People Ponderings: Nikola Tesla

Geniuses are always fascinating to read about. Their single minded focus on their goals leaves them open to ridicule and exploitation for their foibles, quirks and general disregard for the practical elements of life, especially finances.

I can pretty unreservedly say that Nikola Tesla enlightened the modern era. He gave us alternating current power, modern radio, radar, neon and flourescent lighting, remote control and almost it is believed universal free energy.

While most of his inventions, as is the modus operandi of capitalist imperialism, were turned to violence, war and monetary gain, Tesla himself forsaw and pursued a world of peace and enlightened mankind. He sought to lift the burdens of humanity and bring a new era of abundance and joy to all peoples.

Seeing the coming of World War II he sought to create a device that would make any country, regardless of size, safe within its own borders. It was rejected as was his device to create an ionosphere of unlimited energy for free use for every person of every nation.

Tesla was an inventor, scientist and engineer of the highest order. A veritable Superman!
He left us with a multitude of modern technologies, patents and scientific data.

He died leaving no offspring or legatees of his brilliant mind who might have carried on his work. He created fortunes for many money driven men but died penniless.

Ok...rewind that back please....universal free energy?!?!....apparently Tesla was working with resonant frequencies of the earth to potentially transmit unlimited electric power. He also found the same harmonics in the sea, air and space and believed that energy could be transmitted into any of these mediums and then utilised anywhere on the planet instantaneously...wow...and I mean WOW! Time to build a lab and do some experiments!

Book Botherings: "The Transition Handbook" - Rob Hopkins

From oil dependency to local resilience. "We have little time, and much to accomplish" - Richard Heinberg, author of 'Peak Everything'.

This is a ground breaking book! Not just because it says so on it's back cover but because the idea of transitioning anywhere from the mindless slog of capitalism and endless (though the end appears nearish) growth and expansion is both refreshingly freeing and utterly terrifying. But this book is a solid how to, not in the sense of the appropriate forms to have prepared for your new community's various activities but in the sense of preparing yourself and your neighbours and family, mind, body and soul or in their words head, heart and hands for a move towards self-sufficiency and local community living.

Transition Initiatives are based on four key assumptions:

• That life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it’s better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.

• That our settlements and communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil.

• That we have to act collectively, and we have to act now.

• That by unleashing the collective genius of those around us to creatively and proactively design our energy descent, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching and that recognise the biological limits of our planet.

This great upbeat guide offers the tools, resources and reasons to prepare ourselves adequately for the coming economic, social and cultural renaissance.

Family Fathomings: A dose of humility

I find having a son one of the greatest joys and pleasures of my life, let alone three of them. Three little souls bursting with joy and unfettered love and merriment. We have a wall of the boys' drawings and written gifts etc that to be honest I don't particularly notice most days. Today I did and found the following reminders of who we are for our children.

"Happy Father's Day! I love you because you play with me before you go to work"

"Happy Father's Day! I love you because you resol me"

"I love it when Daddy plays Brandy with me"

Time spent and love given is the currency of children. It's also an opportunity to open a door for our own souls to be merry and joyous. It is easy to get caught up in the great tribal buffalo hunt for wealth and ownership of stuff but the true treasures lie in our relationships, especially those with our children.

Book Botherings: "How to Be Free" - Tom Hodgkinson

Have you ever had the experience in reading a book that perhaps your journey through life is in fact a great play that you planned from the start and you left yourself some little guide posts and reminders along the way...? This book read like a tale I had planned to tell myself all along and was momentous, joyous, reflective and downright delicious to consume.

From the book cover itself - "Drawing on the French existentialists, British punks, the US beats, hippies and yippies, medieval thinkers, anarchists and 1970s back-to-the-landers such as Ivan Illich, Idler editor Tom Hodgkinson provides a new, simple, joyful blueprint for modern living. He shows that consumer society has led not to a widening of freedoms but to the opposite, and that they key to a free life is to stop consuming and start producing. We are not consumers, we are creators!"

