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!

Late Season Frosts

Our winter, in my part of the world, was relatively mild. We had a few days that were cold and a few more nights that were bitterly so, but it was nothing like when I was growing up. Back then, we would have whole weeks where the temperatures remained below zero. Your nose couldn't run while you were outside, because the snot would freeze each time you took a breath. Ice would grow so thick on the Bay that motorcycles and cars would race on the ice and in Spring, when the ice shoves would happen the giant blocks and sheets would be feet thick. That thick ice would not be plain white, riddled with long thin crystals, but it would have the azure, turquoise of pale blue sky or the luminance of a marl bottomed lake. Pantone 17-4139 The clarity of the ice being like a vast prisim that transmitted only that one color. This winter, we had ice and a few foolish drivers put their cars through it, but it was stable enough to walk on and do some ice fishing, but the season was cut short by warms days and nights above freezing. Interestingly, maple sap flowed early and for a long season this year, warm days and cold nights seemed to come early and stayed late this year to the delight of many sap collectors however, when that time passed it did so abruptly and we have been having fairly warm evenings for over a month now. So many were led to plant early. This, combined with the resurgence of victory gardes and so many new growers has led many to cove rtheir newly planted sprouts and larger tomato plants with blankets for the recent cold nights.I'm glad that so many new gardeners are coming to learn about the joys of eating food produced in their yard or on th eporches and patios of the world, however the late season frosts are always a concern if you get the urge to plant your seeds or seedlings too early. Many old-timers waited until after the Indy 500 to plant. I don't put anything in the ground until Memorial Day Weekend they would say, as if Mother Nature cared about our calendar. In their defense, they had a family to feed and no money for buying more seeds, so they could not afford to take any chances. I listened intently when I was young to this relatively ancient wisdom. Memorial Day was only 100 years old back then however, my life had been less than a decade, so it seemed ancient to me. I did not realize for many more years that what I was hearing in those words was their conservative nature speaking. They also wanted to avoid the extra work of putting plastic or blankets over their gardens as many old folks do now. Many of my ancestors didn't have extra sheets, blankets or quilts to throw over their rows and rows of tender plants. Even if they had, it would have been too much work covering an area larger than the footprint of their house! What we find when we look into the whole climate issue is that Mother Nature really does bat last and as we destabilize the atmosphere more and more, the planet is constantly seeking to stabilize itself. After all, that is why the wind blows. it moves from high pressure areas to low pressure ones. That is why the seasons follow the relationship of the Earth to the Sun by about six weeks, because it takes that long to heat the atmosphere and the water. That is why the ephemeral plants of spring jump up to grab as much sunlight as they can before the trees leaf out and that is why, if you are going to plant early, you have to invest in blankets or green houses or enough plastic to cover your rows for a few of those late season frosts.We are living through an age so out of balance that we don't care to honor the systems that have existed for generations. We like to eat sprouts instead of waiting until the whole plant matures. Think of it. I like sprouts as much as the next guy, but think, just for a moment. In the case of alfalfa or mung bean, sunflower or radish, all make tasty sprouts, full of life's energy and vigor. The tiny seed combines nothing more than water with its' inherent genetis lust for life and makes ten times as much food for us as we might have been able to get from the unsprouted seed. If we let it mature and express the genetic code fully, we would experience a thousand or perhaps even a million-fold increase in the food value of the plant. We are willing to sacrifice at least a tenfold increase, possibly one of a thousand fold, but boy those sprouts are sure tasty and who has time to let a radish mature? Who has time to wait for a sunflower to set seed? I would like to end this with something Cat Stevens said, many years ago. "Take your time, think a lot, think of everything you've got for you will still be here tomorrow but your dreams may not."

Biochar Introduction in 2 min.

