On Saturday I drove 72 kms. round-trip to my local Officeworks store in Lismore, NSW in the vain hope that they might have stopped stocking Reflex paper. I signed the pledge and the petition (with 11,000 others!) months ago and so far my boycott has meant that I have taken my business to others.

But operating a small business in a tiny village means I am reliant on some companies. And Officeworks until recently has been one of them.

Why is this boycott important?

Officeworks buys paper that is made from native forest timber. Simple as that! is well aware of the environmental costs of native forest logging – and that ready alternatives exist – but they continue to support this by stocking the Reflex range. They do this despite their own Corporate Social Responsibility policy, which states that Our goal is to fully integrate environmental responsibility into every facet of our operations by select[ing] better products for the environment.

Hmmm.

Greenwash? I wonder?

With the Wilderness Society, I believe that it is well past time for Officeworks to start taking their own policies seriously and to refuse to stock Reflex Paper until its producer, Australian Paper, no longer sources wood fibre from the logging of native forests.

So this matter was in my mind when I went into the store.

I was told by an embarrassed young man (who told me that he had to pay his mortgage and feed his dogs and therefore could not speak out against a policy he clearly did not agree with) that the stock of Reflex paper was new and that they were still stocking it.

So I asked to speak to the Duty Manager.

I think that Richard, who arrived after some time, had probably had enough of North Coast activists by the time I arrived.

But if he traced my stationery purchases over the past ten years, he’d see that not listening is not going to be good for business.

“Officeworks: Clean up your act” National Day of Action, 13 September 2011

Hopefully the day of action tomorrow (www.ethicalpaper.com.au) will help him see the error of his ways. Richard has no point of view. native forests from becoming copy paper.

To give Officeworks the extra motivation it needs to continue its role as a leader in paper retailing, the Wilderness Society, in partnership with environment groups across the country, are holding a National Day of Action to name and shame Reflex and Officeworks for their hand in forest destruction in Australia.

On the morning of 13 September, stores across the nation will be visited by troops of “janitors” telling Officeworks to clean up its act! Armed with vacuums, dustpans, sponges, and rubber gloves, volunteers will descend on Officeworks, scrubbing Reflex from their shelves. On the day, the TWS aim is to show Australian Paper and Officeworks that Australians will not stand for our precious forests being turned into office paper.

The “Company Man”

As I looked into Richard’s face, his cold eyes and unsmiling, trembling lips and listened to his hard ‘company’ line, I was reminded of a comic character, Twimble, “The Company Man”  in a movie of my young adulthood: How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (1961):

Twimble: I play it the company way;
Wherever the company puts me
There I stay.
Finch: But what is your point of view?
Twimble: I have no point of view.
Finch: Supposing the company thinks . . .
Twimble: I think so too.
Finch: Now, what would you say . . .?
Twimble: I wouldn’t say.
Finch: Your face is a company face.
Twimble: It smiles at executives
Then goes back in place. …
Finch: So you play it the company way?
Twimble: All company policy is by me OK.
…
Whoever the company fires,
I will still be here.
Finch: You will still be here.
Both: Year after year after fiscal,
Never take a risk-al year!

Shame, Richard. You can do better than that: But what is your point of view? I have no point of view.

Officeworks has already shown us they are willing to take action in this important issue when it comes to paper from overseas. Now is the time for Officeworks to keep this high standard they have set for themselves and suspend the sale of Reflex paper while it is made from the critically endangered Leadbeater’s Possum Habitat.

Day of Action!

If you believe that in this International Year of the Forests that it is simply unacceptable to woodchip and sell our native forests as Reflex paper, please join us.

To RSVP and for more action details please contact TWS Community Campaigner, Triér Murphy, on 0433010390 or by email Trier.Murphy@wilderness.org.au

For more information

http://www.wilderness.org.au/campaigns/forests/officeworks-clean-up-your-act

Do you need to buy office copy paper and do you also care about Australia’s forests?

Don’t buy any Reflex copy paper and don’t buy any copy paper from Officeworks.

Buy these copy paper brands (recommended by the Wilderness Society):

• Evolve
• Vision
• Fuji Xerox Recycled

And try, as a supplier, EcoOffice (great Australian-owned company who does care about Australia’s native forests).

