My life has changed a lot. (Our lives are always changing.)

School is back in session. The number of boats is thinning in the marina. Playground equipment stands empty in the rain, and leaves are beginning to turn and fall. Autumn is a season of change more obvious than the gradual changes of summer.

The rest of the United States, when it recognizes the name Bruce Catton, thinks “Civil War historian.” Here in Michigan (especially northern Michigan, where Catton spent his boyhood and youth), we know him as one of our own, not only the writer of books about the Civil War but also author of an engaging and moving history of Michigan, as well as his beautiful and much-loved memoir, Waiting for the Morning Train. 

 

Catton had a tragic sense of history. His thesis in Michigan: A Centennial History can be stated simply, if metaphorically: “We are all Indians.” With this phrase, the author was not taking on the colors of a wannabe and dressing up in literary pow-wow regalia, pretending to be something he was not. This is not cultural appropriation. What Catton meant is clear to readers of the book: the relentless march of American history, the tide of white Europeans invading and claiming ancestral tribal homelands, which meant cultural destruction to Native American tribes, bringing change faster that the native peoples could adapt to it (had the Europeans even allowed them to adapt, which is another story) – that kind of rapid, destructive cultural change is the fate of us all, whether we realize it or not. One example from Michigan history is the destruction of old-growth white pine forests: in the short term, the timber industry provided jobs locally and lumber to rebuild Chicago after the fire, but the resulting fields of stumps provided nothing for the many young lumber towns that rapidly fell into decay.

Perhaps being overcome and left behind is the fate of the older generations everywhere in the world where change is rapid. In this Western “civilized” world, certainly, we are (and have been for generations) overdriving our headlights – and we are also, simultaneously, the deer in the headlights, those bringing change no more in control of the future than those overwhelmed by changes wrought.

In my own life, for a long time, there were certain things I did every year and naively thought I would always do, and now I find myself falling away from many of what used to be annual personal traditions, while at the same time unforeseen developments have come into my life, complicating and changing it irrevocably. One recent development is the dog we call Peasy.  I knew I was adopting a shy dog, a dog with “issues,” but I had no idea what it meant to live with a “reactive” dog until, as we got to know him better, I began reading more about the special needs this little guy has, which is why I now say that he is “my comfort and my challenge, companion and burden, solution (to some of life’s problems) and problem (on his own, in many ways).” Fortunately, I am not alone in dealing with the challenges Peasy presents, however, because the little dickens has managed somehow to worm his way into the Artist’s heart, as well. How amazing! 

“He’s so full of life! And he’s so grateful to us! It would be churlish not to love him,” says the Artist (who adds that the last thing he wants to be is a churl). When Peasy trots proudly into the bedroom carrying one of his toys to show us, we dissolve in laughter. He plays joyfully and brings his joy to us, another of his treasures and one he shares happily. If only he could spread his joy and love around to other people, as Sarah did! But that, sadly, is not his nature.

Nikki was a shy little plain Jane, “pure mutt,” as I used to say when people asked. Sarah was a beautiful, calm, very sociable Aussie-border collie mix. The world was a scary place for Nikki, but with us she had a good, long life. Sarah was the easiest puppy and dog in the world to live with and loved just about everyone and everything in the world. Neither of those dogs prepared us for Peasy. But although the accommodations necessary for dealing with him and friends and family at the same time are sometimes a real pain in the neck, he loves us so much that we can’t help loving him back.

 

So that is one big change in our life. Another, creeping on us gradually, but more speedily with each passing year, is that we are getting old. Us! Whoever thought that would happen? It doesn’t mean a thing that it happens to “everyone,” because what has “everyone” to do with us? 

 

I began this post with Michigan history, zoomed in on my personal life, and now want to pull back again for a wider, longer view. Northport. Leelanau County. Traverse City. Northern Michigan. In Traverse City, change has been bigger and faster than out here in the county, such that if we don’t go to town for a couple of weeks, we hardly recognize the place. Okay, slight exaggeration. But really! High-rise hotels and motels have taken the place of old mom-and-pop tourist cabins, and enormous condominium buildings sprout like giant mushrooms from outer space along the Boardman River and Grand Traverse Bay. We look at what we see there now and recall to each other how the same place used to look forty, fifty, sixty years ago, when Traverse City really was still a small town. 

 

Well, Northport is still a small town. We have our dog parade in August and homecoming parade in the fall. In the summer, there is the farmers market and, on Friday evenings, Music in the Park. There is a blinking traffic light at the south end of the village, and there are parking lots but no parking meters. Yet change is inevitable everywhere, and Northport is no exception. Will our little village be able to accommodate change and retain its friendly small-town atmosphere, or will the atmosphere itself be changed? No one, I think, wants the latter possibility to be realized. Those of us already here like our town the way it is, and new people come because they like it, too.

 

When I posted on Facebook that I had a couple copies of the book Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, two village council members put dibs on those copies (so I should probably order more). Is it possible to limit growth? How do we do it?

