Words Fall Short Post Covid

I learned that my community is Global, just like Todd Rundgren's album says. The glowing electrons of Zoom and other portals to the digi-realm are representations of real people. (not the people themselves) It is not any of our faults that we cannot make eye contact through this techno-meeting medium. We can actually honor our affinity groups and "see" into the hearts of what matters to us by our belonging to groups. My experience has been that the anonymity of the digital interface allows a$$#*les to operate with relative impunity and I have learned that the people I didn't like before are even less tolerable post covid. Many either refuse to or are unable to change. Perhaps they are happy being miserable hot-heads and morose complainers, that has zero bearing on who I am or choose to be. Now, I won't waste time on them. The fact that I can teach people from around the planet to sequester carbon cheaply, efficiently and virtually forever has been one of the most liberating things about not being able to interact with "real" people, in person or wasting time trying to talk to people who just happen to be in my physical presence. I don't have time to spend on players. I spent the last year learning about more than twenty types of soil organisms, what they "like", need and rely on for their quality of life. What they prefer to consume and which organisms consume them, which are cannibalistic and which are not. I am becoming "friends" with them instead of human-beings. I don't miss two-leggeds as much as I had expected to and I have discovered that soil organisms will never sell you out or lie to your face. They won't try to commodify the relationship or turn on you over a misunderstanding or feign compassion in an attempt to gain your trust. In short, I have grown into a different person with new perspective and will continue to share deeply with those who respect who I have become. Those who regressively cling to their out-dated beliefs, practices and neuroses are welcome to keep them, I just won't waste time concerning myself with their mal-adaptive behavior. I mean are we not all responsible for our own development? I don't want to bring anyone down, but I'm not going to spare anyone the truth either. I still detest chickenshits and liars, that has not changed. What I value has changed and most importantly it is my time that I value.

12-06-2021 Status Report

ECO-Tours has been working to purchase land for an outdoor school. Not only will we be able to teach carbon smart farming in a hands-on way, but regenerative grazing, permaculture principles, Leave No Trace Ethics and skills needed to be more sustainable. In the old days, we called some of the skills Home Economics, or Folkways, and we will also teach skills for enhancing energy efficient and healthy home retrofits that dfon't require people to have hundreds of thousands of dollars to drop on a home renovation. We will also teach strawbale construction, Living Home systems design and construction. We have recently received a large contribution from an anaonymous donor and want to thank everyone who has contributed through our gofundme page as well. We now have more than ten percent of the total needed for the land purchase and we have more than a dozen experts who are anxiously waiting to teach as soon as we close on the land.
In the interim, we have reached out to several Land Trusts to see if we can begin teaching some of our classes even before we finish our fund-raising efforts and several other not-for-profit organizations have voiced an interest in collaborating and participating with our programs in several important ways. Bringing students, offering classes of their own and helping spread the word about what we offer. This word of mouth advertising is invaluable for making the transformation we need to happen. At this moment there are thousands of voices raised to tell people that there is no hope, that we are devolving into some sort of Apocalyptic mayhem and our message of peace and cooperation, mutualism and intentional communities that allow people to thrive is more important than ever. If there is any way that you can help share information about our efforts, or use anythnig that has been written at this blog or at theotherfishwrapplease share it. Education has always been and continues to be the second most expensive thing in the world, ignorance is number one.
For now, we continue to give away what we can afford to and hope it finds traction because we cannot wait for better times to do our best.We are anxious to work with you and are willing to teach via the digital realm wherever you are. If you want to contact us, we are available in a variety of ways. tnsaladino42@hotmail.com will get you to my personal e-mail. You can reach out via facebook. Tony C. Saladino Drirector/Guide ECO-Tours of Wisconsin,Inc.