What we have learned about social reform and social change in Western countries over many decades is that burning books and silencing dissent are very dangerous practices.

What is my dissenting voice really saying?

I am saying that exclusionary practices in the Jarlanbah Permaculture Hamlet make me and many of my neighbours feel excluded and unhappy.

At a higher level, they are inequitable, unfair and destabilising of community strength, solidarity and, ultimately, sustainability.

It’s not fun being the focus of sustained attacks.

But I am willing to wear that discomfort to have my voice — my small single voice — heard.

I come from a long line of people who spoke out against injustice. As a Canadian-Armenian, I know what happened to my father’s family and his father’s family. The blood of the martyrs runs in my veins.

Social exclusion and bullying in Jarlanbah are hardly genocide. But they are definitely ways of killing community.

I guess I just have to be unpopular. Tearing off the gag.

Speaking the unspeakable.

And I am going to fight for the rights of the disenfranchised and silenced members of communities with my dying breath.

Charity begins at home!

Then I experience my own neighbours resisting the changes that dual occupancy (or accessory units) might bring to their subdivision of half-acre lots.

And then, finally, a wealthy developer with a large site asking why we needed to bother with community engagement at all — when there are (apparently) no activists or “greenies” in this (a large country town) community and there are no frogs or anything that could be considered endangered.

Or that anyone would get in a lather about or go to the press about…

In a (somewhat) small voice I was muttering to myself about an “engaged citizenry” being a value in its own right.

Who would do community engagement for a living?

I would.

I keep at it, trying to help where I can, accepting that to some I am a “mercenary”, or the hired gun of the developers who are paving over paradise.

And to others, I am a hopeless, naive optimist who does not understand the “bottom line”.

All these personae.

The same me.

The best part of this very challenging period was an unexpected phone call last night from an old friend — a prominent developer — encouraging me and bolstering my spirits. We’ve been friends for nearly thirty years. He had the same thing to say about his profession, recounting a conversation over lunch last week with a fellow developer: who could be a developer?

Vale Arne Naess

Last year we mourned the death of the great Norwegian environmental philosopher, Arne Naess, father of Deep Ecology and the first Chairman of Greenpeace Norway when it was founded in 1988.

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/15/obituary-arne-naess

I was blessed to have heard him speak on two occasions: once in Melbourne and once in Killarney, Ireland.

The frontier is long

Naess, who was 96  when he died in January, 2009, reminded us that “the frontier is long”.

The community engagement frontier is long, too. There’s a place for all of us working for reform and seeking to empower communities.

Naess’s birthday was the day before mine. He was my hero.

I want to be working for reform when I am 96, too.

I may not have the wealth of the greedy developer with his cynical and opportunistic views of community engagement.

Hopefully, my ethical self will be alive.

And hopefully, I will still be having provocative weeks like the last few — to remind me what my life is for.

And why, like Arne,  I am here on Earth!

Jarlanbah Permaculture Hamlet from Shirley's house, 1993

Here’s a photo of the Jarlanbah Permaculture Hamlet from Shirley’s place (lot 6) in late 1993. An exhausted dairy farm being transformed into a Permaculture Hamlet.

Shirley has been explaining to me how the process worked. That heady mix of dreaming and practical realities.

She’s been explaining what her intentions were, coming here alone as a widow in her early sixties. She was dreaming of community. And support. A place to put down roots and live into her older years. Her own, ecological, architect-designed house.

A place where she (a distinguished fine artist with works already in the National Gallery) could paint and create in peace — embraced and supported by Nature’s beauty and bounty.

Embraced and supported by a community of like-minded people caring for Nature and for each other.

What exciting days those were!

The dream was so inviting; the vision so bright; the intentions so clear.

Promotional material for Jarlanbah Permaculture Hamlet

Here’s the Jarlanbah Permaculture Hamlet insert in the Northern Star for late March 1994:

Star Focus on Jarlanbah March 1994

This is the vision we need to revisit.

How can we update the vision and re-align with our current version?

How can we move forward in harmony, cooperation and peace?

I look forward to your comments.

All ideas are welcomed. Contrary views are welcomed and and invited.

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter…. Obliged to you for hearin’ me….

It’s Easter weekend: a time for reflection on renewal, blessings and hope.