We have been teaching people to make and use biochar for more than a decade, but the past year we have turned almost exclusively to online classes. It has been much easier and more efficient in many respects, but there are still a number of people who would rather have in-person classes. That is why we are fundraising to buy land on which we can teach about this and other skills important to become more sustainably oriented. Permaculture design, foraging classes, animal husbandry and regenerative ag. skills, even home economics and other sustainable living skills are more necessary now than ever and there are dozens of great teachers who have offered to teach at our facility. Things from knitting to soap and candle making, canning, drying and putting up th eharves during the fat times so we still can appreciate Earth's abundance during the lean times, etc.
Making and use of biochar can be taught in a fairly comprehensive way in just two or three hours, but some of the other skills we teach can take considerably longer to learn. For guests who want or need to stay longer, we have a plan to offer glamping opportunities as well. Just enough "roughing it" with just enough luxury to have fun and stretch to the limits of our comfort level. That is why we are developing a broader plan to purchase a significant acreage upon which we can offer opportunities fo rno trace camping while teaching a variety of management strategies that layer functions, emulate nature by closing the loop on nutrients, energy, carbon, water and other "resources" and adapt creatively to our rapidly changing world. In our experience, we find that appreciating the gifts of the nature and investing in them often pay dividends that are not necessarily financial, but are every bit as important to our quality of life. what we put in, or give away often comes with unimaginable rewards.
One of the most important aspects of permaculture is that one needs to look, listen and learn, really get down to the level of what goes on in nature, before ever trying to make change happen. The often quoted belief that native people have that every decision needs to be weighed for the good of the next seven generations may seem like far too long a timeline to consider seeing as many are predicting that human actions may make our species extinct within a decade or two, but for those people who have been paying attention, we know that even if people don't want to change, they are going to have to. Far from being a drag, or predicting destruction of society as we know it, we teach ways that the recovery of sound ecological practices will enhance quality of life, jobs and the sense of community that seems to have evaporated under the powerful, but often nearly invisible hand of capitalism.

Far too many use words to describe themselves that were arrived at by focus group or polling data, so I try to refrain from naming myself, our group or the direction our guests are headed. A wise older gentleman laughed at me once, when I was struggling to give him a word to describe myself. I know that far too often descriptors can be pejorative. He said, "I know what you are, a bioneeer!" and at first it felt a bit like the same slap in the face that tree hugger had always been, but as I learned the depth of meaning behind the term and came to understand that he meant nothing negative about it, I took it to heart and more and more have grown to like it. After all, pioneers are eternally optimistic that perhaps over the next rise will be some sort of Shangrila, a place where the cool fresh springs will be plentiful enough that our livestock will have water and that the lush, green grasses will feed them abundantly, the winds and snows won't be too harsh and that we can find straight, tall and strong timbers with which to build shelters that will serve the coming generations. Bioneers do the same, but they can find their lush abundance right where they are, without packing all of our worldly goods in a prarie schooner and striking out across a vast sea of grass to get there. We often find rich abundance by turning over a single rock, or collecting enough from nearby to build the foundations of a new, rich and abundant life, through interaction with the natural world. We invest time required to turn wast to resources or trash to treasure, getting creative to save money and eliminate waste. When I was first called a bioneer, I was still a young man. I had explored hundreds of thousands of places, slept out under the stars in hundreds of them, gotten to know biota on their terms and within their various biomes. I had come to find many dozens of wild foods that thrive where I live and learned how to propagate ones that were finding it difficult to thrive, learning what they needed that had been missing, creating more stable and habitable niches not only for myself, but hundreds of thousands of other species even though I could not name them all.
At this point in my life, I may be an elder, but the motivation I have is not the same as the elders I met and saw when I was young. Most of them had exuded a holier than thou attitude and explicitly said that things were "My way or the highway." Many of the elders I had when I was growing up taught me far more abotu the wrong way to be than how to grow adapt and create meaningful positive change in the world around them.
I choose to continue to strive toward something better, more fulfilling, to learn and grow, even though it sometimes brings painful consequences. Yes, I am sometimes forced to admit I was wrong or to stretch my boundaries, adapt and change. That hope for a better place, for the bioneer lies in the same space we are in today, the same culture, the same location, we don't find it by traversing a vast wilderness. More likely it lives within us already and by digging deeply into the difference between needs and wants, understanding that there is no "away" and that once we discover how to help nature to be abundant, the hardest task becomes equitably redistributing the abundance. I have written at length about the give away, or the give back. The time I have left may be short, but the depth of experience I bring to the table will not die with me. Stories allow us to transcend death, as long as people continue to tell them and find the meaning worth putting into practice. When I teach people to make and use biochar, it is a story that was told over nine thousand years ago. Before humans had developed written language, there were those who knew how important it was to give back to the soil. The only thing that has really changed is that today it is far more important to know, instead of me speaking, think of it as our long dead human ancestors, reaching out across time to show you how to make the soil healthy and life thrive.

