The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: January 16, 2007

267 comments on DrumBeat: January 16, 2007

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jokuhl on January 16, 2007 - 11:18am

Hey Bob;
I asked once before, but it was buried deep in a long thread..

Have you ever looked at what they are doing north of you with the "Arcosanti" project? North of Flagstaff, I think..
I think their forward momentum has been a little glacial, if the term isn't too inappropriate or critical .. but the goal seems very useful. As I understand it, to create a medium/high density community built on what is considered to be 'wasteland', and without a great dependence on external energy & supplies.. save Solar, of course. Water use is designed to recycle and reuse much of the supply through natural Bog and Pool systems. The whole habitat is designed with a modular approach that makes efficient but very livable places for residences, workplaces, public spaces, etc..

As we look at the precipice that may well face cities like Vegas and Phx, I want to hear more about how some of the Arcosanti ideals could be turned into retrofits for the currently 'Greengrass' building developments that surround our desert Cities.

I don't doubt that Wheelbarrows will be an essential ingredient, and even possibly a status symbol, at some point.. Maybe we can work together to design the 'Once and Future SUW!~ Sport-Utility Wheelbarrow'.. to ease the transition for our many unconvinced brothers and sisters..

But in conjunction, I'm trying to imagine what turnkey systems could also be in the wings to allow a currently unsustainable, irrigated Trophy-Lawn into a water-reusing garden plot, or a Housing Development into a mini-village, with some shops, some energy generation and a 'mini-grid', some food supply internally, jobs internally.. and a couple bus/light rail stops.. or bike trails that keep them connected to the city-center where other jobs and markets/trade-goods connect them to the rest of the world..

Regards from the (Finally!) icy and wintry Northeast! .. and don't believe what they tell you.. we got almost nothing of the ice that slammed the middle states this weekend. But this morning, I'm working on our IceStorm plan again, just cause one day, we'll get hit with something!

.. And THERE! I've gone and upstaged the ARCOSANTI question with a lot of other good stuff.. Take a look, if you haven't had any experience with them.. I think they are working in a smart and hopeful direction, that sounds somewhat inline with many of your suggestions.. minus the "Fast-Crash" parts, anyway!

Bob Fiske

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totoneila on January 16, 2007 - 12:24pm

Hello Jokuhl,

http://www.arcosanti.org/project/main.html

Arcosanti is just north of Phx, about an hours drive, towns close by are Cordes Junction, Cottonwood, Camp Verde. Not north of Flagstaff at all.

Yep, I have toured Arcosanti years ago, but not involved in any way with it. I just don't think they have enough water and high quality topsoil to make a go of it. The surrounding boomtowns and the Asphalt Wonderland are sucking the small river and acquifers dry, and GW is predicted to make this even worse over time. My guess is that the inhabitants will never reach the energy efficiency levels of the Anasazi or other ancient native desert-dwellers before they abandon Arcosanti. The summer desert is absolutely unforgiving if you don't have water and/or shade; you are simply toast.

Az has drastic elevation changes with corresponding climate zones: from above-the-treeline tundra, to near rain forest, to scorching sand dunes. If the population could be radically reduced-- IMO, the best strategy would be a migrating tribe that moved with the seasons and additionally short-term moderated temperature/weather changes by altitudinal variation.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

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jokuhl on January 16, 2007 - 1:30pm

Hi Bob;
Thanks for the thoughts.

My main reason for watching them is not necessarily the success at that particular, and fairly extreme location, but to see what tools they have been able to use or reinvent that gives an advantage to any community trying to survive in landscape that was once (Artificially) abundant, and becomes increasingly marginal, esp WRT water supplies, roadway conditions, piped-in power requirements.

My own optimism, to such an extent as I can maintain it, lies in our ability to adapt and devise new tools to handle changing conditions, and our ability to codify and share these discoveries. With the sometimes underappreciated abilities of the internet, we can still duplicate and spread a good (or bad) idea to all corners of the world, and not have to wait for the Pony Express and Literacy to get an idea or a blueprint broadly disseminated.

Without the help (or interference) of massive energy inputs, the solutions will have to begin varying from locale to locale. I suppose there will continue to be forms of migration that follows the fruiting fields, dodges the hurricanes and sleet, but at the moment, what we have is mostly settlements, and we have a number of advantages we've learned to glean from planting deeper roots, such as shared infrastructure (Geothermal installations, Water Purification , Greenhouses) that benefit multiple families/clans.. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of these 'Beehive' Developments investing in a central WindTurbine, for example. This morning, I sketched up a recurring notion of mine, where you get some temporary storage with raised weights to smooth out the variability of wind generation. Of course, a community might also invest in water storage, which lends itself to using the water in High and Low tanks to achieve this end, too.