I am awash with fresh insights following a fascinating community mediation about the dual occupancy (accessory dwelling unit) issue on this community.

Sometimes people leave intentional communities. See “Leaving Utopia”, click here:  Leaving Utopia – MARY GARDEN

Things are different now. We’re settled in, the toilet is built, the deck is a daily marvel and my three books have been birthed and are now for sale.

I realise that I can no longer turn my back on the goings-on in my own immediate community and focus only on other communities.

There is much to learn from this small eco-village and much that needs to change.

The Jarlanbah archives

With the help of my elderly artist neighbour, Shirley, a founding resident, I have been exploring the Jarlanbah archives from the early 1990s.

What a tale they have to tell us!

Robyn Francis

The birth of this community in 1993 was accompanied by deep reflection and much dreaming, bearing in mind the state of the Earth and a deep desire to care for Nature in all her wondrous beauty. The developer was completely aligned with these ambitious social and environmental objectives. The designer, eminent Permaculture educator and designer, Robyn Francis, keeps in regular contact with many of us and recently has been helping us understand the deeper intent of our founding principles with respect to intergenerational equity, density, community infrastructure, inclusion and sustainability.

She’s reminded us of the strong focus on inclusion in the founding documents. Given that today there’s a lot of exclusionary thinking about in the world, it’s a salutary reminder!

Those of us who live on Jarlanbah are blessed to have Robyn as a neighbour. Awarded NSW Rural Woman of the Year a few years ago, she’s a Permaculture designer and educator of international eminence.

For Robyn’s award-winning teaching, education, training and design work, see:

www.permaculture.com.au

and

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/utopias/dream_machine/docos/jarlanbah.htm

How I wish I could have been part of that early planning process!

The far-thinking developer, John Hunter, his planners and designers (and then the first residents) spent long hours exploring alternatives for the social and physical design of this place. It was a dream that was both far-looking and practical; resilient and able to be modified.

We’ve lost our way…

For reasons that I will explore in this blog, I believe that we’ve lost our way here in the Jarlanbah Permaculture Hamlet.

But I am confident that it’s not too late to bring the original vision up-to-date, realign with it and and move forward in cooperation, self-reliance and harmony.

I’ve pasted in below the poster that used to be on our sign at the front gate:  the original dream. The sign went missing but the dream is still alive in the hearts and minds of many early Jarlanbah Hamleteers. And the newbies are now learning what our founding mothers and fathers had in mind.

The details of the dream are spelled out in a detailed Management Statement and fascinating early newsletters, which I will also post for people to read.

We need to understand our history here.

I need to understand it!

Blessings on you all this Easter weekend! May we all live in peace, cooperation and harmony.

The promise, if not (yet) the reality…

Trouble in Paradise

Tomorrow evening my neighbours are meeting to decide whether or not to try to ban dual occupancy (commonly called accessory dwelling units:  http://www.mass.gov/envir/smart_growth_toolkit/pages/mod-adu.html ) in this eco-village of 43 dwellings on 22 hectares.

The whole process has me mightily confused.

Imagine the contradictions

Imagine the contradictions. Here we are living on half an acre in a Permaculture community committed to self-sufficiency and sustainability principles.

We live in a low-income community (Nimbin, population 350) with a desperate shortage of housing, especially for lower income residents. And most of us do not grow much food – if any – on our properties. I think every lot has at least one car. We’re highly automobile-dependent and we’re certainly not secure in terms of food production.

Designed by Robyn Francis

But we’re trying. The Jarlanbah community, designed by formidable Permaculture designer, Robyn Francis, who lives down the road at the Djanbung Gardens Permaculture Education Centre (see: http://www.earthwise.org.au/), was established in 1993 and the first residents moved in in 1994. We’ve been here since 2001, actually living here since early 2006.

Now many of us are ageing and looking for opportunities to age in place and to have the possibility of a caregiver living on our house block.

Or to have an income stream from renting a small dwelling on our land.

Recently, the Jarlanbah Review Sub-committee rejected a proposal by one of our neighbours for a dual occupancy arrangement on his block. In North America, this is generally called an “accessory dwelling unit”.

His house is very stylish and modern in its design and I wondered what role “aesthetics” played in the decision.

