Keep Circulating in the Common Room or What Rosemary Did

I had planned on giving a pre-spring tonic Herbs for Resilience class at the second Common Room prototype day at St. Laurence's church in Norwich on Saturday. I was going to focus on plants like dandelion, cleavers and nettles to wake up our systems after winter.

Only it really wasn't 'after winter' on Saturday. It was after a week where the temperature never rose much above freezing and I'd had too many conversations with people who said they'd been feeling gloomy and low (including, unusually, myself) or who had had flus and colds that were taking an age to clear up - or both!

So on Friday I decided that the spring tonic was just going to have to wait. What we needed right now was something cheerful and warming for the End of Winter. Something that would clear our heads, lift our spirits and also keep us warm in the nippy air of St. Laurence's church!

Welcome to Rosemary! Known since forever as a herb that warms, stimulates circulation, helps clear the head and improve memory AND cheers the heart, it had to be you, bold, resinous Rosemary!

I picked some sprigs from the garden, packed up my teapot, and took some dried thyme and lavender to add to the mix along with some Norfolk honey. The class would be based around a cup of tea. 

Then on Saturday morning I sat down at home with a hot water bottle to tune in to the day and the class. The temperature was almost as low inside the house as out and I suddenly noticed my kidneys and hands were really cold. I placed the hot water bottle on my back to warm up my kidneys and carried on considering the class. Five minutes later I noticed not only was my back now warm, but so were my hands! Warming up my back and kidneys had warmed up my hands too. As my system was not just focused on keeping my organs warm, the blood was circulating further out to the extremities. 

"THIS," I thought, "is what I want to pass on to everyone at the Trade School today." Keep your internal organs warm with a hot water bottle. And make a pot of rosemary, thyme and lavender tea with a small amount of honey to help clear those old colds and cheer the spirits!

Ten people turned up for a lively class and in the way of skill and knowledge share and Common Room and Trade School, I was rewarded with friendly people and some lovely gift exchanges: a pair of hand-knitted fingerless gloves, a diary, organic fruit and veg and a jar of homemade Seville orange marmalade, all of which are already being loved, worn (fingerless gloves on as I type!), written in, cooked and eaten!

So thanks to everyone for those and for joining in so heartily. And also for sharing your own knowledge about the virtues of Rosemary, which is also an antiseptic:

"When my brother was a teenager, he had terribly smelly feet," said Sarah. "Our grandmother told him to bathe them every day in cooled rosemary tea. And that soon sorted it out!"

Notes:
(i) For more on The Common Room in Norwich check out the website. There were all sorts of interesting and co-operative/collaborative classes, talks and demonstrations going on on Saturday, besides mine: from creative action for trees and grassroots media to origami and creating complementary currencies. The whole day had a great atmosphere with many people joining in in spite of the cold. And you can see some photos from the day, too!

(ii) I teach people in groups and communities to reconnect with the living world by taking notice of the plants growing right where we are and how that helps increase well-being. Here is some of what I've been doing recently:

Common Plants, Common Room
The Plants for Life 2012 Archive (a monthly series of talks, walks and workshops I organised last year with Sustainable Bungay)
Mark in Flowers

I look forward to doing more Trade School barter sessions at the Common Room! And if you'd like me to come and give a  plant talk (always interactive and practical), or lead a walk or workshop with your group, do let me know: markintransition@hotmail.co.uk

STOP PRESS: Common Room meeting tonight Monday 25 Feb 7-9pm at the Norwich Playhouse (42-58 St Georges St, NR3 1AB) to discuss next steps and how to move forward. This is your chance to join in with setting up a new and exciting community space in Norwich! The meeting is in the Playroom (the room to the right when you come in).

Pics: Preparing the blackboard and the tea at St. Laurence's Church (in an attic-like side room); Passing the rosemary tea at the herbs for Resilience class; Lovely things people brought in exchange for the class

Strategic Thinking or The Library at the End of the World

I knew, as soon as the Man in Seat 61 (c) got on at Colchester, that it was a Sign.

I have been away for a week, he told his fellow commuter, and no more was said between them. It's the influenza season, where public places are a maelstrom of invisible bugs and viruses, waiting to wreak their pesky havoc on the lumbering forms who haven't stepped up their immune systems with echinacea and oranges.

Three days later I found myself in bed unable to get back on the train to London, or even to go outside, and now, dear reader, still horizontal and faced with the awesome prospect of having to write about Strategic Thinking, I fear I am not up to the task. So please bear with me. I will write this introduction to the Building section  (on the Social Reporting Project series about The Transition Companion) as soon as I can.

You may be wondering why I have a photograph of Mark Bee, leader of Suffolk County Council (with various members of Sustainable Bungay peering quizzically at him) here and why I am including a trailer for the new documentary, Chasing Ice (see end of post). But it will make sense. I promise you, by Thursday at the latest.

Some people say the world is coming to an end on Friday. Well maybe not literally, but some tear in the fabric that brings about a collapse in our civilisation. However it plays out it is the end of a long, long cycle of time, mapped out by a people whose own high city culture tumbled into ruin in the forests of the Yucatan.

Sometimes I feel ancient, as though I have seen it all before, and sometimes I feel like a being from the future, starting again with an entirely new bluepint. Sometimes, when I listen to people talk, I think we have learned nothing, in spite of all the books and buildings and all our thinking. But that, as they say, is another story . . .

Part Two: Perseverance Furthers

Transition groups aim ultimately to catalyse the localisation of their local economy. They strive to move from running small community projects to thinking and acting much bigger. New skills and ways of thinking will lead Transition initiatives to become social enterprises, such as becoming developers, banks, energy companies and so on. (Intro to the Building Section of The Transition Companion)

 The main purpose of this Ingredient is to glean knowledge about a local region and what it would take to relocalise the supply systems - the food economy, for example, or energy or transport. It requires undertaking research and amass data that most initiatives would not know how to access, or why. One of the example Rob Hopkins uses to illustrate what is meant by Strategic Thinking is the Norwich Resilient Food Plan.

Which is why here I am almost at the end of 2012, looking back at a cold day in January in the Baptist church on Boltolph Steet, four years ago where 17 of us - a farmer, a miller, several bakers, wholefood shopkeepers, the TN Oats, Beans and Bread group, Professor Martin Wolfe of the Organic Research Institute (researching wheat that can thrive in eco-systems undergoing climate change) and Andrew Whitley of The Village Bakery and author of Bread Matters - are meeting to discuss Resilient Bread. It’s a project aiming to create a sustainable supply of bread for Norwich, using locally milled flour from English wheat, grown on Norfolk farms. One of the components of the Plan that also includes a CSA and a market garden in a local school.
 