( Variation on the weights system might be a Hilly Community that builds a Funicular (Hillside) Trainway, and uses parallel counterweight tracks (In hillside trenches, with ample 'freefall security') to both lift the car system, and to store energy from Direct-winched Wind Turbines atop the hill ) The build would be expensive, but fairly simple in modern engineering terms. Lifting could come from other inputs.. Hydropower, PV to Elec Motor, etc) Lots of Bikespace built into the Funicular Train!

'Do Yeast ask themselves a corresponding question?'
Bob

(By the way, your tagline has become my default summary of the conversation here. So if I play with it a little, it is not to offend, but because it has given me food for thought. PPS, It's maddening,too.)

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fleam on January 16, 2007 - 3:40pm

I've not been to Arcosanti, but looked at visiting and am familiar with tourism-driven economies, and I don't consider Arcosanti any more sustainable than the "Polynesian Culture Center" (a Polynesian theme park and Mormon recruiting tool on the Windward side of the island of Oahu). In fact, I'd say less so, since the "PCC" is surrounded by much more hospitable land. In either case, sustainability would only come after 90% of the people in the area died. In both case, they're kept going by visitors with bulging pockets, who leave with smiles and much thinner pockets. The $ obtained is used to buy goods from outside, many, generally thousands, of miles away. This is how SPAM gets to Hawaii and how strawberries get to Northern Arizona towns in January.

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InfinitePossibilities on January 16, 2007 - 2:33pm

This is certainly an interesting anthropology/architecture project. But an approach to better living for 10 billion people on earth it is not. And I don't think it strives to be that. For one thing, if you ask any ecologist, they will tell you that the middle lattitudes of Europe and the US provide the ecologically most stable habitats for large population densities because they have an abundance of water and fast healing vegetation. Even very crudely destoyed natural sites quickly recover under these conditions and with some landscaping even badly scarred landscapes can be restored. Reforestation, for instance, is not a battle against a harch climate but a rather straight forward exercize.

Europe has many success stories to tell and continues to heal many of its wounds that were inflicted in the 18-20th centuries. See e.g. the Ruhrgebiet in Germany which was (and still is) one of the countries centers of heavy industry. Once the cadmium, mercury, lead, oil etc. loaded layers of earth below the former industrial properties are removed, natural habitats, parks etc. can be restored and a dirty urban landscape becomes, once again, a living community for many people. Similarly the industrial channels that many European rivers have become are being restored with flood areas to support a wider variety of species.

Deserts are a completely different kind of environment which are already on the edge, even without human influence. Even small disturbances lead to irreperable harm or require much longer time scales to return to halfway natural conditions. The Arctic is even worse. There is little hope that large numbers of humans can move to these environments. There is little incentive for them to move there, either. The planet has plenty of space to accomodate people in areas which are ecologically stable and can support them.

The central problem with human overpopulation is that once large areas get destroyed by the local population, the same people (have no choice but to) move on and continue destroying neigboring areas without reflecting of what went wrong and how it can be avoided. Usually "the return on destruction" of these events is very poor (see logging) and few, if any, of the people responsible for these ecological catastrophies reap much of a reward.

In contrast, inhabitants of Europe and North America have been able to earn a steady (and steadily growing) income from the areas they altered for their economic needs. The reasons for this very obvious difference are well understood and are all related to us taking less out of these eco-systems than they can produce. Modern agriculture is, after all, nothing but the application of science to the problem of keeping top soil in good shape for the next seasons. Neither deserts, rainforests nor the Arctic allow such an approach as far as we know.

If you take a look at e.g. Singapore, you can (still) see responsible use of limited space. The people there live in highrise buildings but large fractions of the city are (still) set aside for parks, nature preserves, botanical gardens, the zoo etc.. The resulting urban environment is very enjoyable and certainly a much better solution than the suburban sprawl in the US where cheapshot develpers are giving millions of people a blueprint copy home which is poorly designed, boring as hell and has no other cultural environment than the copycat mall next to which it was built. Singapore, by the way, is a city in constant development, but the developers are simply upgrading the existing highrise buildings with new replacements. It is a vertical, not a horizontal upgrade. One can only hope that the Chinese (and the US?) will learn something from these excellent examples of urban architecture.

