Photographic Punk: Another Look at the Urban Okanagan

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Yesterday, I shared a vision for my city, Vernon, in the North Okanagan, based around the notion of steampunk, an art form usually praised for funky flea market jewelry made from recycled watches, and novels with computers, dragons, and zeppelins all flying around together having great, low-tech adventures. I see this exciting new way of considering urban space to have the capacity to unite communities into common vision (because it is already universal) and to provide as well clear terms for creating healthy interfaces with the earth, using terms rooted in young, popular culture, where any future will be created. While I work out some more detailed principles, I’d like to leave you with a thought. It’s about photography. These are all images of humans. What you will see as you scroll down are (bear with me here) four humans. Have a look at the beautiful creatures…

Human #1

A steampunk creation of brick, asphalt, a power pole, paper for recycling, a glass window, a magnificent art work of natural gas piping, and some handsome sturdy posts, as part of the human-automobile war. This human lives in an alley between the Vernon Art Gallery & Civic Parkade and a discount clearance outlet selling anything and everything in no particular order.

We’re working on the primary sculptural principle that sculptures are representations of the space of a human body in time, but those are big words for something that photography has made simple. Here’s our second human:

Human #2

Empty flower planter and dry fountain at the Vernon Museum & Archives. Budgets are tight. Flowers and water appear to be the first thing to go. Even though dry, though, the human still appears to be doing well.

It is one of the principles of photography that everything it captures takes on significance. It is an industrial, machine process so perfectly pitched to human consciousness that it fools us every time. It is, in other words, a form of sculpture. More on that in a second, but first, human #3…

Human #3

Recycling waste cowering for shelter around a sturdy pole, becomes, when meshed with a muralized wall, a human, bravely facing the future, although with a certain amount of unease.

It was Mary Shelley who first created the steampunk world, right when photography was invented. Her creation, Frankenstein, was a novel cobbled together out of experiences, ghost stories, and folk tales. It’s star, Frankenstein’s monster, was cobbled together out of dead body parts, reignited by a spark of electricity, and wanting a life of its own: pure steam punk! Also, pure photography. Here’s Human #4.

Human #4

A particularly bright-eyed specimen, with very intriguing body alterations and decorations. A splendid example of steampunk. Backside of the Royal Canadian Legion.

Now, one might wish to call these humans “robots”, but I’d prefer that we called them images of contemporary Vernon citizens. I think they’re beautiful, and can be brought together with the other, fleshier humans, who live amongst them, to create a new language. I am intrigued by how photography, which in a way (through its industrial nature) led society down the path towards being divorced from the earth, can now lead us back by helping us to see where its effects sit within our cities. I think these photographs are sculptures. I think Vernon itself is one giant spiritual photograph, one that is dynamically alive, as here in the one functioning civic fountain …

Notice the Clock!

Photography traditionally achieved its effects of aestheticizing the world through the addition of time: a photograph of anything 100 years old is automatically art. It’s a fascinating effect. Now, though, we have the Vernon Post Office …

A Woman’s Tree Fear

… the effects are immediate, and time has saturated all aspects of the urban environment. See how I got to steampunk? All those lockets and earrings made from old watch gears, and all those thousands of people streaming around to garage sales on Saturday, are all playing an interesting aesthetic game with time. The tree above is not, and that’s what’s interesting. This difference means that there is great latent power within this aesthetic, and I’d like to accept the challenge of trying to find words for it and to bring it to healthy life. I’ll leave you with one more thought, while I think further on this. Here’s the local farmer’s market …

Tents, Cars and People in a Parking Lot

One part of future economic health.

And here’s another…

A Pot of Tea (or, a Farm of the Future, or Human #5)

Back Alley in Vernon, with muffler, pineapple weed, and a used coffee cup. In the steampunk world, which adds articles together to create temples of time, nature is trying to get into the picture. The steampunk image is currently looking to the past, and to a very dirty industrial one, too. The plants are pushing the image into, what… life punk?

Let’s follow it!

Next: I hope to have some clear terms for this form of art and future making.

Vernon: Steam Punk Capital of the World

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Steam punk is a branch of writing and art (especially jewelry and sculpture, romantic novels and visual poetry) that recombines materials from the age of steam and iron, and sets them in the contemporary world of petroleum and electrons. Here’s what www.steampunk.com has to say about all that:

Take place in the Victorian era but include advanced machines based on 19th century technology (e.g. The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling);
Include the supernatural as well (e.g. The Parasol Protectorate by Gail Carriger);
Include the supernatural and forego the technology (e.g. The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers, one of the works that inspired the term ‘steampunk’);
Include the advanced machines, but take place later than the Victorian period, thereby assuming that the predomination by electricity and petroleum never happens (e.g. The Peshawar Lancers by S. M. Stirling); or
Take place in an another world altogether, but featuring Victorian-like technology (e.g. Mainspring by Jay Lake).