The ingredients for real bread are simple - flour, water, salt, yeast. Bringing a resilient local loaf into Norwich is more complex. The mega-distribution system of the big three industrial bakeries have trucks perpetually on the road travelling 200 miles transporting ready-sliced to the city’s 122,000 inhabitants daily. They are roaring across East Anglia from Stevenage, London and Enfield. To feed Norwich sustainably would require 30 tonnes of wheat and several local mills. On the agenda that day in January were questions about the supply chain: quantity of flour, storage and transportation of grain, the price of a loaf, the feasibility of setting up and maintaining an electric mill in the city, the packaging and marketing of the loaves.

East Anglia has arable land for growing the wheat but few working mills. The first challenge for the project is to find a mill in the city to grind the corn. The nearest wind or water mills are 25-30 miles away. The other is the quality of the wheat. The gluten content of bread is a key consideration in baking. Wheat has a very high gluten content (between 12-15 per cent) which gives the dough its extraordinary elasticity and ability to be moulded into the hundreds of shapes in which we have historically consumed it. Artisan bakers in England have been using commercial Canadian flour for decades because its exceptionally high gluten levels makes the light and fluffy white loaf we have got used to. The lower gluten content of our native wheat is compensated for by the industrialised "Chorleywood process".

“No one is going to buy a bad bloomer”, said one of the bakers rather gloomily; “You could call it ciabatta,” another quipped, and there was a long discussion as to how we were going to get over the fact that life was unpredictable and that white and fluffy was not the future. It felt it was going to take some time for all of us to get used to the idea.

Tully Wakeman (the architect of that plan and then a director of East Anglian Food Link) asked me to write up that meeting and it was the first record I made within the initiative. It kickstarted the kind of reporting I have been doing in in Transition ever since. This tiny pic of me going to a neighbourhood bread baking workshop in Yoxford a month later - by a fellow participant on her phone - was the moment where I realised the potential for writing "citizen journalism", small on the ground stories that could grab people's attention about change.

What happened to the plan? you might ask. Well, Tully left Transition Norwich before the CSA (Norwich FarmShare) reaped its first harvest. A small and handsome electric mill did get bought, but the resilient loaf of Norwich did not get baked (well not commercially anyhow). Great British Beans however, which came out of the same staples project, are launching themselves on to the market in January. The bread we buy at Southwold Market is made with flour grown by the farmer at the original meeting. I look at the fields outside my door and recognise peas, oats, barley, potatoes, where once they meant nothing.

The Building section is about stepping up the enterprise. As a comms person this has meant moving from being a personal blogger in my local initiative, to running a national newspaper (Transition Free Press) as a social enterprise. That's a big undertaking that involves thinking about a crew, discussing pieces with people all around the UK and the world, advertising, social media, crowd-funding. It involves risk and 12 hour shifts. Sometimes I look back fondly at the days when I could just write about what was happening in my neighbourhood, stepping out into the frosty lane with my camera, learning how to bake bread. There was a beauty and a lightness to do with those days. But Building is a bigger move. You can't do Transition for real, and stay where you feel small and cosy.

In fact you can't do anything and stay small. If we had stayed small in Bungay there would be no library. The reason we are looking quizzically at Mr Bee, is because we know that in spite of all his words about Bungay Community Library celebrating its 20th Birthday, Suffolk Country Council were famous for zealously wanting to close libraries down. Only some people from the communities in North Suffolk got together and forced them back. What you don't know about this picture at the top is that Sylvia (just out of shot) and James Hargrave (who took the picture) and several others put hundreds of hours of unpaid work into keeping it open. And still do.

So I'm guessing you are wondering what on earth any of this has got to do with a documentary about glaciers. There is one word: perseverance. None of these enterprises work without a big desire or sense of destiny.

You can't photograph the movement of glaciers, without going to extreme places and suffering. You can't save a library, start a collective blog, or run a community bakery, without the kinds of people who are prepared to put themselves on the line against all odds. Norwich FarmShare would not have happened without Tully who pursued a funding application over two years. It wouldn't have worked either, if it had just stayed as a Plan and other Transitioners hadn’t stepped on board to manifest it. So no matter how brilliantly you understand the ingredient of Strategic Thinking, with its data and analysis, maps and bigger picture thinking. it's the people who will make the blueprints work, who translate them into physical reality.

We live in a culture where we think to have an idea is enough and that anyone can do it. If you can bake bread you can start a bakery, right? This section is where those ideas fall down hard. To relocalise a food supply doesn’t happen by growing vegetables in an allotment, you have to look at the staples and where they grow. Transition teaches us that to really succeed we have to know a lot, put in a lot of unpaid hours, and keep going, for reasons only we know. And most of all have the kind of people on board who know what they are doing. That's not strategy. That's something more like luck.

Thank your lucky stars when you find them. . . .



Post originally posted on Social Reporting Project
 
Images: Mark Bee and Sustainable Bungay by James Hargrave (the only geek in the village) Local bread in Breakfast with Friends by Mark Watson; Steve Winter of Dozen Bakery, Norwich by Jane Chittenden (Transition Norwich blog)

Integrating our cities' functions

I've always been a fan of things with multiple functions.  I take great pleasure in the fact that the tree which I've been building a treehouse in with and for my niece and nephew is not just a place of recreation for them, but is also contributing to the air we breathe, supporting various forms of wildlife, and providing a visual and physical barrier at the edge of a field.

But this is a trivial example in comparison to many others.  Cities, one could argue, are the ultimate in providing multiple functions in one space. Within one city block, there will be housing, entertainment venues, cafés, shops, public buildings, transportation hubs.

Within each of those, many human needs may be served at once. The best cafés, in my opinion, are ones which provide good food, a calm environment and wifi access so that I can work on my own, as well as a nice space to meet with friends or colleagues. Even better if the café has a community noticeboard, outdoor seating, enriching art on the walls and a few plants around.

It troubles me that some areas of cities have lost touch with what makes them great - this multiplicity of functions - and have been compartmentalising themselves.  In Norwich, the city centre is a place to shop, but with relatively so little residential property, it becomes dead at night, and seems cold and unfriendly. The suburban housing estates, meanwhile, lay empty in the middle of the day whilst everyone is at work in the city centre, but become active once again in the evenings when residents get back from work.

