fresher due to the lack of a residue. I have also been half drying the clothes which believe it or not doesn't leave everything half dry. What happens when you run a load for a half dry cycle is that the heavy clothes like pants stay a little damp and most everything else dries out. So if you collect all the heavy clothes and run it through together or better yet hang it on a line, you can cut out a lot of your drying costs in energy, and at the meter.

Can't forget the cloth diapers, and reusable wash clothes, plus breastfeeding, whcih all have so many benefits in all aspects of our lives, I won't list them here. So far, baby has been pretty close to zero waste, which is a nice cherry.

None of this has really taken a lot of work to put in place, and in fact has been a fun challenge, and lesson on how we really live. The compost has been providing me with great soil to grow my tomatoes (the first are green on the vine now). The kitchen has become much more organized, and we waste less food since the packaging is meant to work forever, instead of for a week. The food stays sealed and available for longer, and doesn't get buried in a jungle of packaging, and containers. Its all so much healthier too, plus the culinary delights remain at their highest with fresh whole foods.

As always, any ideas for cutting waste are welcome. Here's to an empty garbage can at some point.

Insight at 3am
artedetimo - 05.31.08 05:12
I'm not sure why things come to me when they do, but I find myself lying in bed at 3am sorting out the world's problems. It could be that in dealing with life's little problems, like wet diapers, my mind searches for perspective.. or it could be that I am delirious from lack of sleep, you tell me.

What occurred to me at this wee hour has to do with the $4.29 gas I noticed today at the local gas station. That is a lot on the one hand but nothing on the other. It is good because it will drive innovation and political change in the coming months; the kind of last minute impetuous our lumbering country needs all too often. The fact is that to many people, high prices will have a major impact on their lives, yet to others it won't make any difference.

The US has one of the largest income gaps in the world, and indeed probably in all of history. We exist where in one neighborhood people live in terms of hundreds of dollars, and down the street, budgets are in hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our tolerance for this is unusually high, and international economists have wondered why in the US, we have such a high tolerance for the disparity. I would have to say that much of it comes from a comparison of the poor here to the truly poor from around the world. Poor people here seem like whiny brats compared to the people of say much of Eastern Africa. In fact I would go on to say that is what allows for much of the political right to hold so much contempt for the poor in the country, and treat those who have little here with such antagonism.

I used to think that it was an attitude based on some sort of Social Darwinistic world view, or a Hamiltonian belief, but I have come to realize that this attitude is more of a resentment of the poor by a class of people who think of the US as an empire whose global exploits benefit everyone. I can almost picture a conversation between someone with money, and someone with out much following the lines of, "Why are you complaining, you have a  car, access to a hospital, a TV, Food and entertainment, even though your lazy butt won't get out and work for a living?" I know, that imagining says more about me than anything, but does it hint at something important? Do we, even the poorest among us, really have it so good, that an income gap is unimportant?

Well, based on the steady stream of immigration, and a continuinngly Americanized global culture, the answer is yes. Even the bottom rungs of our economy can afford the luxuries that are so rare around the world.  Just by living here most people get a reasonable supply of cheap fuel, cheap stuff (crappy consumer goods), and life saving health care (This is a contentious point, but I would say more people die here of neglect than untreatable disease. In Europe, no one dies of minor things, but they have a hard time with ailments requiring complicated treatments). The next question is to wonder why? Surprisingly, the answer lies in the foreign policies that provide us with those benefits.

The policies probably go back to WWII when our military industrial complex became the underpinning of our economy, but more recently, under Reagan, we stated to acting as an empire, pumping serf countries for resources to support our failing, though luxurious, culture. Before the 80's we still contributed in real ways to the global market place. After, we became THE international consumer of resources, to which everyone sells to.

Anyway, where and why it happened isn't what I was thinking about, though. What really hit me, is where will we be with those pockets of poor people, and gated communities of rich people when we no longer have cheap fuel, or cheap stuff, or purchasable world class health care? Decent health care is for the most part out of reach for many many people, and fuel and entercrappment are both on the way out for the same China connected reasons. What happens when a burger flipper's wage no longer can provide for a tank of gas, cable TV, or 6 pack of beer? What happens when the poor in the US are no longer indirectly subsidized by an imperial market place; where the price of living is way below the cost, and where minimum wage keeps people clothed and happy?