Very cool stuff. A popular way of crafting some good steampunk is to hop on down to the flea market and scrounge up some broken watches and costume jewelry, and do your magic to them, like this:

What’s not to love? You can view the rest of this Australian Maestro’s gallery here. Well, here’s the thing. I’m living on the edge of a city in the grasslands, and for a year and a half I’ve been talking about the lost world of the grass, and trying to show how it’s the future, while wandering through the houses and vineyards that have been plunked down in the middle of it like some bad body jewelry. Well, I’ve just had a brainwave. This is steampunk!

Steam Punk in the Hills!

OK, maybe more waterpunk, but still, right?

You see, this city is flush with crafty artists and self-proclaimed avante garde writers, who are busy … making old things, in old ways. The truly avante garde poet Jason Dewinetz, for instance, pretty much gave up poetry to devote himself to a letterpress. He has never been so happy. You can find his award-winning design work at www.greenboathouse.com. Here’s one:

One of the first books Jason did, before he was in the dungeon of Okanagan College and out at the Greenboathouse just up the lake from my house now, and long before I moved here, was this baby. First, the proud papa…

… and then the book …

And for a sample of this translation of Shakespeare into a kind of steampunk nrrgh? Here you go: click. At the time, I was trying to work out some things about oral language, but what I did manage was to translate myself into Vernon, capital of steampunk. It’s not just Jason. It’s Kevin Mcpherson Eckhoff, too. He’s a stand-up comic who teaches writing things at Okanagan College, hangs around Jason’s dungeon, and hosts chapbook making afternoons at Vertigo Gallery in Vernon. Here’s one of Jason’s books…

This tradition of using Victorian etchings in new and wild ways as a new art form and a daughter of poetry and excellent glue-stick technique has roots in the first world war, and wouldn’t you know it! So does Vernon! In fact, in Vernon, the men of the entire Interior, between the Coast Mountains and the Rocky Mountains, a country as big as West Germany, were lured into a makeshift camp on the grasslands, trained for a few weeks in marching and lunging, and then sent off to France, where they all died. And that was the end of that. Well, you might think so, but not in Vernon. Now it’s steampunk. Look:

In Vernon, the War has Just Begun!

See the Steampunk touch? The mirrored wall beside it, complete with tagging and this photographer’s legs and worn-out hiking boots? Excellent, Vernon!

In fact, the war is everything to Vernon.

Note the Steampunk Hand-written Addition!

That’s one tagger I owe a cup of coffee. It was a French soldier who shot my Great Uncle Alfred through the head and sent him down the long road of a private post-war battle with the German Post Office and, gasp, eventual incarceration in an insane asylum in Sweden, no less. Not a boy from Vernon. No, they were all dead by the time Verdun rolled around.

My resolute hatred of war aside, I think this steampunk thing is the key to local society. After all, here’s a local alley…

The Last Two Straws

The installation would be nothing without the tire. Pure steampunk!

Even the local art gallery is in on the act. It is right now trying to get funding to move out of its parkade before the local museum gets funding to move out of space built 50 years ago and as tiny as a crypt, while the politicians are trying to insist that they become one building, with one great big cold storage for all their paintings and artifacts (this was a fruitgrowing town once, and cold storage knowledge runs deep in the veins). Here’s what it looks like from the street…

Annual High School Student Show, Vernon Art Gallery

While the kids are being taught about the ancient aesthetic thing of art (In mnany places, contemporary with the pre-World War I era, but in Vernon definitely a NOW thing), the passing traffic is driving right through their paintings. Really…

Pure Steam Punk.

Note the lack of “plant art” in the “planting box frame”. For “art”, the writing is on the wall.

You see how that works? No need for a multi-million dollar gallery. Just a cold storage and a bunch of polished windows, and we’re in. Meanwhile, over at city hall, the wise councillors are into a little steampunking of their own…

Civic Fountain

That’s an elm seed (an invasive weed) and a dead mosquito and … eeyew.

You see how this works? Vernon is so steampunk, that everything is steampunk here. Even nature. Now “nature” is not a word I use when I’m in the grass, but down in town, where it’s an aesthetic thing, well …

See the Man Walking Up in the Tree?

I wish I could do that. Very futuristic! And the civic offices? Aha!

Former Flower Planter

Now a weed planter, framing the reflected “nature” in the office window… no different than the art gallery with its cars, but grass and dandelions. Wow. Just wow. Brilliant use of media, guys! I owe this landscaper a coffee, too. And as for the War That Will Not End, even it is fought in Nature …

Note the Flag!

