It Takes a Whole Village to Raise a Superman

by Brian Hildebrand


"Get off this/get on with it/if you wanna change the world/
shut your mouth and start to spin it."

These words were the first thing that came to mind when John Mayer's insufferable "Waiting on the World to Change" became inescapable. Now we find ourselves in the context of "Waiting For Superman," and I have to wonder whether its merely a furthering of this same passive attitude towards the future that John Mayer exemplifies as a human being.

Last night's screening of "Waiting for Superman" provided a powerful context for a lot of passionate dialogue. We heard from former teachers, human rights activists, and more whose names I failed to acquire, including a woman whose son is currently enrolled in Vashon High School's StudentLink program.

We've entered an interesting transition in the educational system. One point that was brought up, and my experience with students over the last 10 years has borne this out, is that some of the best and brightest hearts and minds are no longer attending school in the classroom, instead taking their core classes thru online programs like South Kitsap's Explorer Academy or various online facets of Running Start. It was remarked upon, and I couldn't agree more, what a shame this is, to lose the collaborative learning experience that comes out of a healthy classroom environment. From my younger friends on Facebook I can attest that they are just as bored and restless with things like American history as they ever were. There is a fundamental lack of engagement with certain subjects, and I believe it is a failure of context.

The upside to this situation is that these young adults have much more control of their time, which is something that needs to be considered in how we structure our modern educational construct. The woman whose son was enrolled in StudentLink told us of her son's struggles with math and science while doing just fine with humanities and such, and how removing himself from a context that didn't resonate and putting the responsibility for the shape of his curriculum into his own hands has been an incredibly empowering experience.

The question I have to ask, particularly in these budget tough days for schools, is how can the community step up to provide a space for these self-directed learners to have an alternative to the standard classroom experience? I'm not just talking about the StudentLink building, I'm talking about a cross-generational exchange of energy and information, and a space in the heart of Vashon's dynamism to host such things, way The Crux was for teenagers when I was one, but more open to all ages and dynamics. I believe, as this report, It Takes a Whole Village to Raise a Child, attests to, that a true community would open its doors to such energy, be they private residences, public restaurants, parks and rec et al. This is not a sacrifice to make, it is ultimately a win-win all around.

I'm thru with waiting on Superman, I'm sick of playing the lottery, and I sure as hell am sick of John Mayer waiting on the world to change his diaper. Answers are not going to come thru top down corporately influenced systems, they're not gonna swoop in and save the day. If we can't work together as a community to produce a healthy engagement with learning, and if our schools can't open up their context to include the community at large, then there is a fundamental imbalance between these two spheres; it's time to tear down that wall, stop sending our kids away from us to learn, and start honoring the occupation of teaching the way we honor our sports heroes now. Can you imagine if we had as many cafes and other businesses with a focus on cooperative learning and social engagement as we did sports bars?

It's time to start to spin this world in the direction we want, and perhaps the ticket is to get together and begin that dialog. Last night's event was a great first step in that regard, I wonder how it can continue to evolve and reach into the wider context of our community? I'll be wandering around on the lower side of the economic spectrum trying to stir this pot; maybe we can scrounge up enough change to sit down with a cup of coffee sometime and continue the discussion.

Life and Death Dollars

by Brian Hildebrand

On Saturday, April 9th, Fourth Corner Exchange founder Francis Ayley came to Vashon to give a presentation on Life Dollars, "an Alternative Monetary System that supports a cooperative economy," and the Life Currency Cooperative Exchange, which has hundreds of members in the USA and around the world.



Mr. Ayley, who is originally from Great Britain and currently resides in Bellingham, WA, began the discussion by speaking of his grandmother's experience in England during the Great Depression. In the small town in which she lived during this time people were experiencing severe deprivation and even starvation. Ayley took for granted that those were typical, even unavoidable conditions of the Depression. However, his grandmother opened his eyes by telling him that perfectly good crops were being plowed under for the supposed sake of economic recovery. (Similar such programs were enacted here in the US. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, though deeming such action necessary, called this activity a "shocking commentary on our civilization.")