Flats in the city centre of Freiburg, Germany

OK, some would argue that that's just how cities work. But you only have to cross the channel to see that that isn't entirely true. Cities such as Amsterdam, Netherlands or Frieburg, Germany (above) enrich their city centres with multiple functions, with housing right in the centre, greenery on the rooftops, and plenty of multiple function public spaces and shops, serving shoppers during the day, and residents in the evenings.

Food From The Sky on the roof of Budgens, Crouch End, London

Transition, I feel, is all about this integration of functions in local communities, serving local needs locally.  Why ship food from across the world, when it could be grown on our rooftops? Why get contractors in from London when we could be giving Norwich people jobs, keeping money in the local economy?  Why separate work and living zones when integrating them together will reduce need for transportation and make places more vibrant places to live?

Whilst we operate as individuals, or as single organisations serving their own needs, it is easy to lose sight of how what we're doing might be affecting the things that are going on within our communities and cities.  That's why this Friday's meeting, "What's Happening in Transition Norwich", was organised. It's a chance for us to learn about what is going on in Norwich, and how collaboration can lead to the enriching of community, each action serving multiple human needs at once.

Images: all by Simeon Jackson

When the experiment fails

This is part of a series we are running on the Social Reporting Project, looking at the 74 Transition Ingredients and Tools.

I was going to write about Communicating with the Media, a nifty tool in the second section of The Transition Companion. I planned a practical exploration to the business of writing press releases and cultivating a positive relationship with local newspapers and radio. But then whilst Becoming the Media - creating the preview issue of the Transition Free Press - I stumbled upon a subject which was closer to home, nearer the bone. More urgent, I reckoned, than raising awareness of our local projects in the mainstream press.

The title of the second chapter is Deepening, and contains some of the harder aspects of Transition. The start up phase of initiatives is often exuberant and exciting. People are attracted to the buzz, full of hope and expectation. They stand up in rooms and declare what we (you) could do. Deepening is when you first hit the wall. Ideas and fancies about downshifting turn out not to be the reality of downshifting. Those big words fade in the light of day. You realise that you have to get on with the people in the room and do the work. Power struggles happen in deepening. Things don't go according to plan. People leave and let you down. You let people down. It's awkward because you don't know anyone in your fledgling initiative that well. The groups start to falter. What do you do?

Celebrating Failure is perhaps the least understood ingredient in the book. Because we live in a culture of success. No matter how we talk about losing being part of the game, it's still losing. Victors take all, stand on the podium crowned with laurels, king of the castle, biggest banker on the block. No one wants to be in the beaten team, on the bottom of the pecking order. But to be in Transition means we have to understand this win-or-lose mindset as an old order we need to transform.

Interviewing Shaun Chamberlin for the paper, he talked about the new book, The Future We Deserve, in which 100 authors write 500 words on their take of the title:

What was interesting in it was dissensus. The recognition that Nature doesn't decide by consensus on the ideal life form before it creates it. It just creates and creates and some things work and some things don’t work and I think Transition follows that “dissensus” approach - we don’t try and have a universal plan for everything. If someone wants to do something they go and do it. As Rob wrote about the punk ethic (here's three chords, now start a band): Here’s three ingredients, go and start a Transition initiative. That is that creative energy that underlies dissensus. Let some of the projects that we undertake thrive and let some of them die and don’t feel that everything we do has to succeed.

In a creative frame, you try everything. You start with the idea of communicating some key tips about the meda but then a more pressing subject comes up. So you change direction. From the creative perspective everything is material. There is no loss or failure. You carve your piece out of the mud, the clay falls to the ground, you sweep it up and use it again another time. Nothing is wasted. Everything is compost and you need that compost - those past events, meetings, open spaces, clashes, those wasted leaves, those dead heads. You need that stuff to rot down in order grow nourishing and beautiful flowers for the future.

In Deepening all the expectations of how life should be come up for examination, and it is wise to know Transition is not what you think it should be at all. But of course you don't read the manual. Your ego hits the wall, you are challenged in all directions. Most people at this stage, rather than let go of their defence systems, or their lifestyle, leave and blame Transition for not living up to their shiny idea of it. That's not the failure of Transition, it's the challenge of our society. We don't live with the messy paint box of dissensus, we live in the pure and airy ideals of the mind, and the vicious battleground of the will. I do it my way. Publish that email and be damned.

If we had heart we would realise that everything we do in Transition is to create a future that is not apocalypse, and in many ways we are blind to what this might look like. We are feeling our way ahead and "failures" are merely telling us that some paths are the ones we don't need to go down. Try again. Move your attention somewhere else.

Valuing experience

OK, so this is the theory. What about the practice? In 2009 I helped organise the second Transition East gathering in Diss and before the event interviewed 29 initiatives on the phone. I collated all the information and posted it on a regional blog. I asked everyone the same questions. How were they doing, how many people were in the initiative, what kind of town, village were they in etc? Everyone cheerfully answered the questions. Do you have any difficulties? I then asked them. There would be a hesitation and then suddenly a huge outpouring would happen. Ten minutes would turn into an hour. Up until this point no one had mentioned dificulties. We weren't sure how to handle them. But the fact is the difficulties were not "wrong". They are our experience of change, how we know what to focus on, and what not.

Today many of those initiatives do not exist. The initiative I have been in (Norwich) is a shadow of its former self. The 14 groups that began so exuberantly after our Unleashing in 2008 no longer exist. The core group disappeared. The Heart and Soul group faded away. In April the monthly bulletin was not sent out, as it had been for the last three years on the first of every month. No one noticed. Or if they did, they did not say anything.

What does this tell us? Some territories are not fertile ground for Transition. Something holds groups together and if it's missing the group will disband. At some point you realise that you need to put your time and energy into projects that feed back, and not just because you can do them or that you are expected to. You need to go with the spirit of the times, be amongst people who understand that the project matters. That communication matters. That Transition is not a hobby, a once-a-month feel good community thing, it's for real.

Some of this stuff is bitter stuff to swallow. And we don't like bitter, we like the sweet and sugary things in life, the triumphs and the happy moment. But bitter, as all medicine people will tell you, is the taste of the heart. It's what tells you what is good and not good for the system, how you grow up and take responsibility for your actions. How experience teaches us to shift out of being the haughty me-against-Them people who want to rule the universe and become fellows with all beings on the planet.