Coming back to the deserts areas of the US: certainly the best possible use for many of them would be for energy generation. Areas with low ecological potential which have already been destroyed by human activity (see e.g. the area around Las Vegas) can be used to produce copious amounts of solar energy without risking further habitat destruction for many species. The energy can then be transmitted through power lines to areas which can support much, much larger human population densitities without risking their complete ecological destruction. Or so the theory goes... in practice, of course, Americans seem to prefer destroying a pristine area over making more efficient use of those places they already occupy. At least the current generation of Americans does. Let's hope their children and grandchildren will know better.

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jokuhl on January 16, 2007 - 4:50pm

INFINITE, surprise me, please.

As people toss at you WRT Solar Electric, over and over again.. "Nope. This idea has nothing to show.." (and if you were answering the point of the question..) "It does not contain tbe silver bullet I want, and thus has no Silver BB's to concern yourself with."

as you said on or about line one..
"But an approach to better living for 10 billion people on earth it is not. "

You produce thousands of words proclaiming that such and such is ImPOSSIBLE. It's a conversation killer, a buzz-harshing seemingly for it's own sake. Try an experiment and look for the things in a proposal that DO look like possibilities. It's where I think these vital BB's are Hiding.

I'm finding your tag increasingly non-credible, even though I know you and I do support many of the same BB's. I think PV should be a universal, contributer (not all, just PART), mainly installed right at the point of use, so Rooftops are my first choice (Incl Factories, Stores, etc..).. Then, it's getting hit with minimal Line-losses, and can double as a home's Roofing material, reducing that absurd use of Asphalt and the throwing away of all tbat door to door Energy, right before it got to you.

"The planet has plenty of space to accomodate people in areas which are ecologically stable and can support them." I'm glad to hear it (Trust, but Verify), just as I'm glad that there is plenty of sulight to power everything. It's just a matter of going from here to there. Piece of Cake.. you'll just leave the details of that to everyone else? That is what this is.. What are some mechanisms and designs for backfitting current communities where SO MANY people live? There are ideas, there are ways to learn how to improve our model-community while we start to change.

It's worth looking at anyone who is working on Living Area, Water Use, and basic Community Design, basic community leadership. Nobody expects a finished plan to spring forth from one individual or type of experiment.

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jokuhl on January 16, 2007 - 4:57pm

By the way. How do you define "Ecologically Stable"?

One of my concerns is that up here in the Fecund and Fertile Northeast, we might have to deal with an unexpected shift to something more like Desert conditions. If that's the case, I want us to have generated a bunch of 'Last-minute best-sellers' that will have studied, tested and compiled every little scheme we can Possibly Scheme up.

Johnny Trek "It's a crazy plan.. but it just might work!"

Signed,
Finite Patience

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InfinitePossibilities on January 16, 2007 - 6:33pm

Central Europe is mostly ecologically stable and can be made into a fully sustainable environment as the past shows. There are problems with the bork beetle and such but they are managable and they are being managed. To keep agricultural production stable has been a managable task, so far, but then, there have been enormous investments made in the past in water supplies etc.. I don't see that changing in areas where people are planning _responsibly_.

Much of the US Midwest, of course, is living on borrowed time as long as it power mines its aquifers like geological treasure troves. Peak water is just as much a reality as peak oil. That is not the fault of the environment but the fault of the people living there and of everyone else who wants to eat cheap steak every other day. If a place only supports switchgrass really well, but could support switchgras really well for centuries, well, switchgras is probably what you are supposed to grow there... I believe we have a lot of ecologists who can tell us all about these things by now. And if as a result of listening to rational planners my steak will be twice as expensive, I will get a larger side of potatoes with it and live just as well. I think that, too, is a fair statement, isn't it?

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oldhippie on January 16, 2007 - 8:33pm

WTF? Bark beetles are chowing down right around the high latitudes of this planet wherever there are conifers. Managed? Dream on. Management is performed by cold weather, which is not forthcoming.

The ecological stability of Central Europe is a phantasm purely of your imagining. If nothing else, please see Noisette's posts right here at TOD. Central Europe is seeing extraordinarily high temps and rapid changes of all types.

Stop posting so darn much if all you do is make stuff up.

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expat on January 17, 2007 - 4:16am

Actually, not to spend much time on infinite posting, he isn't really wrong.

That is because Central Europe has a number of people who are involved in maintaining its stability. Sure, the weather is extreme - but then, in the early 1940s, the weather in Central Europe was essentially at the level of the Little Ice Age/Maunder Minimum- people, like the world around them, also respond over the longer term.