In Vernon, where World War II soldiers line up at the bus shelter, Canada is steam punk, too.

Now, I’m thinking that we could make common cause here. I could use the concept of steampunk to find an appropriate language for the colonial treatment of the earth in this place and put on some photography/text shows to blow the whole idea of nature wide open, so even Leipzig, champions of street art, would notice, Kevin and Jason could teach the stuff at the college, the museum and the art gallery could move in together and make steampunk displays of both artifacts and paintings in the same installations, and install stuff in windows to keep it all up to date, the taggers could be put on the gallery board of directors, the landscaper dude can be given a bag of dandelion seeds to work his magic on the civic lawns, and the road crew could use their mastery of abstract impressionism …

… to beautify the streets.

Green Light in Vernon

A head rush, for sure. There’s no limit. The cars don’t actually have to move…

They’re Waiting for Us to Catch Up!

Notice the excellent steampunk decoration of nature in the background. Exciting stuff!

Whatever else happens, the galleries and museums are going to need to reflect a culture in which the current galleries, the back alleys of town, are endlessly creative …

It Just Would Be So Much Less Without the Nature

Here too …

Clever Use of Asphalt and Cardboard

And here…

A Veritable Steam Punk Novel!

And pure mystery here …Mystery Wall.

It is time to honour the culture of this place, and to help it heal its war wounds by bringing it to a language that can mesh its exciting culture of power …

It’s Unclear Whether You Should Turn Left

and gas …

This Gas Fitter Should Get an Award from the Regional Arts Council

Especially for that drain.

… and power…

I weep for the joy of it. And for its exquisite use of line … Right to the Red Door!

…and (Hey, it is steam punk) Victorian lighting technology … In Vernon We Don’t Let in the Light. We Beam it to the Stars.

What a gas!

Not just a gas, but jazz…

The Power Lines of Vernon: A National Artistic Treasure

One of the earliest public art installations in the country, and, thanks to steam punk, excellently preserved. It makes those decades of a fruit industry all worthwhile!

And just in case you forget to …Breathe.

More of that private parking thing, though. I think humans are at war with cars.

This war must end!

No Cars, No Steam Punk!

Note the eyes in the back window.

After all, the cars, strategically placed, beneath walls painted with the right colours, with the right orientation to the sun … can become steam punk, too!

Vigilance is necessary …

… and nature could be treated with as much honour as the concrete it complements…

Weeds Trying to Steam Punk an Abandoned Planter for Shrubberies

Well, shrubberies were so 1970s. There was still money here. There was still a fruit industry. The museum had 50 years less steam punk to try to preserve. Time is part of every story here. And out on the outskirts, where something of the earth still breathes? Aha …

The Plastic Has Been Laid Down

Steam Punking the Land

It’s only here, where the city breaks down at its edges, that steam punking is a bad idea. In the city core, steampunking adds life. Out here, it’s just death. This soil has been stripped of nutrients, plasticized, chemically sprayed for weeds (yesterday, to prevent seed germination), and pounded back to rock …

Tractor Blight

Steam punk gone bad.

So, you see. Steam punk, the heart and soul of a city that so wants to have a big art gallery like those huge multinational global cities of artistic excellence like Kelowna! What? You haven’t heard of Kelowna? Well, you’re forgiven. It’s a strip mall of car dealerships that sits on top of a bunch of old onion fields, but here’s the thing: they have the steam punk bug too.

Stephen Foster’s Toy Portraits, June 22 to September 29th, 2013

Pure Steampunk!

Now, in Kelowna this stuff is called “Art”, but in Vernon it’s the streets. We have an incredible confluence of forces: museum, gallery, college, writers, print foundry, book designers, taggers, landscapers, road crews, and all the people who dress up like this …

Without Colourful People, Vernon is Just for Cars

… just to keep the colour thing working. Kelowna doesn’t have that. As for the toy Indians? They did that in Dresden a decade ago. But this art is on the street and its punk thing? They did that in Leipzig only five years ago, so, like, we’re ahead, right! Not only that, in Leipzig, they don’t have this …

Crab Spider Hunting on the Steampunk Weeds in the Steampunk Suburb

They had a life on earth 200 years ago. We still have it. So, when we go to the stars with our art, and our streets, we can make a new kind of city, in which art, streets, museums and galleries are all one thing. I mean, we’re already there. Sometimes being in cold storage for awhile is an advantage… if you seize it. Even Kelowna can’t do that anymore, even if you haven’t heard of it, even if you have. Think Green!

“Art” is obsolete, but the green light is on!

Vernon! Steam Punk Capital of the World!

I’m serious.