The loss of these groups told us that power struggles are not for the future, nor is old-fashioned spirituality, hierarchy of any kind, hostility or control. It taught us that you can't really co-opt the future. It doesn't belong to big business or to the institution, and it will slip out of the Empire's clutches at every turn. In Norwich we learned that our Transition Circles brought a key aspect into the fabric of Transition - personal carbon reduction. We have one circle left still meeting, but the legacy of all that great experiment lives on. It's in the comments pages of the Transiition Free Press, it's in the interview with Shaun Chamberlin. It's just taking another form, working with a new mix of people. No blame. No loss. No failure. Just celebration.

P.S. There is only one real tip I would add to the media tool in the book and it's this: journalists are people and finding the story is what we really care about.

Photos: Untitled piece by Maria Elvorith for the cover of The Future We Deserve; Banner for February edition of Transition Norwich news bulletin; Transition East Gathering 2009 at Diss; with Alexis Rowell, News Editor of Transition Free Press (photo: Sarah Nicholl)

Transition Dad and Other Unofficial Initiatives

My father lives in a mobile home on an ex-airfield in central England with electricity but no running water. The surrounding land is used for farming and until recently there was a scrapyard next door. There is also a caravan onsite. In the ten years he’s been there he has completely renovated the place himself, made a garden and built a shed, all re-using scrapped and salvaged materials.

The following excerpts are from emails he has written to me in response to This Low Carbon Life, where he talks as a lifelong craftsman and maker about his own experiences of rebuilding, repurposing and reusing.

When I was growing up, in the way of children, I took for granted the kitchen he made out of scrap wood and old insulator crates from the railway. Now I'm older and in transition I've come to realise just how valuable this practical expertise is. My father's name is Richard and in three days time he will be 72.

2010/2011

Hi Mark,

I have been reading your transition blogposts and find them very interesting. Did you get the photos of my abode? The whole exercise was one big re-purposing. I am pleased to see that you were paying subliminal attention to me when you were growing up in regard to finding new uses for things as that has been my way of looking at life…

Water and Heating

Hi Mark,

I have just been reading your latest blog and admire your push for simpler living. As you know I have electricity but no other utilities. I have seven water butts which collect rain from the roof, one of which I have now connected up to pump water to the sink for washing. I came into possession of a redundant central heating pump which is 250v. This had been scrapped. I stripped it down and found the impeller was blocked and not allowing water to pass though. After cleaning it out and reassembling the pump it worked perfectly.

Prior to this I was experimenting with 12v narrow boat pumps which were not really practical as batteries and some form of charging was needed. I used 1/2" plastic pipe which I salvaged from scrap. I had to buy some connectors and elbows and tap fittings. The electrical stuff I had collected over the years (sometimes it pays to hoard). The cost of it all was about £15.00. My next project is to make a solar water heating system out of scrap black plastic pipe which I have. This will be mounted in a large frame painted black inside with a silver reflective surface on the bottom. A thermostat will control the flow into a 45 gallon drum for storage. This will be in an insulated box.

If you know any Transitioners who have experience of making something similar I would be interested to hear from them. Give them my email address.

Love, Dad XXX

Garden

Hi Mark,
I thought you might like a few pictures of my garden. It was all done from recovered materials from the airfield and was completely covered in rubbish and nettles before I started work on it. The Sparrow hawk I took this morning. The greater spotted woodpecker flew off before I could get him properly…

I hope you are ok for the coming cold spell (Nov 2010). I have been collecting wood from the site but my chain saw is playing up so it's all hand sawing which warms me up anyway. Love, Dad. XXX

Waste

Hi Mark,

Glad you liked the photos. In reference to your blog on energy waste, I remember that in the 70's when we had the last energy crisis, we were told that oil would run out in twenty years. We had the three day week and were told to share a bath (with our neighbours?), pick up people at the bus stop and keep to a 50mph speed limit among other things. In carrying out service work around the country at the time, I remember that the businesses most profligate were the public utilities. When the time to clean up came I was astonished that in most cases the water was actually scalding hot, lights on in all the offices etc.

Since then car ownership and usage has increased dramatically with the focus on larger 4wd's. We don't need the brains of Einstein to see that politicians and governments only pay lip service to the concerns of peak oil and climate change.

You might be interested in what the farmer here told me recently. He has materials delivered by a transport firm who also collect paper and plastic waste from a massive depot near the MI for shipping to China to be sorted.

The driver told him that once sorted by Chinese children on a vast tip in a remote location they then burn the paper waste. If true, so much for the UK commitment to recycling and eco concern, as it must be sanctioned. Export licences and so on. I have long held the view that global and international trade and finance govern worldwide behind the scenes and that politicians and governments are just the puppet frontmen, paying lip service to the concerns of the people.

I know many people think this way and it is heartening to know that the transition movement is going some way to reclaim the imbalance. It seems the next logical step is transition communes where all the ideas and skills can be combined. Dad XXX

Shed

Hi Mark, the following photos are of the shed I made from 100% recovered materials that I scavenged from the airfield. The timber would have been burnt.

The space is at the back of the mobile home between two brick buildings. As you can see I had to extend the floor to get the size needed.

The side with the ladder was an old shed side that was on the bonfire, waiting to be burnt, as was all the other timber. The bath I took from the mobile to make more space inside and to use as water storage. The roof is 8x4 chip board with heavy asbestos sheets on top. As I said all the materials were on site.

An amazing thing happened. I needed a door which I was going to make. Having no windows the shed would be dark inside.

The morning I was about to begin, I went over to the the site where the fire is and there was the door with a glass panel in it laying there ready to be burnt. The only things I bought were the guttering elbows. Even the paint was free.

When I look at it now I am glad I did it a couple of years ago as my back is no longer up to it . You can add any of this to your blog if you want.

Love, Dad XXX

Chip Off The Old Oak

Nov 2011

Hi Mark,

Hope you are well, although I was a bit worried seeing your photo that you were in the process of being blogged up to Transitionland. Dad. XXX

Dec 2011

Hi Dad,

Got your message and hope you're keeping well. I've got some Bungay Community beeswax for you. Elinor, our beekeeper, did a great job of purifying it. On Sunday I went to her house and taught people from the bee group how to make yarrow salve using the beeswax. It turned out really well and smells amazing. I'll get some to you as it's excellent for the kinds of cuts, burns and abrasions you get when you work a lot with your hands.

