After four years living on our half-acre block and over eight years in total including time visiting on weekends, we have a toilet. We christened it a few weeks ago with great delight and considerable relief (pun not intended).

Neighbours and friends wonder why this basic amenity has taken so long.

I sometimes wonder, too.

But with the wettest two years since European settlement delaying construction of our large roof, we had to work quickly on other projects when we finally did get the roof on.

That required several alterations (dismantling, cutting and re-welding) to the massive box gutter which was splashing all over the interior house timbers.

Now it’s all working.

We have a roof and insulated exterior walls and a box gutter that handles great floods of water.

So we could finally turn out minds – and our resources – to the toilet.

A Farallones Institute Composting Privy
I was surprised to find out what the design for a composting toilet which the local Council approves was first published by the world-famous Farallones Insitute in Berkeley, California in 1976. I was living in Berkeley in the late seventies and much admired the Farallones Institute and the Integral Urban House (see: www.newsociety.com/bookid/4032).

The Farallones Institute was an independent association of scientists, designers, horticulturists and technicians which served for several decades as a pioneering centre for teaching and research in appropriate technology and sustainable design. Integrating architecture, agriculture, waste recycling, water conservation, and renewable energy, the Institute has been widely recognized as a model for ecological design. The Farallones’ resource conserving systems, solar dwellings, and organic gardens have been used extensively as a teaching tool.

That famous place. And now I was about to have one of their two-chamber composting toilets.

The toilet turned out to be much more work that I expected (though I did not build it.) Because it does not get direct sunlight, it has two chambers. After six or nine months, one is decommissioned and the other one is used for a similar period of time. The compost is put on the fruit trees.

Seems fine to me, though having two separate toilets in the bathroom is a rather quaint touch. We did not have toilets like that in North Vancouver.

So now we do not have to trudge 50 metres in the rain down to the community toilet. That was sometimes challenging when we were sick, it was raining heavily or the grass on the slope to the community building had not been cut. More than once I’ve slid down the hill to the community toilet on my bottom.

Gratitude to the Jarlanbah community and goodbye community toilet

Karl’s so happy not to have (in his words) to “push s**t uphill” any longer, as it was his job to clean out the community toilet while we (and many others) were using it. He had to haul the compost in a wheelbarrow up the hill 50 metres to bury it on our lot. That was a hard job, which he did uncomplainingly. But as he says, it’s good to know that it’s your stuff if you’re carting it. He has great tales about what he found buried in the Jarlanbah community composting toilet! And it certainly wasn’t “our stuff”!

Farewell to the Jarlanbah community toilet

Toilet Heaven
But now, rain or shine, we are in “toilet heaven”.

The kitchen is next.

Then we can benefit from Karl’s bountiful kitchen garden, currently fallow, but ready for reviving once he has a break from the seemingly endless task of house building. (I know he’d gladly give up the ladder and welder for a spade and trowel!)

We’ve been at this house-building job for three years now. And now that my three books are published, I have more time to help.

We’re hoping to christen our new home before the end of this year. In the meantime, when we think of people who are so much less fortunate than we are, we’re reminded that we’re blessed with two huge tanks full of water, a cozy, dry place to sleep and a spacious deck for entertaining.

The world ice hockey champions
On which deck, to the great delight of our dear Canadian friend, Marnee and her Irish (but pro-Canadian) husband Ollie, we watched the Olympic television coverage last month for sixteen exhausting nights. A passionate, newly demonstrative nationalistic Canada reminded us that Canadians are (and must always be) the world ice hockey champions!

Right on!

Eh?

Last December, I attended a one-day training workshop about “Planning to Engage Your Community Online”  conducted by the Australian firm, Bang the Table.

See: http://corporate.bangthetable.com/upload/filename/116/PDF-Brisbane.pdf

See also:
www.bangthetable.com

www.budgetallocator.com

www.onlinecommunityconsultation.com

What a treat that was for me!

One of the weaknesses of my work has been a reluctance to engage with electronic democracy and online consultation with the sort of furious enthusiasm that characterised the work of my firm, Sarkissian Associates Planners, and many talented colleagues I have worked with over the years.

Bang the Table specializes in providing web-based community engagement platforms for local, state and national governments mostly in Australia, but also in New Zealand and Canada.

What I learned

What I learned was that the approaches used by Bang the Table can make my own engagement processes livelier and friendlier. They can make them more approachable to many, including younger generations without in any way trivializing the content. I learned the benefits and weaknesses of a whole range of options, including blogs, forums, social networking (Facebook), wikis, and microblogs (Twitter) and a wide range of suggestions for incorporating images and video into the engagement discussions.

My engagement universe expanded. Exploded.

And, after three co-authored books in two years with a total of thirteen authors, I discovered, somewhat sadly, the benefits of document-sharing systems. As authors, we managed quite well communicating from Sweden, Canada, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Honolulu and France, not to mention Brisbane and me here in the bush, but it could have been much easier, my new friends explained to me. Much easier.