The Scent of Spring

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Here’s the queen of our wild flowers … it smells so fine, it finds you before you find it!In wild rose season, everyone gets to be a bee. Bees gather pollen after being lured by the scent… and humans? The intriguing creatures stick their noses into the centre of the flower and breathe in deeply. That’s just as practical as the bee thing. It can change your life, and your attitude to the world around you. Instead of creative writing classes, we can just send people out to breathe deeply.

They will return as humans.

All flowers found on Tuesday in Bella Vista.

Beyond David Suzuki

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

My friend Claude has reminded me of David Suzuki’s observation:

“We need air to live, we need water to live, we need food to live. If we continue to destroy all these gifts of the Earth, we will have no livelihood.” David Suzuki

By “We”, Dr. Suzuki means, I think, creatures like this:

Crowd in Hong Kong Source

Dr. Suzuki is an eminent politician. He knows how to influence humans. His “we” reflects that. To ensure the earth survives human self-absorption and over-population, however, this vision will need to evolve to include, among the ‘we’, this person…

Killdeer

Leading me step by step away from its nest. Waiting for me when I stop, moving when I move on.

And this one, too…

Look how its whole body breathes …

Western Tailed-Blue, Bella Vista

With my fellow earth people and the planet in mind, I’d like to expand Dr. Suzuki’s vision for the new century and the future that must be built:

We need air to live, we need water to live, we need food to live. We, the people of the earth, from the smallest bacteria to the largest whale, are these things. Whoever in this community continues to destroy these things and their living connections is separating life from the earth and individuals from community, thereby destroying life and sowing death in its place. We, the people of the earth, from the grizzly bear to the salmon and the human child to the black widow spider, the blue-bunched wheatgrass and the rocky mountain maple choose life.

If you can shorten that, I’d love to hear your version. Consider it a work in progress.

The Creative Economy and a Living Earth

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Here’s how the earth came to be alive up on the hill.

Spider Making the Most of Invasive Knapweed

Here’s how the earth came to be dying up the hill. An investment company hoping to transform a section of living earth into a piece of “land” which could be sold socially blasts it to bits to make roads and building lots. Now that a rare remaining grassland was a part of social life and no longer a part of the living earth (it was now “land”), the company could sell it as a cost to society. To make this cost as large as possible, a vineyard was planted. Its presence made the earth around the development seem like a piece of Provence (a social image) and the “land” seem like a piece of New Mexico (a social image of a hot place). These attractive social ideas were incorporated into the architectural and landscaping plans of the development. They had the potential to increase the land’s cost to society, which would then be private profit for the developers. For complex reasons to do with global economic factors, a collapsed real estate market, and so on, the development went bankrupt. At that point, the final phases of the vineyard development were abandoned, although the sagebrush and native plants had already been scraped off of them and piled up to the side. In other words, it had already been transformed from life into “land”. At this point in the development of a piece of living earth into a monetary engine, the project’s capital investment was written off, and the developers moved on, free of encumbrances. Well, almost. They left behind a life-debt, from the earth’s perspective, and a creative debt. Here’s what the creative debt looks like:

Bamboo Stakes, Rotting Away

These stakes were likely harvested in China and bundled and shipped at great expense. As this creative input and the life-debt behind it was never put to use to help raise young grape vines (by saving on labour costs — another social cost contributing to greater profit for the development company) it was ultimately wasted. Instead of leading to social life, as a substitute for original earth-life (which would have preserved and expanded the creative capacity within them), these stakes became only capitalized objects, discarded as easily as the capital debt. Unlike the debt washed clean by the bankruptcy process, however, this debt remains. Here’s some more of it…

Vineyard Infrastructure … Mostly Ruined Now

Strangely, the laws around private property are so strong that the banking companies left with the abandoned project never sold off this material (while it was still useful) so that the creative input that went into it could be used, to help clear its life-debt. Instead, it was treated like the capital that invested in it. Capital, though, is a social concept. The earth’s debts are not so easily erased. There is, however, a way to do it, that gives some hope for the future. For one thing, the wire still holds its creative potential. In the bank of creative potential, it still has a positive balance in its account.

The rest of the story is what is happening around that stack of wire. Here’s a closer look …

Yes, humans are messy, and this form of economic organization is messy, but that’s not the point. Look more closely …

Yellow Clover!

You see that? The “land” creation process made a desert of blasted bedrock, yet life is establishing itself there. Not social life. Not human life. Not the original grassland. Not a vineyard. But life. New life. With new goals. In this case, the great debt this “development” created within the living earth can be partially erased by observing that in what is supposed to be “Provence” and “New Mexico” and “hot” and a “desert”, new crops are showing up, capable of living on dead land without irrigation or soil and making it alive. The creative potential of the bamboo has been wasted.

