Alternative Building: Papercrete

Okay, so you’ve got your eye on a piece of property that has a 3 bdrm/1.5 bath house on it, 17 acres of land, a barn, an all season creek (fresh water is going to be increasingly more important), and is divided between 5 acres of cleared pasture/farmland and the rest in timber that you can mill or sell.

We’ve already learned that one of the best small farm practices is to start off using no more than one-to-three acres for crops and flowers. So what else can you do with all that land?

When you have land, you have SooOOooo many options. Every structure you add to your land increases its value. Building Green and “Alternative” allows you to creative wonderful, mortgage-free buildings at pennies to what traditional buildings cost. The building can be wood burning Sauna cordwood building or a Strawbale “Adobe” home that keeps you warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer while decreasing your dependence on both energy and energy companies.

The latest … and the building style that has recently caught my eye is Papercrete …. a substance that creates lightweight “concrete-ish” mix or “adobe-ish” blocks to build with.

Like cordwood homes, you don’t have to be a builder to build a house. There are books and videos at your local public library. You can begin your search by clicking on the links and by googling some keywords like: alternative building, papercrete, cordwood building, strawbale houses, and building with cob.

Green Movement Can Help Blacks

I rode the 38 Geary out to the San Francisco Ft. Miley Veteran’s Hospital this morning. A group of pre-teens were headed to school. Several of the boys were black … the scene they put on wasn’t nothing nice.

 I always write that if it ain’t broke ~ don’t fix it. We all know this buggy ain’t just broke, the wheels done come off and the bottom done dropped out. Time to re-boot the system and get back to baseline. That’s why I always assert that getting out of Urban America and rejecting its values are key to our survival, our healing, and our future economic growth.

Land has always been the major path to wealth in this country. The fact that so few blacks currently own land is a corner stone to our problem. Forget racism. Forget what the white man done done or might do. Look at what we’re currently doing to ourselves….

• Our rate of divorce far exceeds our rate of marriage.
• The Civil Rights Movement was won on moral grounds … and that’s exactly where we’re losing it.
• HIV/AIDS continues to be the Number One killer of black men 16 - 25 and the senior citizens are now following suit. That looks like deep despair around love to me. When so many are desperately jumping for lust instead having the faith and character to create love … well folks … don’t look good. You cannot point a finger in any direction of the African American Community and not see, hear, or feel pain … yet we want to keep doing the same things and believing in the same fantasies?

First black men were demoralized, then black youth. Next they got to women and now they’ve hit mothers. Ain’t nothing left. Grandmothers are struggling to raise their children’s children. We make up the vast majority of Foster Children numbers even in places where we are a fraction of the population. Are many of these systemic problems? Yes. But that has little or nothing to do with our responsibility to grow through them.

“Every problem is an opportunity in work clothes.” ~Henry J. Kaiser (I love that one…)

This is why the Green Movement holds out great promise to blacks. At present, whites and others have been holding down the fort at Ecology Centers all across America. Middle class despair and “Liberal” blindness abounds. But give them credit … they have and are doing their work and they are holding out the door for us. That means there is already tons of information available on Permaculture (a system of planting, housing, and living the incorporates everything in a  person’s environment.

The Green Movement touches every aspect of a person’s life and in the future, this will be of even greater importance. Global warming and the very, very real threat of a future WORLD economic “downturn” means that those who live on land with a watershed beneath it will feel no pain and in fact be in a great economic position.  [NOTE: It's forecasted that the shortage of fresh water alone will cause a world crisis by as soon as 2015. Read Guardian Report ]

 Canadians fear Avian Flu could help ignite economic crisis. I don’t know about you, but when white people keep warning each other about something, after a while, it’s time to look up.

The list of reasons why it makes sense for us to move out of urban America, create some sweat equity, rebuild our family structure, and prepare of any one of the many future threats that loom is large.  Just the fact that it’s black men’s  responsibility to create families AND make them safe should ignite some desire to look into moving onto 5 or more acres in rural America. You don’t even have to farm it!

1. You can lease some or all of it out to others who want to farm (and there will most certainly be many)
2. You can put some cabins or trailers on it and become a “Home Developer.”
3. You can adopt some of those many black children currently in Foster Care and orphanages and discover the spiritual truth that it really isn’t all about you … but more, it’s about what do you bring to the table!

Here … just glance at some of the post I quickly pulled up about a LIKELY, world economic disaster:

 Australia on: “The Future Collapse Of The World’s Economy”

Mainstream, respected European economist Stefan Karlsson on: The Future of The World Economy” (read the last two paragraphs)

 The World Conservative Union on Why It’s Not Business As Usual … or bust: (Meaning OPPORTUNITY FOR US!!

And last, here’s a “funny” one that raises your eyebrows: Samizdatdata.net

Racism or Engineering Your Life?

Recently I’ve been receiving comments about racism. This blog really isn’t about racism. It’s about walking away from the addictive pull of contiual reaction to racism. I say “addiction” because anything that traumatizes the psyches of MOST human beings, the mind repeats looking for resolution.