1/60

Our gofundme page has reached the first of a few important milestones. In our intitial phase of community building, we have begun to find other groups and opportunities for our work to harmonize and meld with th elarger community. Lots of local lodges are interested in having more guests as we ramp up our classes. A local resort is offering to give us a first shot at buying their site too, which is within walking distance to our land, somewhat off the beaten track, but easily reached by car and able to provide some of the creature comforts we will not be able to provide on the land. Today, the news came out about Biden wanting to fund a civilian climate corps to rehabilitate and help sequester carbon. We are well-positioned to be one of these teaching facilities that will train future land managers!we have trained thoud=sands of people already and with a larger facility and mor eland to teach these principles, we can do many more times as many training sessions and for larger groups than we have been able ot teach before.
If you are interested in helping to fund the protection of eighty acres and to help endow such a sustainability school ,please either contribute through our gofundme page, or you can still send contributions through our patypal account as well. The paypal account number is the same as our email, tnsaladino42@hotmail.com or https://gofund.me/52fa3b77

ECO-Tours Creates Community with Living Soils Association

During covid-19, outreach has been mostly limited to on-line and digital links. The half dozen times I had to be around others were because we were moving or had to see a doctor, little things like getting a car repair done. I put it off for over a year because I drove less than twelve hundred miles last year. As often happens when I have time on my hands, which quarantine gave us in spades this past year, I discovered the history of the Lincoln Highway. The first coast to coast road in the U.S. There was a great public outpouring of support for this road and not just upgrading the quality of it from end to end, but to include signage and comprehensive directions, so travel could be much safer with less adventure. There was a new way of thinking about the automobile then an dthe public was glad to step up and sponsor th enext big thing, it seemed that millions wanted to help fund that first big step toward becoming a mobile society, they invested in th esort of future hey could only dream of, a road that would take you from coast to coast.
I would like to think that our understanding has grown. Many lines of research prove the need to rebuild our soils and stop their wanton destruction the way "modern" industrial agriculture does. I live in a Wisconsin County with the highest number of tons per acre blowing or washing away each year. Living soils create the opposite conditions. Many are coming to realize that it is our duty to be the first, to show by doing and to preserve as much soil as possible for the future of our species. The question for many is: How? ECO-Tours of Wisconsin has been teaching these principle for over a decade and we can scale this up and replicate it virtually anywhere! We are having a major influx of interest in biochar classes, permaculture and sustainable living classes just in the past few months. More importantly, we are beginning to see a possible route to end the pandemic. The way we go back to will never be the same as before. People are valuing everything differently. They feel, a need to learn how to grow their own food, put it up for harsh times, live like the soil matters and that is what we have been teaching for generations. I see the need for hundreds of schools like ours that can train thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of new-age CCC recruits. Civilian Conservation Corps made many changes to our landscape, especially parks and public spaces that are still giving back after half a century of service. Our new version, a Civil Climate Corps could turn th etables on our assaultive behaviors toward soil in a generation. We have no time to waste! In the Spring of 2021, we have more than thirty million unemployed young people, imagine unleashing their potential in building soil, managing for diversity and carbon smart management goals. We cannot afford to squander the desire of our youth to be part of the soul-ution. We all know what the problems are, but we rearely speak about solutions, these Living Soils Association Camps will train next-level permaculture practitioners, carbon-smart agriculturalists, sustainability experts and folks who know how to restore carbon to soils at pace and help reverse the atmospheric carbon trend. It is time for growth, in my hemisphere, the life is expanding, we need to mirror, emulate, mimic, whatever you want to call it, nature. We need to do it now. Nature models for us mutualism, where all organisms benefit from the life force of other organisms. Communities collecting and equitably redistributing resources is the rule, not the exception in the natural world, we can teach one another to do that as well. The many are always more stable and healthy than a few, especially when they know how to share. We need to honor that, respect it and give back in ways that honor this natural system.