The removal of the slopes from the earth to create a vineyard to increase property costs was a waste. The death of the land and its now-rare grassland was a waste. All of these wastes are debts. Nonetheless, the earth can be returned to this place, and it can be alive again, with the input of human creative energy. In other words, by giving human social energy to the earth (rather than using the alienation of a living earth to create social debt which can then be turned into private profit), humans can help the earth give them a creative profit: a living development, with an economy of life stronger than the life that was here before, and a social life in tune with the earth. There can, one day, be profit here again, but it will be in the life created out of developing human error and transforming “land” back into living earth, complete with new crops, new reclamation strategies, new systems of earth-based economics, and new lifestyles. It is too late to go back. We can, however, go forward with hope. If we chose not to, we are choosing death…

Death

Transformation of a Living Earth of 1000s of species and great water efficiency into “Water Smart” Rock Landscaping and invasive knapweed and a few strands of cheatgrass, and nothing else.

…instead of life …

Life: Beautiful Natural Grasses (Foreground)

Doing a better job of aesthetic gardening than the “Provençal” plants in the back.

I mean, look at the beautiful colour of this stuff…Lavender looks no better, but this stuff can grow here without water, and can host insect worlds. Of course, even the knapweed, for all its sinister, hellish qualities, does a better job of that than lavender…

Crab Spider, Nicely Camouflaged

Let’s work with the earth. Let’s live.

Wild Bees Going Wild

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Wasps, bees, hornets, bumblebees, beetles, ants, butterflies … everyone is out in the wild cherries today. Nobody is in the orchards ten feet away. And not one single domesticated bee in sight. Look at them flying around!

Here’s a blue wasp sucking the sweet nectar of life…

And, not to be outdone, a blue ant …

… and this beautiful creature, whatever it is …

… and all the while, these guys are flying around …

I gave up on photography and just stood in the swarm (they cared not a whit). I noticed this much…

Mourning Cloak Butterfly
Blue ant … Blue ant? … yeah, blue ant!
Shiny blue fly.
Grey bee 2 cm
Blue wasp 2 cm
Blue grey bee 1.5 cm
Blue grey bee 2 cm
Black wasp 1 cm
Black bee-fly 1 cm
Beetle-like bee 1.5 cm
Small round beetle with grey scribbles on its back 5 mm
Yellow bee with black stripes 1.5 cm
Yellow and black bee 1.5 cm
Multiple tiny bees and wasps ± 5 mm
Black hornet 4 cm.
Black bumble bee 4 cm
Yellow bumble bee 3 cm
Yellow jacket 3 cm
Black and white striped bee (fat) 2 cm … and
Wasp with red abdomen with black lightning strike decoration, like a black widow …

Gold fur and black chitin is a very lovely look …
Here’s what it looks like in flight …

And not a single bee, wild or domesticated, in the orchard. Does it really seem an accident that domesticated bees are dying out? The poor things are as poisoned as we are. Now, just so you can share in this glimpse of a possible future for beekeeping, here’s a video, a bad video, a wobbly video with a ridiculous airplane filling it with NOISE, but, still, full of bees, for your pleasure…

They care not one bit whether a human stands in their tree or not. Got that? We’re not the story. Culturally, in these parts wild bees are considered excellent pollinators and … well, that’s about it. But it’s not about pollinating a future crop, and it’s not about honey. It’s about the presence of a crop right now. One ignored by humans. One that causes hay fever among humans with non-localized immune systems damaged by human environments. One that nonetheless provides pollen. Huge amounts of pollen. Here’s the skinny on that:

That is, um, more protein and less fat than a T-bone steak. And we don’t harvest this stuff? Imagine a world in which there were flowers everywhere, no agricultural chemicals, because they didn’t matter, and we just harvested the pollen and staggered around surrounded by beautiful insects and birds and blue (Blue!) ants. I mean, wouldn’t our work places turn into this?

Beats flogging burgers at MacDonalds. Look again …

See? No grease. Humans, it seems, are always the last to know. That’s because we’re still new on this planet. I think the best thing to say to young scientists might be: Get out of the lab! Go and stand in a tree at 3 in the afternoon on a hot day! Thirty minutes there are worth 5 years in a place of higher learning. Oh, and stay out of the orchard! That place can kill you.

The Future Economy is Here

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

On Friday (click), I mentioned that the future is here. Now. Not tomorrow. Not on the second Tuesday after the signing of the Keystone Pipeline Accord. Right now. Look up. There it is! It is just a matter of learning to see it. Here, this is what it looks like, in case it’s night or your window has curtains…

Lambs Quarters in the Spring Sun

In a world of monocultural agriculture, in urban configurations that include huge amounts of waste space, and in which most space is not productive of life, the earth sends forth lambs quarters to heal the soil. To capitalist agricultural traditions, this is called a weed and is actively suppressed. So is the economy that it supports.