It's really mild here still, twelve degrees with a strong south wind. I'm doing quite a bit of writing. And I haven't been transmigrated to Transitionland entirely yet!

What kinds of things are you making from the wood turning?

Keep well and warm,

Mark x

Hi Mark,

I continue reading your work with interest and I am sure it has an influence on peoples' thinking about the way forward towards a different society which I believe will come as more people are seeing through the bull**it that is disseminated through the media by those trying to cling to power. You know all this anyway.

I have been making various items from the old oak I got when they replaced the canal lock gates, so the wood is possibly 400 years old. The beeswax is ideal for getting a nice finish and I’ll make the polish myself. One of the things I hope to do is make a pole lathe from the scrap wood I have. The thing about working in wood is that it is entirely natural, and has for me a spiritual connection. When you take a piece of wood that was destined to be burnt as scrap and expose the inner beauty through either turning or planing it is a satisfying process. The next item I make I will send you before and after photos of the wood.

The weather has been very changeable with wind and rain but cold at night. I have been keeping warm as I hope you have. I have got loads of old logs and stuff to burn that are no good for making things from.

Lots of love, Dad. XXX

Being Part of it All

Everyone reading this post will know our modern world is made of oil, from this computer to my toothbrush to the global food and transport systems. We are utterly dependent on it.

Responding to Peak Oil on a community level is one of the original drivers of Transition together with climate change. These drivers are what made a group of us in the pioneering Transition Circles spend 2009-2010 explore ways of cutting our personal carbon use to half the national average. And write about our experiences.

But what about the kind of people we are now after 150 years of cheap fossil fuel energy and all the perks that have gone with it - aeroplanes to cars to i-pods? I'd just assumed before my Peak Oil moment(s) that the "stuff" around us would be around forever. And that I would carry on not having much to do with anybody beyond my immediate circle. I had my own life, my own interests, my own world. I didn't really have to deal with other people. But this was an illusion.

Seeing through this illusion of being isolated, individual units in control of our own world as if we had no connection with or impact on anything or anybody beyond it is one of the biggest human challenges right now. We’ve had the energy and wealth (at least in the West) to keep ourselves apart from our fellow humans, ignore the planet that sustains us, whilst using up its physical (and human) 'resources' (hate that term) and cocoon ourselves in a web of consumerist products made of those resources.

This illusion of independence from the physical world casts a powerful spell. I meet a friend occasionally for a drink. We get on well and enjoy each others’ company. But I also have a strange and mysterious Power: the ability to bring the conversation and the evening to an abrupt end at any given moment. And not because I am endowed with any magical secrets. All I need do is mention the FINITE NATURE of the PLANET’S PHYSICAL ‘RESOURCES’, quite gently, throwaway even, and a restlessness ensues and suddenly it's time to go home.

I don’t do that on purpose. I just don't seem to be able to keep it out of the conversation.

My own separatist defence systems (which are not really my own, more conditioned social responses) have been breaking down slowly and surely over these past years in transition. I wouldn’t even be sitting with that friend four years ago. I probably would have been sitting at home on my own.

I would also not be visiting the Occupiers in Norwich or going to the workers’ rally in Lowestoft, or speaking with the local MP about climate change, or taking people on bee and wildflower walks around Bungay, writing these blogposts, working with a group of people on the Low Carbon Cookbook, or be part of the Transition Network Social Reporters’ project. I wouldn't be talking to Frank and Jeremy about chia, or keep forgetting to send helenofnorwich the photos I took of us picking sloes when she came down to visit with her girlfriend.

Or going over today to Kris and Eloise’s with Sustainable Bungay and the Norfolk Permaculture Group to help out on their work day chopping wood, moving compost and making soup...

Pics: Sunrise Autumn 2011 (MW); Me, Helen, Jo at Walberswick by helenofnorwich

Building Resilient Trading - Economics & Livelihoods Group

Colman Opticians, which has been trading on St. Augustines Street for many years, and Junk & Gems, a new retro/antiques shop

Ever since I first proposed a visioning session on behalf of the economics and livelihoods group, I have been asked the same questions multiple times - why should Transition Norwich be interested in local economic development, and what do I hope to achieve by a "visioning" session in St. Augustines Street?

The first has a simple, but long-winded answer, which I won't be able to cover fully here, but I'll include links to relevant websites and videos. Essentially, a vibrant and cohesive local economy means that more products and services are accessible on foot or cycle, reducing transport carbon emissions and oil use; money is kept in the local economy, and its power to serve local people multiplies as a result; and the community is more able to face challenges together and respond to global shocks quickly.

Numbers 74 and 75 are both being redecorated and fitted out for commercial use, the latter as a hairdresser, the former unknown.

So what do we hope to achieve by "visioning"? Afterall, none of us are capable of noting a community's wants and desires one day and plonking it on the street the next. And to do so, even if we could, would, I feel, be denying the community the right to evolve its own nature and personality in accordance with all those who reside and work there (the reason why many New Towns and blanket developments have spectacularly failed to achieve strong communities).

What we hope to achieve is an ongoing conversation between those who live and work in the area, so that cooperation is at the core of what the community does and there is a common sense of what the area means to people, and what it should become. It is, I feel, the second question on the visioning questionnaire (see below) that is most important - What personality would you like the area to have?

Numbers 31 and 33 are both undergoing extensive work but will be open as commercial properties at a later date

With this information in place, we can start bringing together the people who might make it happen. If traders are concerned that a particular empty shop is having an effect on their business, then we can try to identify the owner, find an entrepreneur who is looking for a place to trade from, help identify grants which may apply to bring the property into good repair and then setup a traders' association so that new and old businesses support each other.

Now, this is just an example, and in truth, something which appeared viable may be found not to be, and alternative paths must be explored... but this is the entire point of the exercise - to explore what paths are there, rather than making the assumption that there are none and that empty properties will remain so forever.

Numbers 5 and 59 are both boarded up and in need of some love and care, but number 5, with its prominent position with plenty of pavement space at the bottom of the street gives it loads of potential! The owners are not known.

I thank those who have sent back their questionnaires with their answers and will be getting in touch soon to share any analysis, but if you're interested in the future of St Augustines Street, it's not too late to get involved! Just answer these questions (with particular focus on b!):

a) What shops/services/facilities would you like to use/see locally?

b) What personality would you like the area to have?

c) What particular changes would have a positive effect on your life/business?

d) What would save you money, resources or wasted time?

e) What do you or your business have to offer to the development of the local economy in terms of premises, time and/or expertise?