We are still very much in the realm of 'normal extremes' - beyond that is frightening, and yes, we seem headed that way, but the variables are large, as are the effects of those variables - and a century or two is a fairly small time scale.

That things get harder is not the same as saying they are impossible - though pines have been having a hard time in my region, it is because of a storm from 1999 - and the oaks planted in the last generation, behind the now gone pines in terms of normal wind directions, have been growing well for a generation - a lot of people are cutting the excess oak to use in the next couple of years as heat - the forest is always managed as a source of fuel, around here.

Crops will be adjusted - strawberries continue to be a big bet among the local farmers looking for profit (making jam from these strawberries remains a very basic skill - my garden grows without much care at all, for a few kilos of jam a year). If strawberries don't do well, maybe the raspberries will - also in the garden - or the cherries - common in the region - or the plums - also common - or the pears - also common - or a few trees not known in the U.S. (Quitten, for example) - or peaches - not at all common - or apples - everywhere - or the blueberries - quite uncommon - or the grapes - wine or eating - both common - and so on.

Note that I am just describing my town, a completely average one. People here are very worried about climate change, as someone who is referring to hazelnuts may well be - but no one is seriously thinking people won't be able to adapt, whether in the eyes of someone who feels that planting olive trees would be very profitable in the future, to the town forester not seeming how olive trees could survive one normal winter, even if it only arrives once in decades in the future.

That so many many people in America don't see this happening is a problem for people familiar with life in Central Europe to grasp - and some of those people have little patience for explanations why something won't work, instead of just doing it since it needs to be done. (Another commenter on another thread remarked about people going out into local fields on a bicycle with long handled tools over their shoulders - this is still normal here, and likely will be for a long time - and remember, merely a century ago, they just walked, and today, they still could.

Actually, for all its flaws, the idea that solving a discrete problem is sufficient to master that problem, used to be a fairly common American perspective, too. That it has gone missing is a fascinating mystery. Ask someone from New Orleans - America seems incapable of actually responding to normal challenges, not only extraordinary ones. And yes, a major city ruined due to incompetent planning and implementation seems to be a real flaw, which as pointed out in another thread, didn't happen in the aftermath of another city, whose geographically determined location comes with earthquakes, the San Francisco of 1906. People may not have relied on 'the government,' but their society seemed capable of mastering what happened.

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InfinitePossibilities on January 16, 2007 - 6:08pm

"INFINITE, surprise me, please."

What for? Do you really want to be surprised? I don't think so. Do I want to surprise? No. I am trying to give lines of arguments that establish mainstream engineering solutions to mainstream economic problems. The above community is no such example. It is marvelous architecture, though. A lot of urban architects could learn something there. I respect things for what they are, not for what they are not.

"You produce thousands of words proclaiming that such and such is ImPOSSIBLE."

I didn't. I said that the real solution will look a lot more like Singapore than anything in the desert. Please read my posts.

"I think PV should be a universal, contributer (not all, just PART), mainly installed right at the point of use, so Rooftops are my first choice (Incl Factories, Stores, etc..).."

So do I. I could point out GWs worth of rooftops for you in my area alone. But what I also said was that putting PV into the desert is a far cry better for the desert than to put people there. PV/thermal solar land use is a well controlled and limited operation that does some immediate damage and after that results mostly in more shade and changed local temprature profiles. How this can be made compatible with the existing natural environment is a truly important ecological research project. It is far more likely that we have a chance of making power plants compatible with the desert environment than that it will support major human settlements. Solar plants do not produce waste, don't need much water, create little polution from cars etc.. In short, if we have to touch the deserts of this planet, I would support doing it with solar technology rather than human settlements.

"Then, it's getting hit with minimal Line-losses, and can double as a home's Roofing material, reducing that absurd use of Asphalt and the throwing away of all tbat door to door Energy, right before it got to you."

I don't have an argument with you on these things. There are enormous advantages to residential solar with one exception: cost. Industrial scale solar and solar thermal facilities (which can reach much higher area efficiency at much lower cost) are not compatible with urban infrastructure. Yet, if we want to produce e.g. solar hydrogen, we will have to go industrial scale in the places with the most insolation. That, unfortunatelly, are the deserts. Don't get me wrong... somebody might just invent a dirt cheap, long lasting sextuple layer or continuous bandgap solar cell with 45-55% efficiency tomorrow... in which case industrial scale solar might be a dead technology. But I am a realist and I don't see that happening. What I see is that we will have a mix of different technologies. Much will be residential with all the advantages and disadvantages of local power generation. But a lot of it will be happening in fragile environments and we need to be prepared to answer the questions of how much we are willing to invest to keep those places alive while we are extracting energy.