Despite what the reports are about averting a recession, the truth of the matter is, that in addition to the million people who are in prison in this country, there are tens of millions more who will really be in a bad place pretty soon, when our imperial subsides collapse. Do we go on ignoring (one political party) or blaming (the other party) those on Wal-Mart welfare, which has unfortunately become the norm, or will there be some sort of change? A people's uprising? A collapse into economic depression? An economic income gap correction? A worsening of the dichotomy of American life?

What do you see coming in the future with soring gas prices, and inflation at the supermarket? I think its good that we finally start buying less, driving less, and living in the reality of world resources, but the transition is going to cause a LOT of pain for some group of people, the question is, for who?

Grass fed
artedetimo - 05.23.08 18:34
I'm about two thirds through Omnivores dilemma, and have to say that my pessimistic views on modern industrial food have deepened in many ways, yet I am optimistic about where we are going with our food. Without getting into this long master work, you have to read this book if you care at all about food, dietary health, or agricultural politics, I will say that my views have become much more informed, and my positions on food swayed more than I thought they would, or could be.

I post about food once in a while, and think about it as the head of a spear; one that cuts into who we are as people. We all eat, and we all relate to it in one way or another. We are interested in our food, but I have a growing belief that the food industry represents, and is linked closely to much of the rest of our lives. When there are problems in our food, it is indicative of other, more widespread problems. For example, how is it possible that $0.99 hamburgers exist? Horrible agribusiness subsidy policies? Horrible production methods? Horrible product quality? Horrible global resource exploitation? Why don't people care? Food is a great way to get a person to think, because it has direct consequence on his or life, and it is an easy metaphor for other problems that are understandable by even the young, naive or inexperienced.

The book doesn't get into the nitty-gritty of political viewpoints, but plainly connects dots between different self-interested groups when needed, and hints at the topics as metaphors. It is well written as a story of discovery, and journalistic research.  The author makes more than a strong case for one type of food over another, he builds a piece of work that can guide people, and inspire them to reformulate what it is, and what it means to eat in the industrial world.

Why go on about the book? Because, I feel moved to go beyond  just looking at food labels, and organics, and even the notion of energy conservative local food. I feel I need to reenter the food chain as it might have been years ago; seeing and knowing the places my food comes from. The book does a good job of pointing out that often what we are missing, and what makes our lives less than what it could be, is a sense of reality. Its the do-it-yourself, self-sufficient, frugality that I find we miss. We don't need to raise, and slaughter our own chickens, but most people don't even understand the basics of what it takes to raise a chicken, or a tomato, or fix a light switch. The missing part of life, leads people to actions and decisions that have little to do with the fundamental nature of being alive.

I might sound a little way-right-wing on these points, but the spectrum of social thought is a circle after all. If you realize that people in general really don't know how to take care of themselves, then you need a strong  just government with strong regulations, and institutions to formulate the roles people fill in society. That same notion also leads to the idea of making sure people know how to take care of themselves, so they can partake in true freedom on their own, free of government and regulations. True freedom is to be able to decide on all aspects of ones life, without being dominated, or regulated, or limited by others desires. In that lies the difficult duality that is so little understood anymore.  On the one hand we want the happiness of communicating, cooperating, and working with each other and alone on our own terms, and existing through our own experience. On the other hand, it is a social reality that some people, or pseudo-people in the form of corporations will want what others have, and use their energy to win it from those who otherwise would be best left alone. ANd the strange part is that the middle between these two ideas, doesn't lead to a balance between the; it leads to some totally different form of society that is always struggling with itself.

Food leads to complex, and nuanced social ideas the same way food itself is both simply the form of our biological sustenance, and also a socially meaningful activity. There are people out there who are still, or who have rebuilt a self-sustaining, traditionally-valued, and post-industrially scientific basis for farming (http://www.eatwild.com/), but in so doing they have disconnected from the social systems that keep everyone else in order. Bridging this gap, as the gap between political extremes, seems as yet not to be creating a happy middle, but more of a philosophical struggle. You likely know my stance, and I leave the book to you to inform your views, but I can assure you that eating your view out the window sure will taste better, be healthier, and provide a better future.

Grass fed steak anyone?

Slow down
artedetimo - 05.16.08 13:37
Something worth doing in all walks of life. Pledge to drive slower, or eat slower. Just plain slow down