The Useful, Useless Clock

I was putting back some bottles that had fallen out of a recycling bin, and I saw a chucked-away clock. It was a cheap Chinese clock, the kind that will function barely, until it breaks in a few months, black plastic and a battery. However, I could see that it would make a great toy for the children to play with, and learn to tell time.

Of course 4 and 2 is really too young to learn to tell time, but they were fascinated with actually being able to touch the clock hands themselves, after I took off the glass and plastic frame that held it, with the help of a glasses screwdriver. We sat waiting for the bus (free time), and I promised Troy (4 yr old girl) later chocolate if she tried to guess the numbers the hands pointed to. Well, first I put the glass and frame on my face, and made strange voices, pretending to be an astronaut in space to make them laugh. But she loved the game of guessing the clock's numbers, and it was a very effective learning lesson. Later she compared the numbers to the mailboxes as we walked along, and counted from 1 on the clock to the number on the mailbox verbally to learn what the number was called.

Just another green idea.
Even the glass plate on it's own is a beautiful thing. A perfectly round piece of glass. Shall I decorate the plastic frame, and use glass and frame for a really cool picture? Or use it as a window? Or...save it in the arsenal of magic and useful objects.

Koanga Institute

All this is blowing my mind. Learning about Good magazine and all the million inspiring connections and thoughts in there, the earthy growth from worm farming over time, spiritual growth of community I've gotten from being part of the Kohanga Reo, recently finding the book on native Cherokee teaching (referred from my friend Wayne from taking the bus) about "touching" life, and now just looking at the Koanga Gardens website. I feel like I am trying to grow and open up, but am very closed compared to what I could be. Very unearthy, but trying to let it in.

(Links posted here, and also on the sidebar.)

Koanga Gardens Centre for Sustainable Living (and they sell plants and seeds in their original variety):
http://www.koanga.co.nz/

The original institute, started by Kay Baxter:
http://www.koanga.org.nz/

Good magazine made me want to cry when I first found it, and with Koanga Gardens I am having the same feeling. They run courses for self-sustainability and eco-villages, and are fighting this fight.


Here is a little blog from my tiny world, of just having learned to worm farm!

Small Thoughts on Controlling Nature

One of the main reasons I wanted to start this blogs is that I am one of those people that is always thinking about life, and I wanted to record these observations that one makes from life experience.

I am only going to be able to remember these thoughts if I write them down as I think them.

"Man-made"
The desire men have to control nature is foolish, to take ownership of human invention, and to have an ego about the things we build or create. It is rooted in our animal self which drives our behaviour. How can we determine that what we create is better than nature, or more foolish still, independent of nature? We are a product of nature ourselves, grown and born from the womb. We are not separate, and any pattern we use or utilize-- any power we utilize, is a power of nature.

Advertising

My young son Luke watching TV passively


I just ran into a great quote that expresses what I always felt about advertising:

"Societies need to consider the powerful impact of advertising on young children, for whom all information has an educational and formative impact. Children constitute an important market for consumer products, but society has a responsibility to educate them, not exploit them."

--United Nations Development Program

This was quoted in a paper called "See Change: Learning and education for sustainability" [Jan 2004 by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment], which I had picked up at the Kaipatiki ecological project a long time ago but hadn't had the focus to read it until now. Packing away thing, I opened it up, thinking of this, and saw this quote. The material in it is perfect for what I need to learn right now. It is further study in depth on all the issues that concern my mind, every waking moment. Advertising, people's awareness, this sleep humanity is in right now-- compared to how we have been in the past. It is so lovely to see something spelled out which previously felt like a secret underlying truth which no-one else saw.

The full report is at here.

And here is the cut-and-pasted section on Marketing and Advertising-- how it shapes our psyches (especially young psyches). It is my personal view that we need to create a wall or protective barrier by conscious choice, and help our children learn how to do so as well-- as in turning off the tv most of the time. Here is the fabulous report chunk (with only the footnote numbers deleted due to their decontextualization on my blog):




5.4 Marketing and advertising

Marketing explicitly aims to influence people. It involves planning the conception, pricing, promotion and spread of goods, services and ideas. It is often used by businesses to create awareness of, and desire for, their brands and products. However, marketing techniques are also used by many non-commercial organisations and government agencies to sell their messages to the public. Tools of marketing include market research, advertising and public relations.