Arguments in favour of dual occupancy

In any case, this case, which is likely to go to a formal mediation session, has caused a huge amount of discussion in our community. Some of us, citing global sustainability principles, Peak Oil, automobile dependence and the needs of an ageing, rural population, want to be able to have two dwellings on a lot. We can’t see how this would differ – in planning terms — from, say, a house with four or more bedrooms for a large family or shared household. We don’t see that the impacts on our road infrastructure would be that dramatic.

Not everyone would want to have another dwelling on their lot (perhaps half might – eventually) and those who did could pay extra to reflect the wear and tear that another vehicle might cause (assuming that vehicles would not be shared).

“It will open the floodgates”

But not all residents feel this way. Others are afraid that having a few more dwellings will open the floodgates. “It’ll turn Jarlanbah into a slum and a ghetto,” remarked one of the long-term residents, while another claimed that she did not move to Nimbin “to live in cluster housing.”  “This is not inner city Redfern,” claimed another.

NIMBY and BANANA

As a Jarlanbah resident who has spent a whole career (since 1967) working in housing and planning, I am curious to understand what this really means.

Where would these road-wrecking new slum-dwellers come from?

How could a ghetto emerge as a result of density increase?

I can’t help but think of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) or better still, BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything (or Anyone).

Nevertheless, this small village community on 43 lots is about to embark on an open, democratic, community discussion on this matter. In the Jarlanbah community centre, subject of an equally acrimonious debate that featured bullying and recrimination, broke hearts, shattered trust, offended aesthetic sensibilities and still rankles…

The Jarlanbah Community Centre

Watch this space!

Wednesay morning update:

Shocking meeting with no facilitation process to help us.

People jumping up and threatening, screaming and swearing at each other, unable to be controlled by the Chair.

I’m now branded as a consultant who’s the same as a dot-com operator — in the pay of the developers, plotting the extinction of all the wallabies, echnidnas and antechinus.

Pretty soon we will have blocks of flats at the bottom of the gully!

More soon!

Wednesday, after the mediation session

This matter has been taken to a formal mediation session through the State Department of Fair Trading. As a trained mediator myself, I know that what goes on inside the room stays inside the room.

I will post my later thoughts on dual occupancy policy in this blog but for now, I cannot report on the latest events at Jarlanbah.

Except to say that we had a lovely pancake breakfast this morning (responding to advice from American planning theorist, John Forester, that we spend more time together socially and eating together). So this morning before the mediation, I served pancakes for breakfast in the community centre (after Shirley and I scrubbed it within an inch of its life last night).

And tonight it’s pizza on our deck.

It’s raining softly in Paradise this afternoon. It’s very peaceful.

After a four-hour+ mediation, the local residents have gone home to their families and their gardens.

I hear Gaia, the living Earth, breathe a sigh of relief.

Is she thinking: Hopefully, those pesky humans will relax and simply love what they love.

The Guest Bedroom

We’ve been living in our shed for three and a half years. House under construction for two and a half…

And on Friday the windows arrived for the guest bedroom in our house-under-construction project. It has walls, doors, a roof, a floor and almost windows.

Tomorrow morning at 9 am Ken is coming to help Karl install them.

I’ve been reflecting about how much this means to me. It’s so marvellous here these sparking winter days. It’s absolutely freezing at night as we huddle around a fire on the deck in our Mexican chiminea. Then it’s up to 30 during the day.

Many blessings

I’m blessed to be  living in a rural paradise, awakened by the raucous laughter of a dozen kookaburras in a nearby tree. Spending late winter afternoons watching a family of five wallabies relaxing and eating the new grass shoots on the lawn.

I WANT TO SHARE THIS. But it’s not much of an offering to urban people who have baths and toilets and kitchens when I say I can offer a tent or a rat-infested shed. A wash under the hose.

A lovely prospect

But the prospect of putting a bouquet of  fresh flowers in a vase in the guest bedroom,  hanging ironed curtains on the new screened louvered windows, setting out a few good books on the bedside table, a candle, incense… that is such a delightful imagining.  It brings a great yearning to my heart. Many dear friends have visited us in our chaotic circumstances. We’ve trudged them around the muddy building site, stumbling over piles of timber and peering into unfinished rooms, gesturing where rooms could be, how the roof could go…

“I couldn’t live like this.”