Living Soils Association can deliver to soil a level of recovery, protection and restoration that will reduce erosion, increase infiltration rates, increase CEC (Cation Exchange Capacity)build soil carbon, both organic and mineral, increase soil life, soil aggregates and productivity and all while reducing the need for irrigation and fertilizer. By using dollars raised from the general public for a model, living laboratory teaching these skills and creating a replicable program for a larger national effort is essential. Our organization has always used contributions and all volunteer staff, because we are committed to ECO-Tours, reforestation, land reclaimation and ecology, but to grow this movement will require funds, we just want to model how to spend those dollars efficiently or ideally fund stipend for service from the Federal Government, we could employ millions, across the country at short notice. We need mobilization of resources and I'm sure that our youth will respond just as they did during the old CCC days. Back in the Thirties, they were paid just a dollar per day, but they got tents to sleep in and meals too.

The Great Reset

In the course of human events, one often needs what we might think of as a a page break, a place to catch our breath, change our behaviors for a moment and briefly do something physical intead of what we were doing before. If we seem to be running on a treadmill, this might take the form of stepping off, going to the rowing machine for a while. If we have been riffing on a certain tune in out heads for a while, perhaps a change of station. When studying hard for finals, why not take a half hour to watch a favorite show or listen to a favorite piece of music, with the books closed? It often can be a great way to revive when times get tough, take a break or change oyur activity level even for five minutes! When we need a more significant break, often we cannot know why or how long it will need to be, but we just know, instinctively, to put down those tools and walk away, before mistakes are made that cannot easily be erased. In very real ways, covid-19 has provided an opportunity as well as a hardship. Many of us have had more time off in the past year than we have had in our entire adult lives. This may provide such a page break for our culture, perhaps all of humanity.
My part in this is to stir the pot of course. This viscous social space and time are liable to stick to the bottom of the pan without folks willing to stir things up deeply and vigorously. https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-80-acres-of-wisconsin-for-outdoor-school The 100% volunterer not-for-profit that my wife and I and a handful of friends created to teach eco-ehtics is twenty years old and we have lots of great projects that attest to our unconventional approach. We have helped to plant over sixty thousand native trees across Northeast Wisconsin in forty or more locations. We have planted over a hundred acres with native perennial food crops, medicinal plants and plants used as dyestock for natural dyes. We have hosted hundreds of events to share what we know about living more sustainable lifestyles, from plant-ins to composting lessons, biochar classes and square foot ECO-Tours. We have presented informaion to thousands of readers around the world through digital media and when people ask what we charge, we often just ask them to give what they can afford. When we plant a tree, it is the best one suited to each particular location, not a specimine tree that stands out against a background of native trees, but what literally belongs there. We have used several techniques to get free trees to plant, and often, now, we only plant tree seeds, becaus etheir roots experience far less trauma when th eseedlings can start where they will eventually grow. We have stood the paradigm of commercialism on end, not asking for money as much as to be seen, to be heard as we speak for the trees. We have led canoe trips down some of the most pristine as well as some of the most impacted rivers around, participated in Earth Day events and been involved regionally in diverse groups that advocate for th egreat Lakes generally and renewable, clean energy and pro-peace groups as well. I was trained as a teacher in a time when the jargon was all about knowledge skills and attitudes. Knowledge lives in your mind but can exist without outward evidence, skills only exist as action and can be seen, practiced, perfected and can only be made your own through repetition and attitudes, like knowledge only exist internally, although sometimes they can be plain to see, because they are reflected in many of our actions.
This group, these projects, have never been expected to be as important as they turn out to be. In our experience, nothing done as a group can ever be fully appreciated until much later. Creating memories and the deep sort of knowing that our tours engender has such long term impacts that generations down th eroad, ther emay be benefits completely unrelated to the time or place, bu tsomething heard or seen will bring back information or ideas that resurface at just the right moment, or help imform an action that has become instinctive, bu tthat has th epower to teach someone else. Living amongst such a technologically focused society, there is something that deeply enriches us when we love a plant's roots into the soil, easing them down so they are comfortable in the world they will inhabit for many years and whose very life changes the world around them for the better.
Only once per century has Mother Nature felt it necessary to still humanity with a deadly virus of this severity. It comes to us to make the best of what we have, that means with the deadly virus as well. As Cat Stevens wrote so eloquently, "Take your time, think a lot, why think of everything you've got; for you will still be here tomorrow but your dreams may not." In this Great Reset we are being granted a chance to change everything we have known, reevaluate whether it served us, decide wha tto leave behind and in very real ways what we are going to create. Let us not shirk from th echallenge, but put our foot down firmly and move forward. As was drilled into me as a child, I say to everyone now, we can all have total freedom, but only if we are willing to be supremely responsible. We cannot have one without the other.