You can email your answers to me at simeon@simeonjackson.co.uk

All photos taken by me.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

"Soon there'll be no jobs working for the Boss," Mark said to me at a One World Column meeting.

What I've realised this week as I engage in the topic of sustainable livelihoods is that it's not a simple matter. Jobs, for example, are not the same as livelihoods (see Rethink the idea of Jobs by Joanne Poyourow of Transition LA.)

I’ve spoken with fellow transitioners on the phone and at Green Drinks, followed the blog and paid attention to the unfolding Occupy movement. I even bumped into Richard who was installing solar pv's in a neighbouring village and read an interview saying 40% of bankers will lose their jobs.

"We used to install solar panels for people with an interest in environmental sustainability. Now the motivation is purely financial," Richard told me. I heard similar words from the vicar at Bungay's solar-powered Emmanuel church. People are doing it for money. Just business. As usual.

Context and Sustainability of Physical Matter
One thing came up repeatedly in the conversations: as individuals we can be dedicated to living an environmentally-friendly life, even run a local or home business with minimum carbon emissions and energy use on a day to day basis and provide work for people locally, like John. Yet every one of us in the UK and the West, works (or not) within the context of an oil-dependent, energy-intensive globalised system - however our money comes in, whether through a paid job, self-employment or benefits.

How long that system can be kept going (one meaning of sustainable) is debatable. But the physical fossil fuels it (and therefore we) have been depending on are finite and the main one, oil, which is embedded in all our goods and services, is peaking or has peaked. It’s downhill from now.

People and Social Sustainability
The theme on the Transition Network’s Social Reporting project this week is Diversity and Social Justice. In a comment on Kerry Lane’s excellent Helping Your Community Out First, fellow social reporter and smallholder Ann of Transition Bro Dyfi writes:

(It is) so easy to exclude all those who are working really long hours on tiny incomes, those who rather than jobs, have livelihoods, where a patchwork of jobs, skills and goods are traded to make a living, leaving little time or energy for community organisation…

…When a tenner a week makes a difference, that's what I call money poverty. It creates a level of ongoing insecurity which is exhausting, physically as well as emotionally. There are lots of us in this kind of situation, but mostly we go unnoticed until we become homeless, a situation we're only ever one rent raise away from.

This shows that when we’re looking at “sustainable livelihoods”, we’re also looking at social justice. And we’re back to context. There are lots of us in this situation. Most of the people I speak to in transition in fact.

Considering Ann’s words I see a direct link between the exhausting ongoing insecurity, and the tactics of ‘shock doctrine’ Chicago School-style economics, which underlie the present ideological ‘austerity measures’ and keep the illusion of economic growth going so an uberwealthy 1% can carry on landgrabbing and lording it over the rest of us.

Transition and me

So what about me? I'm looking for work. Work that, as the old economic system crumbles is the only kind of work that makes sense to me - helping to build a parallel infrastructure for the future with the underlying permaculture ethics of earth care, people care and fair shares. Some do this by growing food, setting up energy co-operatives or working with alternative currencies.

My skills work best in becoming our own media, which I spoke about in News From The Engine Room last week. I've worked with people all my life, helping them to make shifts in their personal and planetary lives. The challenge now is to do it within a new paradigm.

And to get paid for it.

Pics: Great Depression, taken from Rethink the idea of jobs by Joanne Poyourow; Earth Care, People Care, Fair Shares at Bungay Co-op Family Fun Day, August 2011

Thanks to Charlotte, Nick and Josiah, fellow transitioners with low incomes for vital in person and telephone conversations

Biodiesel - A First Reaction

Last October I wrote about my meeting with a waste vegetable oil man in Beccles, and talked about the beginnings of our Biodiesel group in Sustainable Bungay. This is an update based on a December visit to a man who makes biodiesel at home and our own first attempts at a reaction last Saturday.

But first, why am I part of a Transition Biodiesel group, when I don't even have a car at the moment? Well, for several reasons, not least the social benefits of being part of a community group that's making something useful together. But equally, at a time when oil prices are soaring through the roof and with political instability in so many oil producing countries, plus the realities of Peak Oil, it just makes sense to engage in a project that focuses my mind and gets me thinking in a really practical way about these things.

And you can use biodiesel for other purposes - oil lamps for instance. (Though there are obvious drawbacks with used chip fat - unless you're into things like scratch and sniff!).

(i)
On a very cold December day Josiah, Kris and I took a trip down to Aldeburgh to see Colin, a retired chemical engineer who has been making biodiesel at home now for three or four years. Colin welcomed us with a mug of tea and showed us around his set up, explaining the process - from collecting waste vegetable oils from food outlets through cleaning the dirty vegetable oil, reacting the clean oil with lye, separating the crude biodiesel and glycerol and washing the crude biodiesel with water to produce the final vehicle-worthy product you can see in the photos.

Throughout the visit Colin answered our questions on everything from handling lye (the caustic which is vital for the trans-esterification reaction which converts the vegetable oil to biodiesel and glycerol) to the disposal or recycling of the waste glycerol. He advised anyone making biodiesel for the first time not to rush into producing enormous amounts.
“The thing is to start small, doing the reactions with some glass or plastic bottles,” he said. “Then as you get used to handling the liquids, you can increase the amount.” This came as a great relief as I had been eyeing that caustic lye with some trepidation.

The legal limit for home biodiesel production is 2,500 litres per year, tax-free. This is what Sustainable Bungay’s Biosdiesel group will aim at initially. For the project to get underway properly we would have to wait for wamer weather. Colin meanwhile invited us to come round the next time he does a ‘reaction’.

(ii)
Last Saturday, 19^th February a dozen of us turned up at Kris and Eloise's to have a look at the set up in their garage and to make our first three litres of biodiesel. We crowded into the living room where Kris introduced the project and we discussed everything from logistics to legalities before descending on the kitchen for Eloise’s delicious soup and homebaked bread, David’s tasty flapjacks (his first ever!), Elinor's ginger cake (no comment required!) and Brenna's polenta, lemon and orange cake, also a first. I ate three slices of that!

Then we cleared all the food and utensils out of the way to do the reaction. Great care was needed (and taken) pouring the lye/methanol first into a glass measuring jug and then into plastic bottles with vegetable oil. As it was our first time (and the weather had not yet warmed up), we used clean vegetable oil, which does not go hard as lard in the winter.