"It's just a matter of going from here to there. Piece of Cake.. you'll just leave the details of that to everyone else?"

The details are ugly high voltage power lines. Some of them are already there and there will be more of them. Other solutions are pipelines for chemicals and steam. Some of those are also already there... and there will be more. I am not a frequent hiker but I have hit on three or four water, gas and oil pipelines in my life while hiking in areas where I would never have dreamed of finding one.

Look, I am a physicist, all I need to do to inform myself about the solutions is to go to the library and get the textbooks on power lines, pipelines, steam transmission etc.. None of this is rocket science. Our engineers know how to do these things. And we know that on the scale of what is needed none of this can be hidden easily or cheaply. Reality is what it is and I acknowledge that. I do not go around selling a car that runs on water or that mythical free energy device.

For the same reason I do not dream of a city on the hill in the desert. I know it does not work for any realistic number of people. But I also know that the public transportation system in Singapore works just fine and that one can live comfortably on the 20th floor of a highrise building and enjoy the walk in any one of the three beautiful parks that are only minutes of walking distance away.

"What are some mechanisms and designs for backfitting current communities where SO MANY people live?"

In the US? Raise the population density, for one thing. McMansions are very inefficient in retaining heat in the winter and staying cold in the summer. You get the same effect from living sandwiched between two other heated/air conditioned floors that you get from the very best insulation materials. It is a no-brainer why heating and cooling in New York city is so much less costly than it is out on the farm. The New Yorker needs a heck of a lot less energy than the person who lives in the middle of nowhere. McMansions are responsible for much of our suburban traffic, too. I understand that the schools out there are supposed to be better. What I don't understand is why we can't fix our urban environments. People in Europe and all over Asia certainly can.

"Nobody expects a finished plan to spring forth from one individual or type of experiment."

No. But that does not mean the US is anywhere close to the standards in other continents, either. What you fail to acknowledge is that we are way behind the status quo. We do not need to look for new solutions because we are already failing to use the existing ones.

As a final word: this settlement is (probably) a great example of how things should be. Las Vegas, on the other hand, is an example of how things really are.

I hope this is not too controversial a statement for you?

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jokuhl on January 16, 2007 - 8:13pm

Not controversial, just simplistic.

Las Vegas is how one, very extreme US city is. It may be exemplary of the problems, but it is at the far end. Portland, OR is not, or Missoula, MT. It is not 'How things really are', and is exactly the kind of overstated universal that you pepper your posts with.

"What you fail to acknowledge is that we are way behind the status quo."
When? This is exactly what I fault with your arguments all the time. You say "There's enough Solar", but kind of shrug off the amount of work/politics/communications/public support required to get it going. "It's solved" "It's no big problem" - What do we need to do to get that industry fired up? Where is the new Polysilicon production coming from? Shouldn't we be getting in on that one in a huge way? There are bottlenecks all around that are hampering just this one, very simple technology.. it's not all Physics, or ugly grid additions.

But didn't you just say yourself that we are not "Anywhere close to the Standards in other Continents.." That's the problem, but you fold over on yourself and say an oil downslide is not a big deal. (Sorry, can't link to it..)

Bah, humbug. I have a flu.. I'm done.

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Aniya on January 16, 2007 - 10:16pm

Hi IP,

I appreciate this exchange here, as with most TOD conversation.

My questions: Re: "We do not need to look for new solutions because we are already failing to use the existing ones."

--What are the existing solutions "we" are failing to use?
--Who is the "we"?
--How can we stop not using them and begin to use them?
--What steps can "we" here (us) take as part of this larger "we"?

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Aniya on January 16, 2007 - 10:31pm

Hi Jk/Bob,

Re: "...basic community leadership"

I thought I'd take this opportunity to put in a plug for what looks to me to be a very nice silver BB, (seems still quite unnoticed outside the local area, other than by your truly who thinks what they are doing is one of the most amazingly positive things happening anywhere...) And that is:
http://www.ashland.or.us/Page.asp?NavID=541.

The basic set-up is:
1) A "civilian" coordinator can be hired, apparently fairly easily via funding from http://www.citizencorps.gov/. Why "civilian"? To find someone skilled in organizing and promoting community, who is free to devote lots of (hopefully creative) time to it.
2) This style of CERT, very literally "neighbors helping neighbors" and (if you read the newsletters) having fun doing it, brings together people from very diverse groups, or, I could say - cuts across many lines and gives people a common framework to relate and the means to do it.
3) Provides opportunities to, for example, teenagers and teaches them skills and a role, for example.
4) Anyone can take the initiative to get this program going in his/her community, as far as I understand it.