One, appalled, could only say, “I couldn’t live like this.”  Others have hugged us and offered all means of encouragement. Very great encouragement. Everyone marvels at the beauty of the place.

Tonight I was sharing my enthusiasm for the guest bedroom by phone with Leonie, twelve thousand miles away. Maybe she’ll come to visit after Christmas. We might have the box gutter sorted out by then. I reassured her that her room is rat- and python-proof, fully mossie-proof. It has a great view of the escarpment. Great ventilation. A private verandah. It’s very quiet. We even plan to have key locks on the guest bedroom doors so that guests can leave valuables and not be worried by our relaxed rural attitude to security.

So, one more sleep to an almost-ready guest bedroom. One more step toward the hospitality I dream of.

Feels like Christmas Eve.

Sad postscript the next day: The windows were too big for the spaces. It was the Builders Picinc Day in NSW (a holiday I had not heard of!) so could not sort it out.

Much disappointment. (Watch this space…)

A day later: Ordered new windows. We’d apparently violated some window-measuring protocol. Supposed to call it “make size” to include the window reveals (whatever that means…) Our fault. But they fit in the living room. Still, it’s not the same.

Ken did a great job of brushcutting instead…

Sept. 7th, 2009: The windows are in. At last! It’s gorgeous. It’s ready for guests. Cosy and homey. Not exactly “finished” but filled with love.

March 2010: The exterior walls are insulated and clad, two new windows added above the original ones, an internal screen door to allow for more cross-ventilation and we’ve had our first proper guest. Now that we can offer the convenience of a beautiful composting toilet next door, it’s even more inviting.

Come to visit!

The Guest Bedroom March 2010

Up a ladder and too tired to pay the account

So imagine me on the day that a credit card account was due for payment trying to convince Karl – up a ladder for hours mending the roof – to pay it online as only he knows how. Understandably, he chose bed after an exhausting day and the account was late.

In the morning – at 9 am – he paid it. I then rang the bank to ask for a remission of the late fee. I proudly answered all the identification questions: my childhood pet, great aunt’s maiden name, Karl’s favourite brand of German sauerkraut… Anne, from Tasmania, seemed sensible enough.

Then came the question I could not answer: what recent charges have you made on this card? The earlier statements were with my bookkeeper, who lives in a local community whose road access was flooded out by what the locals came to call “the chasm”.

Airlifted tofu

(As a side note, it was humorous to hear that all the tofu in Lismore was bought up by the emergency services and airlifted by helicopter to the cut-off alternative community members!)

Anyway, I could not remember my purchases. It never occurred to me that they would be, of course, on the statement I was ringing about. Anne didn’t think of that either.

The upshot was that I was deemed not to be me and therefore had my credit card access cancelled.

“I AM me! Truly, I am. Ask me anything else? Ring me back on any of the numbers you have on file,” I cried, then remembering that the floods had cut the home line.

“Ring me back. Email me! Anything! I’m in a tiny village. Don’t make me go into that terrible bank again with those appalling people who send me away, telling me I have to make an appointment to collect my credit card. I have sworn never to go into that bank. Never.”

On my desk is the morning paper with their latest advertisement: “We’re for…  [all good, sensible, community and local things].” I’m encouraged to believe that they are the bank I can bank on. They are for me. Hah!

Deep carpet sobbing

I am crying now. Deep carpet sobbing.

I ask to speak to her supervisor.

The supervisor, also from Tasmania, takes the same hard line. She does not say my name because, of course, I am not me.

I am not me

I am not me. I have to drive 75 kms. round trip to Lismore. I have been cut off.

I explained again, sobbing, that I was me, that the account was paid, that all I wanted was a little compassion (the neighbouring community got helicopter loads of tofu, for God’s sake!).

I closed the account and moved things to another bank .

Which bank?

(Which bank? That bank!)

There a compassionate and generous officer sorted out my affairs and made me and Karl cups of tea.

Complaint addressed

In the end, someone from “complaints” rang from the first bank and apologised.

But when I asked here whether State Government policies on natural disasters had any impact on how banks operate, the woman said she did not know. She thought probably yes.

Disasters come in many forms. For us, blessedly spared, this one just brought us a lot of mess and the loss of some treasured mementoes.