Kris wore protective goggles and everyone handling the mixtures wore gloves. David and Josiah took photos. We kept the windows open to avoid suffocation by noxious fumes. My nervousness about caustic liquids was allayed both by the presence of Mike, a chemical engineer, and the fact that Kris was so calm.

We had to keep the temperature of the mixture at below 50 degrees for the reaction to take place safely (methanol is volatile and can produce an easily ignited vapour at higher temperatures), so the bottles were placed in a pan on the stove for about an hour. Meanwhile we went to look at the reaction vessel.

I had to leave shortly afterwards but here below is the result of our first biodiesel-making session.

Pics: Pouring the Oil (notice no gloves here!); Colin's Biodiesel; Pouring the Lye/Methanol mix (serious glove time!); Still in the Garage; First Bottle of Biodiesel - Photos by Josiah Meldrum, David Poston and Mark Watson

Starting Somewhere

I’ve had some really interesting conversations over the last week or so, inspired, no doubt, in part by the ongoing “austerity measures” that are really starting to to be felt by the ordinary person in the street.  The conversations run along the line of “I really want to do something but I don’t know where to start”.

There’s a feeling that it’s all too much for people – they don’t know what to do and feel paralysed.  Classic shock syndrome.

I don’t pretend to know all the answers, far from it.  But, for those guys, and you know who you are, here is my personal top ten of where to start.

1. Pay attention – to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, it’s very difficult to know what you don’t know.  So you have to get out there and find out what’s really going on in the world.  Read the news (real news, not the slop that passes for news on much of the TV and the tabloids), read magazines, blogs and books.  Norwich library has hundreds of books on various subjects, and some great “dummy guide to” style books.  It’ll take a bit of effort, but once you learn about some of the things happening in the world – happening in your name - you will Get Angry.

2. Get Angry – research suggests that people will only make a change in their lives once they reach a certain point of anger and frustration.  That point is different for different people, but we all have it.  To actually want to do something, you’ll need to get angry. One of my favourite cartoons of last year reminded me that so much is interlinked – peak oil, climate change, economics, social justice, respect for people and planet.  So whichever subject floats your anger-boat, you’ll be in good company.  But anger can be very unfocussed, so it’s important to Arm Yourself.

3. Arm Yourself – with facts (not guns, obviously).  There are lots of people out there who will tell you that a) you’re wrong, or b) that you’re just a dreamer and it won’t make any difference.  Prove them wrong.  Learn some facts about climate change, about economics, whatever.  The more you learn, the more you’ll want to learn.  And also, make sure you learn the counter-arguments.  Learn the rhetoric of the other side of the argument; some arguments you’ll never win, but you may give the other person something to think about.  The important thing is to Get Involved in the debate.

4. Get involved – this should be an easy one in the sense that the country is buzzing with debate around the economy at the moment and the government’s various proposals of how to deal with it, from tax reform to selling off the forests, to restructuring the NHS.  People will want to know your opinion, so let them know.  Not just colleagues and friends, but also your MPs, councillors etc.  Make sure these last two know what you want from them, regardless of the party they represent.  Remember, they don’t represent a party, they represent you.  Make sure they remember that too.

5. Build Resilience – one of the challenges to getting started is feeling that you’re just one insignificant person facing a sea of indifference at best, strong resistance at worst.  But you’re not alone; look around you, there are hundreds of groups, thousands of people all wanting to make a difference; make things better for the many, not just for the few.  Transition Norwich is one such group, and there are many more, big and small.  Working with others will remind you that you’re not alone, and that together, people can work wonders.  If you don’t believe me, think of the suffragist movement, the trade union movement, the fall of the Berlin Wall; look at what’s happening in Cairo at the moment.  Think about the growth of Fairtrade or the Transition movement. Working together will build your personal resilience and inspire you. So, be inspired, and then take action.  If you’re not ready yet to jump right in, you could dip a toe in the water and Start with the Small Things.

6. Start with the Small Things – magazines and Sunday supplements are full of articles on the “ten things” that will save the planet, save the environment etc.  I’m fairly sceptical of these top tens, because they all tend to be pretty similar in subject and in scale.  Changing your lightbulbs to energy-saving ones and lagging the loft are all small things, and to my mind, lack ambition.  But hey, we’ve all got to start somewhere, and let’s start with the easy wins.  Have a look at your house and lifestyle and see what you can change. The plus side is that a lot of these Sunday supplement suggestions will also save you money, so you’ll get a warm fuzzy feeling from your bank statement as well as your conscience.  And, hopefully, as with learning to walk, once you’ve taken your first tottering steps, you’ll soon want to learn to run.

But before we embark on the big changes, it’s worth pausing to take a Look Behind the Curtain.

7. Look behind the Curtain – the world is a complex place, and what seems clear cause and effect isn’t always the case.  There are hundreds of examples, but one of my favourites is that of the Somali pirates.  Quick caveat – I’m not condoning piracy or the violence that goes with it.  Obviously…  However, there’s a view that the rise in piracy off the coast of east Africa was directly related to the overfishing and subsequent depletion of our own fish stocks.  Once we’d fished out the North Sea, then the North Atlantic, we in Europe sought new fishing grounds to keep the supermarket ice-counters full.  The industrial fleets moved into the Indian Ocean, and displaced the traditional fishing lifecycles of the people already living there.  So, skilled sailors with boats suddenly had no jobs, no income, and no way of supporting or feeding their families.  Next thing, Saga cruises are being held up by pirates. That’s a simplistic assessment of the situation, but the kind of scenario that you see when you look behind the curtain of the traditional media explanations.  There are many, many similar stories.

So if that kind of thing really hacks you off, maybe it’s time to start doing the Big Things.

8. Do the Big Things – you know the kinds of things I’m talking about – the things we discuss a lot on this blog.  Flying, shopping local, buying organic, making things, reusing things, changing your personal financial model, cutting down on consumption, challenging the economic growth model.  These are the things that can frighten people, but they’re actually the things that really mean something.  They can require personal sacrifice, or sometimes they just feel like they require personal sacrifice.  Once you make a change, you might wonder why you hadn’t done it before.

9. Live like you Mean It – we had a laugh at work on Friday as I said I wouldn’t get a bacon bap for breakfast unless I knew where the bacon had come from.  I was kind of joking as I’d already had my breakfast, but there was a serious point too.  I do have a personal code that guides the decisions I make.  I don’t always make the right choices; other things get in the way and I have to compromise – that’s life.  But I try and I think we have to keep trying. I want to leave the world a little better than it was when I entered it; leave a legacy for my children and grandchildren that I can be proud of.  I won’t Give Up.