It is amazing. Wherever the soil is removed from life, which is a complex series of mutually-supportive relationships unfolding in time (an economy, if I’ve ever heard of one), lambs quarters and other colonizing plants sprout, to begin the process of regeneration. That’s our clue to regenerating our economies. We just need to look. If we look, we might see lambs quarters showing us the precise place in the living earth where true profit can be made and true healing can begin, with beautiful lambs quarters salads and cooked dishes to replace spinach and all its cello-packed long-distance trucking hydrocarbons. Healthy for the soil, healthy for local economies, healthy for the atmosphere, healthy for farmers, and healthy for our bodies. Take a look at this dry hill…

Lambs’ Quarters and Its Buddy Wild Lettuce Doing Their Magic

The soil is dust at this time of the year, but they are deeply rooted and thrive on natural water. No water infrastructure required. Got that? No tax burden. No capital costs.

And if we look around, we might see another wet season crop finishing up at the beginning of the dry season:

Desert Parsley

This is the plant that kept the Syilx alive on this land for eight thousand years of spring hunger. This is the one they burned the grasslands for, to keep the cycle of renewal in a youthful, productive phase.

Do you see? Once the land has been let go for a few years, it starts to look like this:

Sagebrush Getting Out of Hand…

… but the balsam root (a food crop) still doing well. Mind you, only a few crops are thriving here.

Up close, that sage really looks like this …

Sagebrush

A monocultural desert.

That’s why succession agricultural is the way to go: as the first colonizers are replaced by food plants, which are replaced by woody plants providing shelter and food for winter birds, the full richness of what the land can provide is spread over time — about 15 years of it. After that, it’s time for renewal — not plowing, just clearing away, and then …

… the desert parsley will be doing more than hanging on. This is a form of agriculture that creates a living economy. Rather than future potential being stored in capitalized mutual funds or in heavily indebted water systems or in monetary objects of various kinds, they are stored in the future creative potential of the land. Human creative potential is directed towards ensuring the health of those investments. Instead of investing for the present, and passing the debt on to our children, we invest in the future and pass the profits on to our children. In this respect, monocultures like this …

Dwarf Royal Gala Apple Walls

… are also forms of economic organization. In this case, heavy capitalization. This 20 acre orchard likely has a capitalization of four million dollars, and a return on investment of approximately zero. It is, in other words, an economic system that doesn’t work in any practical sense. What you see in the above image is the creative potential of the wild earth to produce life (a complex system of inter-related relationships) reduced to a small number of species, including grass, dandelions, mallow and a few other wild plants trying to heal the soil, and dwarf apple trees. The idea is that by concentrating all of the creative potential of the land into one product, it can be produced in abundance, and the difference between a complex living system, in which the life energy here were shared with many species, and this model, in which only one species (humans) benefits, the investor (the farmer) can use the excess as profit, and turn it into money (a social relationship.) The next year, the land can produce the same wealth again. Well, that system is broken. The only profit being taken here is by the capital systems (banks, chemical companies, post companies, trucking companies, packing companies, supermarkets, and so on), leaving the farmer, the land, and all the hungry people and animals unserved. Here’s where the profit goes …

Farmer Spraying Poison to Thin His Apple Trees

When I was a young man, we did this work by hand. It was a major source of employment. In order to keep food cheap, it is now done by poison and, logically enough, thousands of people in this community go to the food bank to try to keep from starving. The farmer is using a canister spray mask c. 1970, a pair of gloves, an old shirt and a turban as protective gear. Good luck on that.

You see how that works? In a fully-capitalized form of agriculture, fully-privatized and removed from community (employment), profit must be extracted by reducing social costs (which were once the profit), rather than merely reducing competition for life energy. Humans with no access to the life energy now have to pay for it. Well, it doesn’t have to be so. The land is shouting the future to us:

1 Hour Before Spraying

Ignore the apple blossoms. They’re not the future. They’re just debt. The future is the dandelions growing between the rows. In the current model, they are mowed down to prevent soil erosion.