This is a photo of a simple tool caddy, easy to make, keeps long-handled tools at hand and easy to organize. This rack can be adapted to your needs but I learned of it from a props person on a touring show. when you need th ewhole village to get to the implements, quickly, this is a great way to have them handy an all in one place. Please share this blog with friends. share our go fund me page widely. We don't have any time to lose! If not now, when? If not us, who?

Dry January

I had known that quitting drinking was a relatively common thing to do as a New Year Resolution, but I always thought peole just fell off the wagon at different times. Having never heard of this limited liability engagement, or temporary quitting, it really created a mind storm when I heard. There may be a girlfriend or two that I should have given up for a month, to see how our relationship would age, but I was too young, just inexperienced enough, or maybe just ddin't care to, to know. I have never been a daily drinker, not even while at college. Since alcohol was never my favorite reason to get together, hang out or something to focus a lot of attention on, whether it was there or not never seemed to bother me. Since I did know that some of my friends did like it more than I, being sure to have drinks for parties was always part of planning, but certainly not the main objective. For instance, when we hosted our 1984 Party, which, of course, was in 1984, we recreated the opening scene from the book for each of our guests in turn and making sure we had enough Victory Gin and Victory Cigarettes for everyone was a top priority.That wasn't as much about the alcohol as the story. If a friend would take charge and bill it as a magerita party, or a daquiri party,of course, it made booze shopping easier, but beyond making sure the booze matched the theme, it was mostly just background. My friends and hand-chosen family as well as our relationships were far more important to me.

This brings me to my reqalization this year. First, I have always disliked the end of year push that most not-for-profit groups do just before New Years. Double matching and triple matching donations, trying to get people to commit before the end of the tax year. It always feels like that sort of pressure being exacted during the holidaze is a bit, how can I say it, car salesman-ish. this year, because I found out about this interesting thing, Dry January, what if it could be used as a force for good? Here's a simple thought experiment. What if, the thousand or more friends that I have met and loved, shared and cried with over the years were to take the Dry January events to heart. What if, they donated whatever money they would save over that month to the land purchase? How much would that be? Well, I'm not really in that close contact with my friends, because of covid-19 and all, so to think I have any idea how much they are drinking would just be silly. however, I have heard that alcohol sales generally increased greatly because of the pandemic. Let's just say, with me maybe having a few glasses of wine per week, or a few mixed drinks, I've probably got a budget of about ten dollars a week in drinks. At the end of a four-point two-five week month would have an extra $42.50 from my estimated booze budget to spend or share at my discretion. I used to drink a case a week of Huber Bock. Today that would cost $22 per week so when I was drinking the most, a month's worth of Huber Bock would have cost, in today's market, about ninety-three dollars and fifty cents. That would be a huge help toward building our outdoor school! If you are considering, or better yet, if you have pledged to do a dry January, please consider contributing what yo0u save on alcohol this month to our land purchase. It isn't often that our choices can directly change the world around us and it is even more likely that you will follow through on the pledge if you can see the results and actual benefits that come from your sacrifice. Please, let me know if you are interested, if yo uhave your own good Dry January stories or if yo uhave any idea how I could have not known about this apparently common thing for more than fifty years. also, please don't say because I grew up around too many alcoholics, who never even considered giving up drink fo rany length of time, much less an entire month! I already knew that! to prepare myself for writing this, I even said the little mnemonic device to figure out if January is one of the "long months" which it turns out, it is! If you have decided to stop drinking for the month, I appreciate that and wish you the very best in your absinance. If you do indeed save money by not drinking, let me re-post the link to our gofundme page, you could be part of saving 80 aces for our outdoor school! https://gofund.me/52fa3b77 If you are suspicious about links, check out the go fund me site and search my name, Tony C. Saladino My first update includes the Powerpoint slide show that I use to teach th eclassroom portion of my biochar classes and anyone who contributes at least fifty I offer to spend up to two hours explaining any of the materials or helping to translate the class into a useable form. May abundance find you during the New Year, wherever your path may lead!