And a new bank. With real people.

I was visiting a city friend recently.

We have no oven in our shed in the bush, so the sight of someone preparing to bake was deeply satisfying.

“What are you baking?” I asked Bill, as he patted the lumpy, brown blobs. Knowing he was a vegetarian, I was prepared for lentil burgers.

“Chocolate chip cookies,” he replied, hand-shaping the blobs on the baking sheet.

“Those aren’t chocolate chip cookies”

“Those aren’t chocolate chip cookies, Bill,” I offered. “Where I come from, we never make them that way.”

‘I’ve done my research and this is how they were originally made,’ he retorted, slamming the oven door.

I explained what a cookie was. He said he knew all about cookies.

“Bill,” I implored, “if we were talking about chapattis, you’d be interested in my opinion. It’d be ethnic food and you’d be fascinated if I explained the tricks of making them ‘properly’, authentically. I am sure of that. You’d be so respectful of me as a migrant, with my distinctive culture and cuisine. It’s because they’re American and I’m Canadian that you figure they are not important to me.”

He kept his back to me, intent on his dishwashing.

North Americans are not really ‘migrants’ in this country

Retreating to my room, I remembered what I’d known for decades. North Americans are not really ‘migrants’ in this country. I was about to celebrate 40 years of living in Australia. That very week. Forty years!

I could imagine what Bill was thinking: chocolate chip cookies are just part of a global market conspiracy. They are not any one culture’s food. They are certainly not anyone’s ‘cuisine’. A ‘generic’ thing that you make. Or make from a packet. Or buy in a shop.

I remembered learning to bake Toll House cookies as a child, in home economics. I sort of didn’t have a mother (least not one who could cook), so I had to learn to cook at school.They were ‘invented’ in the 1930s by an American cook and the idea took off like a rocket.

Hamilton Junior High School

I learned how to prepare them properly, in the home ec. lab at school, wearing the starched apron I’d made in sewing class. That was in the 1950s at Hamilton Junior High School.

For soft drop copies, all ingredients had to be at room temperature; cream the butter and sugar. Add the sifted dry ingredients. Drop from a spoon using another spoon to guide the dough onto the cookie sheet. Cook only till chewy.

Never crisp

Never crisp.

Before the cookie fiasco, Bill and I were discussing my research into cultural diversity.

Blessedly, the cooking goddess delivered me from any further relationship with the mounds.

Bill rushed out to his yoga class and forgot to turn off the oven.

The charred black mounds went into the compost.

And I took a trip into the city for some Mrs. Fields.

After we finish the roof and get the floors down, and build a toilet and get a shower happening… then I will have a kitchen and an oven.

It’s been 3 1/2 years since we had those luxuries.

And the first thing to come out of that oven will be my old favourites.

Here’s the original Toll House recipe: http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/detail.aspx?ID=18476

What They Should Look Like

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to have to write a short piece on evaluation for a consulting report. I reviewed what I had in my library, did a quick Internet search and decided it was time to bone up on the latest. So I took myself off for two blissful days in the university library in Lismore. It was vacation time and I had the “evaluation” section all of the library to myself. The whole floor, in fact.

I loved what I read in recent publications, many in the esteemed Sage series. Wise old practitioners warning newcomers. Traps for young players. Helpful hints. Political and strategic advice. Not what I had expected, actually…

As I read, I remembered my own (often painful) forays into formal evaluation, especially the large post-occupancy evaluation (POE) of public housing in Minto, Sydney in 1983  (see  Minto POE questionnaire 1983  for the 1983 POE questionnaire).

And an equally challenging but very different study of False Creek North in Vancouver in 2007 and 2008.

I realised that evaluation is a highly political and sensitive realm. Often messengers get shot.

Do we have to get shot?

You can download my notes from my reading and other sources by clicking on this link: Evaluation of Community Engagement Processes

And there’s lots of information, methodologies and findings about the False Creek North study in this website as well.  See:

http://kitchentablesustainability.com/housing-density-and-sustainability-what-works-and-what-doesnt-work/

Hopefully, by keeping abreast of the excellent advice available nowadays, none of us will have to face the firing squad for trying to evaluate programs, projects or policies. Or community engagement.

I’d welcome your comments and suggestions.