That’s how to see the future. Look at what is being ignored, yet which is still alive. Until 20th Century Industrial Chemical Farming (largely a Nazi invention … really), dandelions were a source of salads, wine, syrup, coffee, and medicinal herbs, with great value. Surely, 2 out of 3 rows of apples returning NO profit to earth or humans but only to non-living systems (which must remove life energy from earth and humans in order to concentrate that profit) could be removed, to leave more space for dandelions, and a series of succession plants building on their healing of the land, OR 1 row could be cropped in an annually-regenerating crop of aromatic saplings for meat and fish smoking facilities, eliminating food refrigeration costs and providing shelter for birds, OR 1 row could be given over to community gardens, or … well, one could go on, because the current system does not produce life or profit, so you can do anything else and add wealth to town. Tomorrow, I will expand this story. Today, though, I wanted to make an initial economic point: 1. any form of agriculture is a form of economy, written large; to understand the economy, look at what’s in front of you; 2. in industrial agriculture, profit is the life energy removed from living systems, with the flaw that 3. the living systems cease to regenerate and systems become old, tired and no longer capable of supporting complex life (such as humans or slugs), and 4. for living systems this is the deal breaker, because the alternative is a dead planet. However, 5. successful economic systems renew and 6. the living economy is attempting to do just that. By observing the opportunities it is taking, we can see the opportunities that we can take, for renewed economic profit, renewed living environments, and renewed social and personal health. When humans become impoverished and are the weeds in their economic system, they need only look to the weeds …

Pineapple Weed

Growing in the iron-hard soil of a roadway (with the frilly leaves). Zero water. That’s a bit of wire weed (looking very flush with spring water) with the broader leaves, poking through. You cannot kill wire weed, and you cannot pull it out without explosives. Well, I exaggerate, but, tough, right?

Pineapple weed flowers make a far more beautiful tea than chamomile tea, it grows everywhere you let it and many places you don’t, and has the beautiful and relaxing aroma of fresh pineapples. Water requirement? Zero. Wireweed is an ancient herbal remedy and a key ingredient in Vietnamese cooking. At the moment, these crops produce zero dollars for the economy, but they could produce millions, with almost no capital cost. The future is here. It just needs to be seen, because once it is seen the path to wealth and prosperity is very clear. Contemporary agricultural practices are tired and old, and at the end of a cycle. They require more and more input for less and less return. Yet, new crops are everywhere (and renewed economic models), and require almost zero input — except for the creative input of seeing them.

Arrow-Leafed Balsam Root Seed Crop is Ready on the Hill!

While “cultural tradition” says it’s not yet time to plant a garden.

Making the Future Now

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Two days ago, I spoke about the great lie that lies behind contemporary economics. It involves a fruit marketing company, originally designed to erase lies but now in the thick of them, and a beer can scaring a coot in a spring flood creek. My friend Tamara reminded me that such stories are hurtful to human hope. Thank you, Tamara. I will now try to restore that hope, because I never meant to weaken it. It’ll take me a few weeks, but I’m excited about the prospects. You can read the original post here. Now follows the first attempts at a new vision, based on the principle that the future is with us. All that stands between us and a new world are words — or, rather, the lack of them. I am now going to make an attempt to find some of them. Here goes. First (sorry, Tamara), let’s start with an assessment of where things are.

Davison’s Orchard, Vernon, British Columbia

After 90 years of farming in the valley, the colonial orchard continues to devour the earth.

The Davisons are a hardworking, devoted and successful farming family, in a country where most farmers have failed. That is deeply honourable. Nonetheless, the image above shows the contemporary economic condition very clearly: in order to make profit, the living earth must be destroyed and translated into an artificial version of itself. Monetary systems, both capitalistic and communistic, work on this principle. Humans have been so successful at this, that it has come to the point at which the choice is very clear: either the earth becomes a simplified, artificial machine, or humans adopt a new economic method, which allows the earth to produce life once more. I am solidly behind the latter model, because I don’t think the first model will lead to anywhere other than poverty, in all sense of the word. But I promised hope. Look, here’s hope:

Davison’s Five-Year-Old Williams’ Christbirne Orchard

Don’t look at the pear trees, look at the grass. There is the hope.

If a capitalistic economic system requires profit to be drawn from the land, on the principle that the land will continue to produce life and energy, freely, without input, which can just be drawn from, the future economic system will realize that profit comes from creating complex webs of life, rather than only complex social relationships, because the webs of life are obviously not going to keep on without help. The image above shows how this might take place. This farm creates pears, which people purchase as part of a harvest celebration in September. It also, however, creates a large amount of green material, which is mowed down and considered waste. A future economic system, one that works towards maintaining the earth, will reward investment not on the profit that is drawn from the land, but on the increase of diversity within the land itself. Simply put, the profit that is derived from the efficiencies of chemically destroying competition for the pears and easy access for machinery on the land, will be compensated by harvesting dandelions, grass, and a large number of diverse wild plants between the pear rows. As a benefit, wild bees will pollinate the fruit, birds will thrive, and this monocultural zone will produce two kinds of profit: profit for the farmer, and life for the earth. Instead of profit being derived from objects, such as pear trees, it will be derived from the creative potential of the land. This will work in a practical sense, because the crops grown on that land will not require heavy inputs of water, which cost both human society and natural environments a great deal. It’s possible, it’s do-able, and it’s exciting. All that stands between us and a living earth is greed and stupidity. Against greed, we can act collectively. Against stupidity, well. Have a look.