Market research is used to understand the needs, wants, desires and values of people. Marketers often claim that they are merely finding out what people want and matching this with what they have to offer.

This is because most marketing is based on the assumption that it exists “(1) to discover the needs and wants of prospective customers and (2) to satisfy them”. In reality, many organisations also begin with what they want to sell and try to develop a market to suit.

A major part of marketing is advertising. Advertisements come in many different forms, “from the tiniest classified newspaper advertisement to a TV spot, from a small leaflet to a massive outdoor sign, from a message on the Internet to a letter delivered to one’s door, or a sponsored cultural or sporting event”.

Advertisers assert that they are providing information to consumers to enable
them to make informed decisions. Simple forms of advertising, such as classifieds, may meet this goal. But the most pervasive forms of modern advertising, especially those used on television, aim to influence and persuade people instead of informing them. Advertisers often play on people’s emotions to build connections between products, brands and people (see also section 6.5).

Advertising long ago discarded the practice of selling a product on the merits of its useful features. Modern marketing builds symbolic associations between the product and the psychological states of potential consumers, sometimes targeting known feelings ... and sometimes creating a sense of inadequacy in order to remedy it with the product.

Advertisements do not make people buy things, but they are incredibly influential in shaping human behaviour. Marketers use techniques that they have learned from psychology, sociology, economics and anthropology to shape consumer preferences. In doing so, they often help to socialise people as willing and wanting consumers. As an example, think about the marketing of four wheel drive ‘sports utility vehicles’ (SUVs) in New Zealand. These vehicles were initially used almost exclusively by farmers and commercial operators such as builders. Marketing has been used to successfully sell them as ‘urban safari vehicles’, playing on symbolic associations that have been fostered and developed in people. It is not their useful features that are marketed. Who wants to buy a vehicle that is generally more dangerous, polluting, difficult to park, and more expensive to run than the average car? It is their image as masculine and adventurous off-roading objects of desire that is marketed, even though they seldom leave the sanctuary of urban streets. The irony is that the beauty of New Zealand’s environment is often used to market these vehicles. There are countless shots on television screens and in the print media of SUVs doing damage to dunes, streams and riverbeds. Similarly, images of New Zealand’s 'clean and green’ environment are often used by many businesses to brand and sell their products to the world.

Increasingly, advertisers are targeting children to shape consumption preferences early in life and to take advantage of the growing amount of money that people are spending on children. For example, American children between four and 12 years old spend over $24 billion in direct purchases and influence another $188 billion in family household purchases. An average ten-year old in America has now been socialised to learn 300-400 different brands. In Britain, characters from a Japanese card trading game called Pokemon are far more recognisable to the average eight-year-old than animals and plants. There are therefore growing concerns about the impacts of advertising and marketing on children. Societies need to consider the powerful impact of advertising on young children, for whom all information has an educational and formative impact. Children constitute an important market for consumer products, but society has a responsibility to educate them, not exploit them.
– United Nations Development Programme

To reduce children’s exposure to marketing, countries such as Denmark, Greece, Belgium restrict advertising to children. Sweden and Norway totally ban it.

The Swedish government believes that “children have the right to safe zones” and that advertising can compromise their safety and well-being. This sentiment is strongly supported by the majority of people in Sweden, as well as by their national association for advertising agencies.

Marketing and advertising to children is permitted in New Zealand, although there are voluntary codes of practice in the advertising industry to moderate some of its effects. While there is little research on this issue, a recent survey suggests that there are major concerns among parents about the levels of advertising to children on television. Among those surveyed, there were strong feelings that television encourages children to want products they do not need. There was also a strong sentiment that advertising should not be regulated by the same people who sell products to children.

The current framework for advertising in New Zealand is mostly based on self-regulation by industry. This framework, and how it relates to the environment, is
examined in a background paper to this report.45 There is a code of practice for product claims related to the environment, but there is no code for how the environment is portrayed in advertisements. There is also a lack of consideration
given to the effects that saturation advertising can have on people. This is despite the fact that advertising expenditure in New Zealand, as a proportion of GDP, is one of the highest in the world. New Zealand ranked third in the world for advertising expenditure in 1996, and the amount of money spent on advertising has steadily increased since then. In 2002 it reached $1.5 billion per year and in 2003 it was predicted to exceed $1.7 billion. What sort of culture is all this advertising helping to create?