I write at a black audience right now because:

• I am black
• Black people as a culture are on fire
• White, Asian, and Mexican/Hispanic youth who feel disenfranchised look to what has become a bastardization of blackness to take their cues on “reacting” to feeling outside of mainstream or dis-empowered.

Are they making horrible choices? Yes! Do you have to? No.

Rather than continuing to be silly by looking at “Da White Man” and pointing fingers to justify our lives and our bad behavior, at the ripe old age of 53, I’ve concluded that it’s a FAR better choice to simply engineer a good life for myself. That means:

1. It doesn’t matter how much anyone else has … the issue is–
2. What do YOU bring to the table?
3. Taking stock (and responsibility) for everything that has happened in my life. Discarding the crazy-making people I’ve allowed to enter it, and owning everything else. Only through such a process can I get on the other side of “being a victim” and move into being a mature “full grown man.”

I yearn for the day we stop reacting to “racism.” It’s become a such a cop-out. YES, racism is alive and well … but if I find myself in a field that I cannot win in … WHY keep failing around, crying about how unfair it all is, instead of picking up my ball and building a field wherein I can win? We don’t have to be against anybody. In fact, the object is to increasingly love as many people as you can… because when you can’t love yourself… that’s when you find yourself hating others (projecting your self hate outwards) and being jealous of what others have. Thank God no one is giving me nothing. I was born with a keen mind … keen enough to see opportunity instead of self destruction when it is ripe. Get some land my brothers and sisters. If you can’t afford to in the city, move out of it and build up your cheap little home, and with the equity you build, you can later buy a dream place anywhere on the planet.

Luke 6:42 “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out that is in your own eye, then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.” (The Beatitudes)

(By that time… after removing drugs, alcohol, helplessness, criminality, and sex as a mood altering, demoralizing experience, whatever is in his eye probably won’t matter.)

“Texas Prison Camp Future American Gulag?”

One More Reason to MOVE and Take Control of Your Destiny.

Detention facility currently holds as many as 200 children and many more adult men and women incarcerated after midnight arrests. Is this the foreshadowing of America’s future work camps?

Reprinted Prison Planet story by Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Monday, January 8, 2007

The Prison Planet story discusses one of the many prisons already built in remote areas that are poised to become a system of penitentiaries that can only be described as American Gulags … or Work Prisons. The prison spoken of in the article is in Tyler, Texas currently holds hundreds of rebuffed asylum seekers who legally entered the country, half of which are children swept up in midnight raids, is a potential prime location for the enforced transfer of American citizens during a time of “national emergency.”

One of the first questions that come to mind is that due to the fact that these prisons were quietly built in remote areas—in relative secrecy—what talks will take place to decide what is and what isn’t a “national emergency?” Reportedly, many people who live in adjacently towns aren’t even aware that the prison even exist.

• Currently, America’s Public Health System is already overwhelmed.
• This country locks up over 2 million people each year and each year, over 600,000 circulate back to the streets where many teach dysfunctional lifestyles acquired in prison, to populations that may or may not ever go to prison. Parole
  
• Officer Dan Belford recently reported that officers “felt embattled … at the point of being “over-run”Prison sentences have gotten longer. There are more “lifers” and an expensive ageing population.
• The mental Health System has virtually collapsed and many of the mentally ill that should be going to hospitals or asylums are now routinely sent to prisons. Currently there are many people on SSI who lie around the hood doing nothing but occasional, mild mannered mischief. Often worse. The Feds look upon them as people who don’t contribute to the public coffers, and drain public funds. When the series of upcoming recessions occur, how will many of these people be viewed?
• What are the going to do with the millions of addicted life-time self-professed criminals they can no longer house nor supervise?
• The gap between the rich and poor is only going to increase … and what is going to keep all those “poor people” out of your cars, houses, and apartments when you’re not looking? Nothing.

Question: Do you think for one second that white America is going to sit quietly by and let anarchy back them up against a wall … the rulers of New Rome?

Entertaining this question is just one more reason I advocate moving to LAND (with your name on the deed) along with like-minded friends and relatives to help you watch your back. The writers of the article cite ways this moving people from over crowded prisons and from towns and cities will legally occur:

“A much discussed and circulated report, the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program, has recently been updated and the revision details a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.”

Click here for the total story.

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix it, but..

 

I strongly believe that Urban America has become a terminal disease that is killing black folks. Should the 2007 reader still need more “facts” and statics to support this claim, please drive through your nearest “hood” –day or night– and refresh yourself with the sights, sounds and smells of black, urban death and decay. Issues not seen by the naked eye but still strongly felt are:

• Despite all the killings, AIDS is now the Number One cause of death for black men 25 and under. (And no, they are not catching nor transmitting the virus by themselves… our black women and mothers  are dying at an alarming rate for the simple crime of wanting love and not insisting that the character-less infected “brotha” not wear a rubber)
• The Public Health System is now officially overloaded. They don’t have enough money nor grant services to provide individuals with known cures they already have.
• Even Black Theology (black churches) are out-dated… still preaching that same old Santa Claus version of God, that didn’t keep pace with the Space Age we entered 30 years ago … let along this alienated, technocratic, New Millennium.” And worst still, is the fact that they are STILL preaching that we need to beat our children … and produce still more violent children emotionally equipped for 18th Century survival and not 21st Century success.