Smokebush (Valanidh)

In Bulgaria, Valanidh (a variety of sumac, in the mango family) is a mainstay of the health system, and a very profitable herbal crop. In Vernon, British Columbia, it is a decorative plant, which grows too quickly for poorly-planned aesthetic gardening and so is hacked back with clippers until it is ugly, defeating its purpose. Yet, it is still full of life and beauty.

We could create an industry around this plant in 3 years. All we would have to do was to put the pruning clippers away and work together, rather than apart, and work for practical ends, rather than pretty ones. But that’s not a loss. Practicality of this kind is beautiful in itself, and will result in beautiful, free-growing trees, right within urban space. It can be done. It can be done easily. That our university is not working on this is to its shame. That our city prefers to talk about 100 million dollars for road and water infrastructure is only an indication that words are lacking for the future that is already here. We who walk these roads and hills will have to lead the way. I find that inspiring.

Ring-Necked Pheasant

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Good news! The ring-necked pheasant up on the hill has two hens. Here he is. The hens are going to fly up in front of me a couple minutes later.

Ring-Necked Pheasant in Flight

Bella Vista, Looking North to Turtle Mountain

And I thought the coyotes had got them all. Happy day!

Death and Life in the Springtime

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

There are two ways of dealing with pests that are eating your crops. The first is human. It involves death. Before humans singled it out, there was only life. Death is the signature of these creatures. Doubt it? Look:

Farmer in Full Protective Gear Spraying Poisons on Your Food

That was 2 hours ago. By now, the orchard is a zone of death. Things are dying all over the place there, right now. Far fewer things than would have twenty years ago, when the only thing to spray was nerve gasses left over from the Battle of Britain, but death nonetheless. Compare that to the advertisement from B.C. Tree Fruits Ltd., the traditional marketing desk for local fruit:

British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley boasts rich, fertile soil, endless days of summer sun and 135 kilometers of pristine lake fed by pure mountain streams. It almost doesn’t seem fair that one place should have so much. But thank goodness. Because this magical combination of conditions is positively perfect for growing tree fruits. Not just any tree fruits. But some of the most delicious in the world. From the newest varieties to old favourites, a BC Tree Fruits sticker means flavourful food grown close to home using natural and sustainable methods. Honestly, this is about as fresh as it gets.

Source

Get that? “Sustainable methods” means, I think, that farmer spraying death. Presumably, it’s just the right amount of death. Well, without that effort codling moth larvae would get most of the crop. I get that. Humans are always making life and death choices — because they are the creatures that determine life and death, and even perhaps the only ones who see it, God help them, but compare that to this:

Knapweed Root Weevil

Hatched in the spring and ready for another year of weed control…by living.

And not just one root weevil. Things are going well.

A Whole Hatch of Knapweed Root Weevils …

… listening to the whine of the sprayer down the hill.

So, that’s the choice: control an invasive plant (knapweed) by importing its natural partner, and it will be controlled the natural way, through creating life, or control an invasive insect (codling moth) on an invasive plant (apples) through death. With the second method, no extra life is produced, but it is concentrated in just one spot: in human life. Well, hopefully, anyway. At any rate, the apples that would have fed tens of thousands of codling moths, and in turn thousands of birds, will feed thousands of people, perhaps. Efficient, deadly, practical, and the reason why the planet is dying. Oh, as for that pristine lake?

Sandpiper Wandering Through a Maze of Lakeshore Crap

The organic matter is chopped up invasive Eurasian Water Milfoil, that is killing the lake’s ecosystem, but is mown off to provide swimming opportunities for tourists.

And the pure mountain stream?

Beer Can Making Its Way to the Lake (2 minutes to go)

A coot had to scurry out of the way.

I get it. To market stuff to humans that they don’t need (British Columbia apples, for instance), you have to appeal to their stories and dreams. You tell wonderful stories, and they buy those stories, and maybe your apples with them. That’s how the world works. The problem is that when the stories get too far from reality, it is also how humans get divorced from the world in which they live. And that is also how the world dies. Advertising is an important part of contemporary industrial culture, and has great power for damage — as well as for positive change. We have reached the point at which we need to tell better stories. Luckily they are right here.

Okanagan Okanogan

Uniting art and science in the earth.

Category Archives: Arts