Ah well, there are new books to write and new engagement processes to undertake…

Brilliance, care and sensitivity

So when I saw a cartoon recently in the Sydney Morning Herald vilifying Bang the Table, I remembered the brilliance, care and sensitivity their Directors showed in their well-designed and well-managed training session.

As I listened to the Directors, Matt Crozier and Crispin Butteriss, I realised that my attempts to bring creativity into community engagement were being parallelled by these innovative practitioners who live in a sort of parallel universe.

Our approaches are complementary, not competitive. Our unique insights, innovations and techniques can work together to enhance the work of the other.

Welcome to my kitchen table

They’d be welcome at my kitchen table any time.

And I am convinced that together we can help to achieve kitchen table sustainability in our different – and complementary – ways.

Karl in the Shed

The Introduction to Kitchen Table Sustainability starts the book off on a bucolic, if pessimistic, note. Three of the authors are sitting around the tables on the porch of our shed here in Nimbin and speculating about the future and the future of all generations – of all beings.

So far, so good.

All beings

All beings. Good Deep Ecology thinking for a woman with a PhD in environmental ethics.

Right?

May all beings be happy and free from suffering.

All beings. Hmmm.

Karl in the shed

For the past week or more, my husband Karl has been up a ladder in the shed with me acting as the trades assistant, that is, holding the ladder.

And what are we doing, two ageing humans with six university degrees between us? We’re trying to rat-proof our 6 metre by 6 metre shed.

So far the little suckers have eaten everything in sight. I mean everything: lids to glass jars, lids to boxes, boxes of files, toiletries, creams and lotions and vitamins and calcium tablets, aspirin, the plastic water filter cartridge AND the carbon pellet contents. The only thing that dissuades them is a locked metal filing cabinet, which now holds cereal, nuts, and other treasures I’m trying to rescue from the chaos.

Messy eaters

They’re very messy eaters so the floor is littered with their droppings, washed with their urine and blanketed with a multicoloured carpet of half-chewed plastic, cardboard, paper, cellophane, food, vitamins…

The rats came in when the floods came and the winds blew the iron off the roof. The python followed them, but it got too crowded in the roof space for everyone. So the python (we dreamed he’d evict them) departed after knocking everything off the tops of the bookcases. He was a messy worker, too.

We’d had lots of rats and marsupial mice before. But now, apparently sensing that Karl (with a stern countenance, rolls of vermin mesh, a drill and metal rods to attach the mesh to the walls) means business, they are redoubling their efforts to chew up and through everything not locked in a metal box.

Local remedies

All the local remedies are futile: scattering chilli powder where they go, various humane and not-so-humane traps, ratsack, traps camouflaged in potato crisp bags…

Nothing works.

Fortunately, we’re not sleeping in the shed any longer… because the night-time antics of one small mouse can drive an adult human berserk. And quickly. Tearing out the door and baying at the moon seems a perfectly reasonable response when you have been wakened a dozen times by what German-speaking Karl calls “knispering”. “Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!”

Knisper away

Well, knisper they may. But not for long. We’re coming to the end of the job of securing the downstairs of the shed so that they will have to knisper only in the roof space and not in my cherished envelopes of chocolate pudding or my treasured antique fan.

They’re smart, these little creatures. They’re persistent and wily. They make plans for their future. They take care of their family’s needs. So they should be worthy of consideration as part of our ethical community. (See chapter 3 of Kitchen Table Sustainability.)

They’ve outsmarted us for years. We may be bigger and have bigger brains, but, trust me, rats are not to be underestimated. I definitely don’t think we humans are the pinnacle of creation or the top of the evolutionary pyramid when I’m standing holding the ladder for hours on end, ankle-deep in rat mess.

And I wonder: what will happen when Karl is too old to climb up the ladder and manage a drill and I am too frail to hold the ladder?

Will rats rule then?

All beings!

Hah!

I love the new building of the Mirvac School of Sustainable Development at Bond University. It reminds me of the concept of “eco-revelatory design” made popular by a great new book by Randy Hester,  Design for Ecological Democracy (2006). All of the building’s many innovative sustainability features are easily recognisable, with signs everywhere to explain the features of the building and landscaping. The only problem is that it’s hard to find the front door. Ecological design sometimes trumps social design…

Introducing the book’s other authors…

We had no problem finding the front door when we launched our new book, Kitchen Table Sustainability, in the courtyard of the new building on a balmy December evening last year. The event was graciously organised by my friend, Danny O’Hare, Associate Professor of Urban Planning, Mirvac School of Sustainable Development. Professor George Earl, Dean of the Faculty of Business, Technology and Sustainable Development at Bond University and formerly Head of the School of Sustainable Development, officiated after Danny welcomed about fifty guests.