"Read How to Be Free and throw off the shackles of anxiety, bureaucracy, debt, governments, housework, moaning, pain, poverty, ugliness and waste, and much else besides. "

"Are you ready to be free? Read this book and find out!"

Enough said...but really...you must read this book! If you believe anything I have to say (and I'm not sure I believe half of it myself) then believe this.

Medieval Musings: Common Ideas, Common Outcomes

"The principle of medieval trade was admittedly comradeship and justice while the principle of modern trade is avowedly competition and greed" G.K. Chesterton, 'William Cobbet', 1926

The theory (at least as far as is advertised) is that competition leads to higher quality and resonable pricing of goods. The opposite is what actually occurs, as evidenced by the rise of massive monopolies and super corporations that almost without restriction pursue their own corporate agendas across countries, peoples and cultures. They force small enterprises out of business and suck money and resources out of local communities and into the hands of shareholders. Sales and profits, not quality, service or human respect are the goals.

Merry old medieval England was imbued with a spirit of hospitality, charity and common enterprise. Workers gave 10% of their produce or earnings to the local monastery and the tithe was then used for local relief for the poor and needy. Communities looked after their own rather than delegate the task to a distant collection of bureaucrats. The notion of a 'brotherhood of man' was powerfully promoted and citizens were encouraged to love they neighbour as thyselves'. Guilds arose to manage work and trade in the mould of spirited creativity and high quality goods with complex agreed value systems specifically to engender free and fair anti-competitive trade. Members donated to a central coffer for feasts, guildhall maintenance and alms.

Gardening Goings On: The Chicken Perch Dilemma

Now chickens aren't the brightest of animals but I had thought that given the choice between a flat plank of wood and a nice cosy perch high up the back of the shed, nicely sheltered, the choice would be a no brainer.

The perches have been set up like a ladder, sloping back to the wall with enough space between each perch to keep the chickens roosting above from dropping poo on the chickens below. There is plenty of room for the birds to roost without being too crowded. Sounds ideal....right...?

Unfortunately our chickens decided that the flat plank of wood we placed above the feeder and waterer (originally put there so they could sit on the window sill during the day without dirtying their resources) was also an ideal perch and there they slept, three fat ladies bustled together on an ever increasingly sloped board.

The solution then appeared to be to simply remove the board and close off the window. Anticipating our reclacitrant ladies would simply sit on the L shaped shelf supports directly above the food and water (they needed to stay as they held up the water and food) we placed two large diameter PVC pipes there to dissuade them.

This was all in vain as my next nightly visit found two chooks perched on the PVC pipe (feet splayed out in the most uncomfortable of fashion) and one cold chook out in the yard who obviously missed the opportunity of a PVC perch and failed to notice the state of the art ladder of perches lovingly constructed at the back of the shed.

At least they lay well!

People Ponderings: James Howard Kunstler

Author of "The Long Emergency" as well as a couple of books harshly critical of suburbia namely "The Geography of Nowhere" and "Home From Nowhere.", Kunstler is a verbal samurai carving up notions that technology will save us from ourselves and depleting oil reserves will be solved by friendly bacteria excreting fuel into our cars and civic projects.

His website is http://www.kunstler.com/ and I invite anyone who wants a direct injection of reality straight to a major artery to visit it.

He also has a weekly podcast available at http://kunstlercast.com/. Again strap yourself in, be prepared to make light of disturbing human dysfunction and weep yourself into a world made by hand.

"I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work."

James Howard Kunstler, 'The Geography of Nowhere'.

I have enjoyed Kunstler's rants for over twelve months now and his no nonsense, take no prisoners approach to what I also believe is a massive waste of human potential in the mega over globalisation and suburbination (new word coming soon to a dictionary near you!) of our world, is inspiring in the same way that being chased by a lion lends an extra step to one's gait. Life is absurd and we are now witnessing the slow swaying and suspenseful slow motion collapse of a world built of goo. Be Merry!