High Tech Guru “Art” a.k.a. “Frank Pembleton” wrote:

“I’ve always said that Black people are a rural people, and that we weren’t meant to live surrounded by concrete.  This whole western urban environment is partly responsible for our jacked up mental, emotional, and physical condition.  Half of what we call “Blackness” or Black culture is southern culture anyway.  Black people are in denial about our southern roots, because for too long we have associated the south only with terrorism and pain.  The white man has tricked us out of our birthright.  We didn’t just escape from the south, we were also driven from our true homes, not in the absolute sense, for the south isn’t a specific place, but rather, rural living, amongst nature, with trees, grass, vegetables, and flowers, is where we should really be.  Folks don’t even understand.  This urban environment is partly responsible for the insanity around hypermasculinity.  The whole construction of Black male identity as being only about “hardness” or toughness is directly tied to this urban nightmare we’re trapped in.”

People all over the nation… as well as worldwide… are now feeling the desire to move into either more collaborative living that involves small farming, permaculure and other green living, or simply getting out of the way and  moving back to the land.

Land provides self determination. I remember my parents telling us how people who lived on farms like theirs back in Mississippi, were immune to the horrors of The Depression. When you own your own cow:

• You have plenty of fresh milk, fresh cheese, cream, and other dairy products to use or sell. [NOTE: While most African and Asian people are lactose intolerant, we still need Vitamin D. Cancer has been linked to a lack of Vitamin D. Our darker skin demands we get over an hour a day in the sun or take Vitamin D supplements.]

When you own your own chickens:

• You don’t have to wonder what you’ll eat for breakfast.
• You can sell the additional eggs at Farmer’s Markets or other sources. 
• You have a meat source that replenishes itself.

When you grow your own vegetables:

• You don’t have to wonder what type of pesticides are on your tomatoes
• You can link with other organic seed growers and remove bio-engineered crops from your diet as well as remove your wallet from large agri-corporations that currently have larger farmers under their thumbs by hooking them to seeds that are good only for one year.

~You don’t have to beg or steal
~ You are healthy
~You have dignity
~You are happy
~You don’t see the insides of a Kaiser Stress Clinic
~The only boss you have is the bank … and God

This isn’t a lifestyle change for everyone. Yes you can easily find 5-10 acres of land with a 3-4 bedroom house on it for under $150,000 (and MANY times under $100,000) in rural communities throughout the South and Midwest, but you have to have ways of making money BEFORE you buy. This will work best if ideally:

• You have done your research and have started educating yourself on some of the MANY ways to make a good living in rural America
• You have researched the areas where your grandparents or great-grandparents lived, researched inexpensive land/farm/rural living choices near Black Universities and/or outside of larger cities
• Decided you want to live out your life peacefully and provide safe, enriching housing to raise healthy children
• And decided that you either want to be self-employed or live and work with other like-minded people who will collaborate with you as you follow your other, primary or secondary dreams like being an artist or writer. You may also have a valuable trade that you can take almost anywhere like teaching (rural communities always have trouble finding enough qualified teachers) or you’re involved with medicine, Bio-tech or high tech endeavors that you can do anywhere you can link with DSL, Cable, or Satellite.

 Urban life ain’t getting no better, and unless you’re very skillful in a LEGAL career field currently in high deman in your area, it most likely won’t provide you with anymore opportunities than it has in the past.

Is It Racism or Economics?

  Interesting program on KQED the other night about white privilege.  The commentator was white and he was addressing a white audience.

“We love to talk racism because it makes us look like better people.  But many people of color don’t care what we think of them — they care about our money.  We can talk about racism all day and it won’t change things because it’s the distribution of wealth that is at the heart of discrimination, inequity, and the dehumanization of other human beings.”

That little “our money” part was a bit irritating because another white guy, Karl Marx pointed out that wealth is built on the backs of the working class. Now I’m no communist… but I know we ain’t been getting no where near a fair deal on the compensation for out labor.  Other than that, it was a powerful statement. (See: website) The decision to migrate back to the land is threefold:

1. Urban America and its values are killing us as a people
2. “Main Steam” will never be a fair playing field. We need to “come ye apart” and create groups rooms for healing, Black Think Tanks, land based wealth, and envirnments suitable to weather any future economic storm.
3. We need to calm down to the point where we’re creating our own communities, (again), our own new myths instead of buying into “myths” that the Korporate Kulture keeps giving us (e.g. “Thug Kulture”, membership in the new “Permanent Criminal Class“, and the idea that we just can’t do no betta.)

I’m not downing Christianity in any way, but the idea of throwing up our arms and just saying … “Oh dis heah is da last days and der jus ain’t nothin we can do about it cus Jesus is comin” is bunk.  Republicans and Owning Class America is playing us (and most others) left, right, and center while they fill their pockets with our tax dollars.

The time is ripe to move to the country, buy some of that very inexpensive land (preferably with fresh water on it), raise some chickens, grow vegetables that you’ll know are fresh and healthy, do more than just survive–flourish!