As noted above, advertising is just one tool of marketing. Marketers use a variety of techniques, such as product placements in movies and using celebrities and role models to shape consumer desires. Public relations skills are also used by businesses, government agencies and non-governmental organisations to ‘spin’ their stories and manage their images in the media. Public relations usually involves intensifying (playing up) some messages and downplaying others that could be detrimental to an organisation’s reputation. There is a growing awareness among the public about the ‘greenwashing’ that many organisations use to shape their environmental image. This may undermine the effectiveness of some public relations skills, while contributing to a fundamental lack of trust in big business and government to be open and honest about sustainability.

It is important to keep in mind that marketing techniques are not just used by commercial enterprises. For example, government is showing a growing willingness to use social marketing to achieve outcomes related to sustainability (see section 4.1). It has also been suggested that ‘demarketing’ can be used to encourage people to reduce their consumption of some goods or services.

There is a major potential to market the messages of sustainability, although it is important to consider that social marketing is very expensive. It is also important to question how effective government agencies can be at getting their messages across when people are already swamped by so many other marketing messages in the commercial media. In some areas, such as road safety, there is good evidence that social marketing can be very effective.

However, social marketing campaigns need to be carefully researched, planned and organised as well as well-financed to capture people’s attention, and to avoid switching people off.

ENDQUOTE

As you can see from the photo of Luke above, and know from personal experience of course, watching TV is a very passive experience. I would just like to add one more note to the wonderfully well researched think-piece above-- as I learned in university communications studies, Marshall MacLuhan's "medium is the message" theory-- perhaps the actual message is less important in forming an impression on our minds than the technology of the message. My personal intuition confirms this as well, in the case of television, I can feel the harm to my children is more the passivity of watching tv than what is actually on TV. They aren't doing something, living, doing something challenging-- they are passively being entertained; and that's a message that should more often than not-- be avoided.

Keeping your knife-edge sharp

My first sharp knife
I've had some knives my father gave me for the past 5 years.

He was always a believer in keeping knives razor sharp. He bought good knives with good steel that would hold an edge, and would grind them by hand regularly with a block stone, and also a leather stroppy thing for the finest edge. I grew up with our knives always kept razor sharp, and you had to be careful after he had just sharpened them or you would cut yourself. Knives were respected in our house, always wiped off and put back on the knife rack and thrown in to be washed with the dishes. When I grew up and moved out, and realized how differently everyone lived, and the discipline that my parents had that not everyone had, I saw that most people didn't sharpen their knives. They kept many cheap tin knives in the cutlery drawer, and cutting anything was a frustrating struggle.

Anyways, back to my knives. They became dull. I didn't have the discipline yet to sharpen them regularly, but I respected them, and held onto them, and bought a stone block. Over time before my life became less chaotic I lost the small one, my husband ruined the big one, but I managed to save one of my father's gifts and the sharpening block. Just recently, I decided to sharpen my putty knife with the block while renovating. Then, if finally happened! I was sick of not being able to cut into a squash for dinner, and I actually sat down, and started grinding the edge of my last good knife. I had finally arrived at a state where I left perfectionism behind enough (waiting for the perfect time to do something perfectly had kept me from achieving so often), and also had grown enough personal discipline to just do things.

Starting small with my own knife

I looked closely at the edge as I went along. I remembered how he had taught me to do it (I just hadn't had very much practice) about the degree of the angle. It was exciting to actually achieve a sharp edge like my father's after doing it for a few minutes. I also had fond memories of him sitting in the kitchen, and grinding knives, so I enjoyed doing the same thing, so far now from home. I also had the understanding now of how early man had made their first sharp edge from stone from watching the Human Journey documentary, which I could connect to this current activity-- I really respected the ability to maintain my own tool.

We can't go backwards guys! We've come so far, for so long, to get our sharp edge, to go back due to laziness to use factory turned-out dull crappy tools our whole lives.

Now I am going to keep my one knife sharp for a start, and over time, buy more good knives. And I hope my habits will leave a strong impression in my children, as my father's did in me.

By the way, that squash cut like a dream.