Save Money Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Most of us live in stick built homes. Wood, cut into rectangular boards or sticks are used, most often at a standard distance from one another to create a frame. Within this frame are holes that are later filled with windows or doors and in places that are eventually covered with siding (outside) and drywall or plaster (inside), it leaves a voids the thickness of the sticks that get filled with insulation. Most of these types of buildings are built upon a deck of some sort which becomes the floor of the finished space. The most common area to be forgotten, especially by insulators is the space directly under the floor. Often, it is just what is referred to as the rim joist. Often a single wide board, set on edge, holding all the floor members (joists) together. The structure that is made of the intersection of rim joists and the floor joists is often called the sill box, because the end of the floor, above the foundation looks like a series of small boxes along one wall of the basement, or foundation and the opposite wall the two walls going the other direction may just have a single, or in some cases a double joist to supprt the rest of the floor deck.This area, especially if forgotten in an otherwise insulated home can account for up to thirty percent of the heat loss in the entire structure and it causes floors to be permanently cold in winter and it even wastes the expensive cooled air in an air conditioned space in summer. some people like to spray foam insulation into that area but unless you take your time, to make sure all the gaps are filled completely and work slow enough to build up a thick layer of spray foam, this may not be the best approach. A more time consuming but also more reliable way to make sure adequate thickness of insulation gets put around this area is to use rigid foam, which can be cut to the proper size and wedged into the space.

The Beverage Manager of Beantown

I met up with a friend for coffee yesterday and she has started using the term "spoons". Instead of telling people that she has "no more fucks to give", or something that could be considered abrasive, she'll say, "Too many spoons." In some cases, she'll say, that dealing with certain types of people would require a whole ladle and "I just don't have the spoons." for that level of interaction. It is interesting to think of parceling out our fucks by the spoonful. I think it is tied up with my theory that if I don't know you, I'll try once (perhaps one spoonful) giving my energy to share the truth with that person. I always try at least once to educate people, even strangers. If I am more invested, like with a good friend, relative or someone I deeply care about, I definitely have more spoons, perhaps a whole ladle to put into sharing my vision of truth. You don't want to waste a whole lot of energy on folks who you may never see again, so "Ain't got the spoons" for them might be the perfect amount. Wear a "Make America Great" hat around me, you are getting served with a coke spoon. I'll still share my truth, but don't want to squander too much truth on someone who is in active denial. I'll still tell the truth, but won't waste much of my energy doing it. I ain't got the spoons. I also had an interesting interaction with the Barista, who happens to own the coffeehouse. She is from near Boston and I told her about the time I was invited to go to The Athens of America, Beantown and how the folks who brought me were going to stay with paranoid friends who didn't want to open their home to me, so I nearly spent the night homeless. About 2 AM, I was outside the Hilton, looking as dejected as a young punk ever did, I am sure; when the beverage manager walked out and saw me. He was on his way home after a long, long day of making sure that people he may never meet could have their desires fulfilled. He said, "What's wrong, you look like you are in trouble." I told him what had happened and he said, "Do you like dogs?" I said that yes, I did and he said, "You can stay at my place, but my dog will want to sleep on the bed with you." So he took me out to Squantum on the train, telling me about how his whole neighborhood was built atop the garbage of Boston that had accumulated during the previous century. He let me stay the night in a nice big bed with a lovely pit bull terrier named beast or something like that. In the morning when I woke up, he was gone to work already and his wife sent me off with breakfast and a brown bag lunch in case I didn't meet up with my friends before I got hungry again. She even gave me train fare back to the city along with great directions for finding the train station because the neighborhood looked completely different in the light of day. The Barista from Wrightstown reminded me that hospitality is not about how we treat the people we know, but those we do not. How can a guy live nearly sixty years and nobody ever explained that to him overtly? I mean, I had lived the experience! In my industry, "hospitality" is an actual place, where you can go to get fueled up, re-hydrate or catch a quick snack. When you travel around the country, you may never even meet the people who care for you and provide you the service of caring for you. Catering to your essential needs. Hearty thanks to all those strangers who have the spoons to provide hospitality! The world would be a dismal place without you!