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ET on January 17, 2007 - 12:26am

Aniya,
Very good point about community response and the value of community coordination. (BTW Ashland is a nice town)

Having worked as a volunteer EMT in our local volunteer fire dept. I can attest to the important community spirit that these kinds of organizations can create.

Many, many times on TOD I've seen the assertion that any 'solutions' we come up with for dealing with declining energy availability have more to deal with human social and political factors than those of the physics of energy. So, community cooperation is a good direction in which to steer the conversation.

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TrueKaiser on January 17, 2007 - 10:10am

care to enlighten me on you 'community solution' for growth, to tell them you must limit how many kids you have(if any)?
for those people who simply will not work with you because they think your nuts and use as much energy as they darn well please?
for those who would rather take you down with them?

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jokuhl on January 17, 2007 - 1:24pm

Objection, Argumentative.
No, Kaiser, why don't you suggest yours? Population is a problem, but that's not what they're talking about..

ET said "I can attest to the important community spirit that these kinds of organizations can create." - What is your problem with this? Since we are overpopulated for a coming time when the race cannot count on the energy crutches that got us this big, do you have some kind of resistance to making sure that communities are at least functioning together?

The percentage of 'joiners' is often far too small.. of course there are people out there who won't or can't find it in themselves to sign up or show up.. all you can do is work to A)Improve that Ratio, and B)Have Plans, Skills and Tools in place to divert as much of a disaster as possible. You are doing it for 'them' as much as 'us'.. and if it works, it stems the next stages of repercussions as well as the initial complications. Not all, just as many as possible.. This is one of the
'ounces of prevention'.

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Aniya on January 19, 2007 - 1:07am

Thanks for responding, TK,

It sounds like you've hit on two important things:
1) Population growth and
2) Communication. (And how to respond to people who do not respond positively to your efforts to connect with them.)

I'd encourage you to keep thinking along these lines, much as Bob suggests. I've been pondering the necessity to link population/Jeavon's paradox solutions with any technological or "hard" design type solution. For example, a 55mph speed limit is immediately doable; it's been done. This addresses conservation. To me, any kind of energy policy needs to cover *and* link solutions in all three categories.

And yes, I'd be happy to share some "community solutions": Let me just give a couple for now:

My suggestion for 1) Was inspired by comments back around Nov. 21 regarding population. My suggestion is to fully support and fund the full legal rights of women and children. More specifically, this means, to fully fund and support such things as community shelters (for victims of spousal abuse), and women's rights, to name just two.

There are many organizations one can support, by doing things as simple as 5 minutes per week online. For example, www.aiusa.org. Women's legal rights and education is fundamental to addressing population growth. (I'd like to write more about this later.)In fact, some people see it as just about the entire solution.

There is also a personal and "immediately doable" element to this. Namely, if one is male, try to understand and empathize with the experience of females, esp. in regard to what it must be like to be, for example, in the category of those who are molested as children. What it might feel like, for example, to be seen *only* as an object. http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/facts/specific/fs_child_sexual_abuse.html

On the communication aspect. There are some really remarkable skills one can learn. Check out www.cnvc.org and www.gordontraining.org. for examples. There are articles on those websites with examples that illustrate the point.

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jokuhl on January 17, 2007 - 1:01pm

Thanks, Aniya.
Great Links, they went directly into my 'Community Energy Loss Solutions' Folder, and remind me to find out how I can be involved in our Emergency MGMT programs here in Cumberland County. (I save a lot of HTML with useful data in it, as I'm never that confident that the site ~or the web~ will still be there if I want to see it again!)

We have a lot of distress in our population in Portland and in Maine. (Poverty, Mental Health, Addictions) There are some great cultural attributes here, and some really hard ones, so the need to have some stronger links formed is going to be invaluable. I am involved with a group that is working to create closer ties between neighbors with Cleanup Days, Picnics, Potlucks and 'TimeDollar' Exchanges, but like anything that asks people to get outdoors and meet their neighbors, it fights against TV, VideoGames, Internet and our now habitual distance from those who live closest to us. But I hope I can start to see programs that will give my neighbors and I some useful work and training to do together that can upstage class, race, age, gender or personality differences and give us some common ground again. We have some parks, but we don't hang out together in them.. yet.

Bob

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