With how much I screwed up everything I tried to work on in the past 2 days, I finally put all sewing projects aside and just stayed away from them. I was talking to Carla and she laughed at me and said I had sewers block! I felt like I had forgotten everything I've ever learned above the level of simple sewing, because I just kept screwing things up. I'm happy to say that today it has been a different story. I got my applique done in about 30 minutes and am ready to start sewing dress panels together. I also listed the skirt and bag for the person who is buying them from me.
I watched the End of Suburbia last night. I saw it awhile back, when I first started thinking about the repercussions of PO. It is an excellent movie that every one should watch. There are some really viable things that can be done, although as several people in the movie say, it has to be a communal solution. One person alone really won't make a difference. And that's the hard part because a lot of people don't know and don't want to know that they are living a lifestyle that will have to change, whether they want it to or not. Matt Simmons, who wrote Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy; says every one has to watch the way they use energy. And there are lots of small things that everyone can do that will add up to a big thing! Turn off stuff. If it's not being used turn it off. Walk or bike, and if it's too far to walk or bike to, then take a bus, or if you must drive, consolidate trips. Buy local, including food, whenever you can. (The food one is going to be tough, right now at the end of winter it's pretty impossible. So many of our fresh fruits and veggies come from so far away. However, as is pointed out in the movie, the age of the 3000 mile Caesar salad is coming to an end). One thing I've been talking about forever is a garden. I don't know if Oakbrook has community garden spots but Villa Park does, and I could use mom's address. The ironic thing is that I would have to be driven to the garden spots everyday because I live far enough away to make walking pretty impossible. I could maybe bike, I'd have to do a lot of riding around here first just to get used to it again. Anyway, growing fresh food for John and I would be a good thing, and healthy, too.
Then of course there is the buying only if you need it and then only buying new if there is no other way to get what ever it is that's needed. I think it's really important for people to start doing these things now, because if we don't do them now on our own, I'm afraid they will be harder to do later when it's no longer a choice to use less energy, it will be regulated instead. It's always easier to change because we want to rather than because we have to.
Another thing that I'm watching is the housing market which has tanked so badly in the last couple of years. I don't pretend to understand economics, but I've read several people who have said that if it doesn't pick up then we will end up in a recession, and that if oil production truly has peaked it will be a recession that we never come out of. J H Kunstler, who wrote The Long Emergency (another excellent book, and who has a sometimes excellent weekly blog which I am going to add a link to), writes about the US housing driven economy fairly often, and it actually makes a lot of sense to me. He also holds out a lot of hope for the future if we can relearn the way we do things. He thinks we'll have to relearn how to do everything on a local level again, and that we will have to learn to depend on our waterways and a rebuilt rail system that would run on electricity. But the car dependent suburbs will become the slums of the future. They are not close enough to any urban centers, and in most cases they haven't been built in a way which makes community building feasible. It's been suggested that maybe some of the malls could be turned into multi-use buildings, but most of the land that could be used to grow food has been turned into parking lots. Anyway, it's a lot to think about.
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