I spoke briefly about the new book and the challenges we face in my capacity as an Adjunct Professor in the School. We had a lively discussion. My favourite question came from a knowledgeable source, planner and activist, Brian Feeney, who asked whether it was acceptable for communities to frame their visions without consideration of the Earth’s carrying capacity.

“It’s not,” I replied. “We need to strengthen community capacity about the limits to growth as part of community engagement processes.”

I drew people’s attention to Chapter 5, which discusses community education issues in detail.

A grateful thank-you to Danny and George for an excellent event, great food and wine, and thought-provoking discussion.

Following the launch, as the building’s sensors turned off the lights and ventilation, Karl and I decamped to our favourite waterside café for a late dinner. We were grateful to our colleagues and delighted to see the book coming to life. But we found it hard to leave the topic alone. We speculated on the effects of predicted sea-level rise on this beautiful setting as we gazed out at the waterfront housing and tucked into our coffee and desserts.

After years of drought, Brisbane was treated to a sparkling evening shower on Friday night, December 5th and a rapturous reception for Kitchen Table Sustainability. Four of our book’s five authors were present at the book launch at popular West End bookstore, Avid Reader. Cathy Wilkinson flew in from Swedish Lappland, Steph Vajda and Yollana Shore are West End residents. Karl and I drove from Nimbin in New South Wales.

Avid Reader Proprietor Krissy Kneen welcoming guests

Over 100 people crowded into the bookstore to hear Drew Hutton, founder of the Queensland Greens, launch the book with stories of community campaigns to save West End and Brisbane from planning disasters. Bursts of applause greeted news of the generous and skilled pro bono graphics and public relations support provided to the authors by Jen and Dougal of Jaxzyn and Maureen Mullins and Elaine Hill.

Popular local real estate agent, Leo Tsimpikas, was applauded for his generous support as the landlord for my West End office during challenging times when many community engagement projects were being pursued.

Avid ReaderBookshop proprietor, Krissy Kneen, complimented the authors and Earthscan, the publisher, on the beautiful appearance of the book and encouraged guests to purchase it as a Christmas gift for their friends. Many books were purchased that night.

I welcomed guests, explained everyone’s contributions, including that of co-author Nancy Hofer in Vancouver and thanked many helpers, including her husband, Karl Langheinrich.  I explained that Avid Reader had been the “kitchen table” at which many of the ideas in the book had initially been discussed.

Steph then read a passage about the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia and Cathy (embraced by her two small children) read a passage from Chapter 10 entitled, “Your input will be taken on board”. Yollana reminded everyone of the intergenerational aspects of sustainability and engagement and thanked guests for coming to share in the celebrations.

Guests waited to have books signed by the four authors and conversations continued into the evening on the footpath as people lingered to talk about the book, its ideas, sustainability and community. And how refreshing the rain was.

A great night was had by all.

The grateful authors feel blessed by the love of friends and family and the support of a strong activist community.

Co-author Cathy Wilkinson, who travelled from Swedish Lappland for the launch

The authors signing books

Grateful acknowldgement of photos: Angel Kosch

Reflections on the Adelaide book-signing event, November 2008

When I emigrated to Australia in 1968, the second person I met was Hugh Stretton, now widely regarded as one of Australia’s foremost urbanists. In his kitchen at 61 Tynte Street, North Adelaide, actually at his kitchen table, Hugh was putting the finishing touches to what was to become one of Australian planning’s classic texts: Ideas for Australian Cities (1970).

I remember him pasting an image of an “orphan” on his mock-up of the back cover because, as he explained, six professional publishers had rejected his book.

My friendship with Hugh continues to this day. We spent many fiery sessions on the Board of the South Australian Housing Trust in the 1970s nutting out housing policy and arguing about women’s shelters and homelessness. I was the only woman on the  Board and its youngest member. Hugh was the powerful (and to me frightening) Deputy Chair. They were feisty times, as South Australia grappled with a more enlightened model of social housing that had been proposed by the Trust’s 1936 enabling legislation.

So it was with great delight (and much surprise) that I found myself embracing my dear friend and former sparring partner at the Adelaide Kitchen Table Sustainability book-signing event, generously hosted by my colleagues at Urban and Regional Planning Solutions (www.urps.com.au) on 20 November 2008.

The first thing Hugh said, after a warm hug, was that he hoped I did not mind if he had a few criticisms of the book.

“It wouldn’t be right, ” I replied. “After all these years of disagreements — and agreements, it’s only fair.”

Old Friends, November 2008

The generosity of my Adelaide colleagues, and  in particular, Angela Hazebroek, a longtime planning colleague and dear friend, and the blessing of my forty years of friendship with Hugh, now 83, remind me of the importance of connections across the generations. Our book has been written by representatives of three generations.

A member of another generation – and an eminent scholar– reminds us of what we have forgotten.

What I had not forgotten — and the warm smiles, laughter and good cheer of the URPS book signing-event bore testament to that – is the power of friendship.  And the great blessing of a professional community.

Thank-you, dear Hugh.