10. Enjoy Yourself and Don’t Give Up – my children constantly remind me that you can’t take yourself – and life –too seriously.  The challenges facing us are great, but working towards solutions can be a lot of fun – that’s one thing that Transition Norwich has taught me.  There’s a great bunch of people working towards a better, more equitable future, so join in.  Don’t give up, and have some fun on the way.

*****

So there it is – a very personal view.  What do people think?  What have I missed?  What would be in your top ten, or even top three?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Pic from www.businesszone.co.uk

Living the advice

There is now a copious amount of advice out there on how to live a low carbon life. However, having given some of it a go I am coming to the conclusion that quite a lot of it was designed by people who haven't tried it out themselves. Recently I have come up against this in relation to household energy saving.

Insulation v's ventilation

The household energy efficiency watchword is insulation insulation insulation. This is all well and good but if you block all of the drafts and insulate everything then the air stops flowing and your house gets nasty and fusty. I am currently stuck in a horrible conundrum in my - rather chilly - bedroom between shutting the window to keep it warmer or leaving it open so that there is some fresh air in the room. I really don't understand how you are supposed to reconcile these two things. If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them.

Secondary glazing

As we live in a rented house with no double glazing we decided to give the DIY secondary glazing a go. So we bought the plastic stuff from thorns and after several attempts we managed to correctly decipher the instructions. However, it turns out the tape they provide to stick the plastic to the window frames is not actually that sticky when it is being put on old wooden window frames. We have now purchased some ordinary double sided tape that works much better, but we can't help but feel that the DIY kit was designed for lovely shiny new plastic framed windows, but they are probably going to be double glazed already! So who knows what the manufacturers were thinking - they probably weren't.

But we have got past that hurdle and now are windows are beautifully shrink wrapped. Unfortunately they keep getting wrinkly though, so we have to keep reheating it. So over all not a resounding success so far but we shall see how it progresses.

Clothes drying

How are you supposed to dry your clothes in the winter without making your house damp? Line drying clothes in the summer is great, but come the winter they take a lot longer to dry and intervals between rain showers get a lot smaller. So I often resort to drying clothes inside, but as the house is now so well draught proofed and not keep particularly warm this doesn't add to the general atmosphere of the house - cold and damp are not a friendly combination. But what are the other alternatives? I have tried drying clothes in the conservatory, but they never really get completely dry out there, so I am a bit stumped. We are going to have to find a practical solution to this problem though as it is one that we are all going to have to tackle in the future.

So in practice the green advice is not actually always that easy to follow or has not actually been practically tested. So I suppose that is why we are here! We are the pioneers who are trying all of this out, so we can tell everyone else how they can dry their clothes with zero energy in the winter and have a well insulated house with lots of fresh air....

Photos: Our secondary glazed windows - note all the wrinkles that have appeared - boo and Radiator foil.

Blog-diversity

The very fact this blog exists with posts of such consistent variety and quality amongst our dozen contributors I see as a cause for celebration in itself.

In this first year we have written over 300 pieces about growing our own food, Transition patterns, our experiences of voluntary or necessary downshifting, the carrying capacity of the planet, the struggle to engage with Transition within a predominantly non–transition culture, connecting with the natural world, low carbon travel... the list continues. And what about all our great pictures!

There are so many posts I have enjoyed and could talk about. Erik's Trees love bookcrossing, for example, or Charlotte's A Useless Generation. But for this retro-week, I’ve chosen Peak Alienation from our Personal Resilience Week in August. The intelligent and sensitive way Andy engages with the subject of inner transition, making something that is notoriously difficult to express both readable and comprehensible, is no mean feat and has my respect. I’ll leave him to speak for himself.

And may we continue in all our blogodiversity!

Me on beach singing "I Know What I'm Here For" (James), photographed by Andy Croft; Peak Stones by me

Peak Alienation by Andy Croft - 20 August

Maybe this is where we're at after 60 years of consumerism in the UK... Peak Alienation.

When I discovered Transition Norwich it was at a time of peak alienation in my life, and I was yearning to find a bunch of conscious human beings. I struggle with the term 'inner resilience' because it sounds like too much of a solitary pursuit. Solitude can be a useful thing, a necessary thing sometimes, even a pleasure, but being a hermit is not a sustainable venture (I know). As I commented on Gary's excellent post earlier this week, we are not islands; I think an inner resilience comes from knowing we share collective faith in a transition, however imperfectly defined it is.

My own faith in that transition is at least partly defined by the people I am on my journey with. I use a small 't' for transition because I keep seeing and reading it in so many places that are not connected with the Transition Network, but share the core appreciation that a radical, if not polar, shift in human culture is necessary and practically inevitable if we are going to survive as a species. Humanity can't be measured in empirical terms - who-does-what-well is only so useful. I think we all contribute to an evolving framework for shared resilience, sometimes in subtle and uncredited ways.

The indefinable factor in the transition IS the differences between us and how we relate to each other. That we have bothered to join in Transition with a capital T denotes a shared vision, intelligence and realisation of the fact that we have to do SOMETHING about it. Sometimes, disappointingly and even shockingly, this is where our similarities stop. And resilience is about withstanding shocks. And there are no shocks as withering sometimes as personal reaction to inter-personal tensions when they emerge.

So here is the first shock we need to weather if the Transition movement is going to be a force for transition of any kind. Resilience can mean bouncing back, but an elastic capacity to absorb shock and retain the same shape is perhaps not what's needed. Instead, maybe what's needed is the learning that comes with recuperation; reconstruction beyond the shock. Perhaps this kind of resilience is easier to plan for in external, practical systems like food, or buildings and energy.

Bridging divides between people, repairing a sense or expectation of alienation, requires empathy and that isn't something that our present society is encouraged to practise. Instead we have been encouraged to seek out common enemies in order to form some unified majority, which only ever causes 'us and them': hurt, indignation and alienation. That fragmentation stops people doing something powerful together.

Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, is completely essential to the culture of transition and real unity. Again, perhaps we are not familiar with sharing our feelings of hurt in case they're seen as a weakness or an annoyance, but I think it's an essential thing to do if and when it happens. The longer things are left to fester, the bigger the rupture and the harder to repair. Sometimes it takes a shock to wake us up!