This revelation led Ayley on a 40 year quest to understand what our economic system is actually based on.
In the first five years of his study he learned classical economic theory, which then led to neo-classical theory, and finally to less mainstream, fringe theories.
Twelve years into these studies he learned of Vincent Vickers, who became a governer of the Bank of England in 1910. in 1919 he resigned in disgust over the fundamental lack of justice in the monetary system. He spent the rest of his life crusading against the Bank of England, leading to the formation of the Economic Reform Party, which advocated for structural change of the economic system. Shortly before his death he completed the book Economic Tribulation.

Today in America we are operating under a monetary system that is the direct descendant of that of the Bank of England. As administered by the Federal Reserve, we are victims of the same usurious kind of system that has been in effect since the 17th century.

When money is "created" by the Federal Reserve, it is created with debt attached to it, having been loaned by the Fed to the US Treasury.
In the ratio between this principal and its interest, there comes a point in time where the interest overtakes the total money in circulation. According to Ayley, that point was reached 15 years ago. (It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt)

Setting aside all moral considerations, this system is fundamentally unsustainable. In the bond exchange between the Fed and the Treasury, the Fed prints the money to back the loan but not to cover the interest. The catch-22 that results reveals the fact that what we are ultimately dealing with is one big ponzi scheme.

For 40 years, Ayley has been looking for the alternative to this system, preparing for the inevitable economic crash when this ponzi scheme collapses. After developing the LETS system in England, he realized that a purely localized exchange system had serious drawbacks and could never truly compete with the international money systems. It was this realization that ultimately led to the founding of Fourth Corner Exchange, and the international cooperative monetary system that is its foundation.




www.fourthcornerexchange.com

Brown-tech

by Brian Hildebrand

As Niece Septic Pumping proudly claims to be the Island's number one exporter, we can't help but ponder what possibilities there are in harvesting this raw material we've so nonchalantly designated as "waste."

In this age of "fracking" the earth to get at its natural gas reserves, allowing our water supply to be contaminated by said reserves to the point that we can, in fact, light our drinking water on fire, should we not consider the natural gas that we are releasing on a daily basis ripe for harvesting?

For example, I heard of a setup at a recent Island Greentech round-table wherein manure was loaded into a drum, with a valve connected to an inner-tube that the methane gas, created as the manure continues to compost, could then escape into. The inner-tube expands as it fills with gas, which can then be detached from the valve and transferred via the inner-tube into a proper tank. Meanwhile, manure keeps breaking down until you have yourself some nice soil to grow with. Granted, I think we're talking about animal manure with this particular project, but the process would still seem to be feasible for the human animal's fecal matter.

Another waste issue on the Island is that which comes from our yards and gardens.
Being as we can burn our yard waste, and many of us choose to do so, we have to wonder how much tonnage there would be getting hauled away if someday we found we could no longer burn on the island.
As it is now, the yard waste that comes into the transfer system is being hauled to a processing plant in Maple Valley. One can't help but wonder why we can't do the processing of this material on the Island. In fact, such an idea was brought up little over a year ago.


The clear-cutting that took place on this island as recently as the 1970's has left the Island with lousy soil for growing in, the nutrient-rich topsoil having long since washed away. We are left with the need to create our own fresh soil if we wish to do any gardening.
Unfortunately, the Dirt Yard at Center was shut down for code violations in 2008, having failed to provide a concrete base to keep composting run-off from seeping into the soil. Little seems to have arisen to supply this need since their departure.

Perhaps it is not feasible to operate on such a large scale; it could be that what we really need is a compost on every corner. If a company like Cedar Grove can run an operation with giant, $100K a piece Gore-tex covers, how can we take and reduce the scale of such an operation so that it can feasibly be established and run as an Island-wide network of neighborhood composters?

The idea of harvesting the gasses from your compost is a step up in sophistication from your grandmother's pile in the corner of the garden, but it's still operating under the time-tested basic formulas that has fueled such agricultural operations for untold centuries.
And, of course, the composting toilet was our go-to method of disposing of our personal "waste" for as long as we've been collectively expelling such amounts that we could no longer get away with leaving our droppings in the woods amongst the other creatures of nature. After all, although sewers have been with us since the time of Rome, the septic system is a modern invention.

And so, as we've seen the waste of our empire expand ever outward until our society approaches the collapse that Wall-E finds himself cleaning up after, perhaps we should step back and ask ourselves, what would a world without human waste actually look like?

If food for thought is digestible, perhaps a nourishing idea can be grown in the composted soil it leaves behind.