P.S. (Added Feb 2011.) Something else, it really works to actually keep looking at the edge to see how sharp it is. There is basically a hill on either side of the point, and you are sanding away, or grinding it away, to create the point. You have to wear away the bump until you've met on both sides. You can sand at a more flat angle as you go.

The whole "looking" and sensing thing - is something that our ancestors did, all the time. Now I am more connected than before, that is what I do, and now I can do it as well as I want. Sensing your materials...

My dad also smears vegetable oil on his cutting boards and cures them in the sun to create a food-friendly varnish.

3 Steps

STEP 1. Baby Steps

You may not be able to find the time to change your the new habits right away (e.g. becoming environmentally sustainable. Just make little progresses, grasping onto each on for dear life, until you get stronger to keep moving forward. When you are strong, and we underestimate ourselves, it will be easy! We are learning new skills.

A first great step in becoming more responsible to the earth, or your environment, is to start taking cloth bags. You'll be amazed by how often they are used, when you stop taking them. And even this is really hard at first!

Right now I am holding on for dear life for motivation to make a small change - to get my lazy self to make yogourt instead of buying it. I know how to do it—- my Dad even made me a version of his homemade using a lightbulb in a metal container setup to keep heat going, but for now I buy yogourt in bulk size, and in a cardboard millk-type carton, and flavour it myself and pour it into reusable lunch containers. That's something! And then it will be easier to go to the yogourt-making habit.



STEP 2. Know History

History makes you stronger: knowing that people once lived differently, and how strong we can be.

I grew up with a mother that loved history. She also researched my ancestors' stories, and told us stories as she discovered them. It was very special and positive - I knew what I was capable of as a person because I knew my own people had been strong.

It also helps to be aware of our place in history. It puts our selfish modern world into perspective.


STEP 3. You will be blessed.
I discovered after having a terribly difficult time-- and I would recommend it to anyone, you really learn alot-- that it is really important to Listen to the world around you. But not just with your ears, with your spirit.

Listen to what you really know in your heart is true, even if it's hard to accept at the time. (Because, sometimes we know the true direction is uphill, at first.) But something neat is-- that we can ask ourselves if we are doing in our life what we believe in, if we are going the right way, and we will hear the answer. Am I really happy doing this? Or, is this relationship working?

In the end all these little steps turn into blessings. The steps weren't made for this reason, but of course, you will have more strength and discipline from it that will be for your benefit. Also, you will gain a creative and resourcefulness edge, as you connect to the materials, and the world, around you. For real.

Huge worms found in our little piece of earth!

Worms are cool.

That's what I was thinking yesterday, feeling ill after working on the computer, rushing around the house or out, eating, resting, doing chores but still feeling weak. I finally had to get out and do something earthy.

I was going to walk to the dairy to get some cell phone time, rush, rush, acquire, acquire, but got tripped up by a weed on the way. My neighbour-- we share this house, three units of a building, she was really good and pulled the weeds out of a part of our garden, a wedge shaped part on the side of our driveway. I saw a weed she had missed. Then, my fingers in the dirt trying to get it out, I had to go get a stick or something to get the roots out. When I got the root out and had a metal tool in my hand which was useful, I noticed that none of the roots of the weeds had been pulled out. I could feel that the roots needed to be pulled. The earth drew me in, and after a bit, I was pulled in by the earth, and pulling out roots, churning up the dirt, and freeing it from this horrible plastic layer some misguided soul had put in years ago. I was lifting and pulling up a root-twined layer of earth like a carpet, as the plastic had made a barrier, roots in the ground white below-- somehow got most of it out, and then churned it all up, free to breathe. AND I found these ginormous earthworms, 10 inches long and very fat, that lived large enough to churn through that soil. My little children had come home from school, and right into the house to the TV. But for once I wasn't needing that sickly babysitter, and I forced them to come out with me, little children, similar to the white starved roots that I found under my plastic layer. COME! I yelled. COME LOOK! Dubious, they eventually came, and they loved it. Soon Troy was holding 5 huge earthworms. Luke was too scared, he kept saying

"look, a worm"

"a worm"...with with the voice of the young child whose mouth is new to making those sounds. He was frightened to touch them, once calling them "-nake baby" (he can't say s's). But fascinated to watch them as I kept finding them and throwing them over to him to see.

It was great. I felt really well after that.

Worm trying to crawl back into the soil, a good symbol for us!