 

It’s bow season right now for deer, to be followed by firearm deer season, and slowing down on county roads is a good idea. Maybe slowing down in other ways is a good idea, too. Easy for me to recommend slowing down, though: I’m getting old. How do you feel about change and speed?

 

P.S. Please see here my pitch for the kind of support that counts with booksellers, whether you like life fast or slow. Thanks!

“How Big Are We?”

Peasy sends greetings.

 

I’m not writing about dogs at all today. Peasy is only there to draw you in. But let me wade into my big, sprawling topic slowly, coming at it from an oblique personal angle. 

 

More and more, conversations the Artist and I have at home are concerned with memories and reminiscences. We recall past adventures and travels taken together, look back on days with children, and fondly (to put it mildly) remember our wonderful old dog, Sarah, “she who could do no wrong.” We also share with each other years before our meeting, his growing-up years in Detroit and mine in Joliet. We tell each other of friends the other may never have met, and we also repeat stories of friends we both have known and loved, some now gone forever except in the hearts and minds of those of us who loved them.

 

Our lives are finite. We will not live forever. And the older we get (those of us fortunate enough to live to be old), the clearer that vision of the end limit becomes, with more life behind than ahead of us, every day more and more precious.

 

Old friends had a show of their art this past weekend, the work of husband and wife Gene and Judy Rantz on display at the Northport Arts Building on 3^rd St. The work was beautiful, the occasion poignant, Gene and Judy not present. Gene had written a statement about their life together, going back to their meeting in 1985, then noted that this would be their “last show together.” It was clear in the show that their respective art had developed along with their relationship, Judy’s work ever-evolving through the years and Gene’s most recent painting a break-through tribute to her.

 

I wanted to edge into my larger topic from the personal angle rather than opening with a quote from the economics book I’ve been reading for the last couple of weeks, because – really! How many of you want to read about economics, even at secondhand? But while Herman E. Daly’s distinction between growth and development is crucial for communities – and that’s where I want to go next – it seems to me that the distinction can be seen in our individual lives, as well. Babies grow and develop. Adults mature. After maturity, normal physical growth ceases (although cells are replaced, we do not continue to grow taller and taller), but moral, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and artistic development can go on and on. We may not learn as fast, and we may not remember as much of what we learn late in life, but in these other ways continued development often more than compensates for losses.

 

A usually very upbeat and positive friend was uncharacteristically crabby the other day. “I danced too much last night,” he said, but still he continued in a curmudgeonly vein to insist that “Northport is ruined!” Oh, dear!

 

It’s true that I have never seen as many people in Northport as are here this summer. Our village has never before experienced parking as a problem, outside 4^th of July evening, but now lots fill up and people have to walk more. (But that’s okay, isn’t it? I remember a faculty member saying once that the university did not have a parking problem but a walking problem.) Seating and being served is no longer immediate but usually necessitates waiting. Still, if people don’t have time to wait while on vacation, when would they have time to wait? Patient, good-natured, happy visitors are very welcome everywhere!

 

There’s been more of a brouhaha, to tell the truth, in both Northport and Leland, between long-time, year-round village residents and owners of big, new houses who have built adjacent to street ends, which are legally public access spots to the water. Another (perhaps milder) controversy focuses on Timber Shores, a proposed RV park south of town on land that was a public campground years ago. Again, adjacent property owners are adamantly opposed, as are a few village residents worried about increased traffic and congestion. The Northport-Omena Chamber of Commerce supports the Timber Shores plan, seeing it as a way to bring more visitors to the area so that our community can “grow and prosper.” 

 

The truth is that population pressures are being felt almost everywhere in the world. We humans have multiplied exponentially! And accelerated growth can be disconcerting. I feel it myself whenever I go to Traverse City, where it seems another huge condominium building or hotel pops up along Grand Traverse Bay every week. But we are not talking about condos with the Timber Shores plan. We’re not talking about million-dollar McMansions for seasonal residents, either. The RV park, which would include a section for tent campers, would complement the campground at Leelanau State Park in providing a way for non-property owners to have an Up North vacation.

 

My first Michigan experiences began when I was 12 years old and my parents and sisters and I began our summer camping life, all up and down the Lake Michigan coast. We camped at state parks in Orchard Beach, North Muskegon, Pentwater, Traverse City and Interlochen, and our two annual weeks in Michigan were the high point of our family year.

 

Herman Daly advocates a steady-state economy because economic growth cannot go on forever. The basic natural resources of earth and its minerals, clean air and water, and surface land space are not unlimited. We hesitate to put limits on population or economic growth, he says, because the alternative is sharing (instead of a second pie, we share the one pie we have) and we in the most advanced country of the world when it comes to producing material goods and waste are very reluctant to share, it seems, even with each other.

 

Our disgruntled friend on Saturday was railing against former plans for the Timber Shores property, plans that would have built condominiums on both sides of M-22. Nothing like that is in the current plan! Ironically, the people most opposed to the RV park are not at all opposed to condos. Population and economic growth are fine with them, as long as it’s growth of a particular kind – the kind with a high price tag, out of reach for most would-be vacationing families. I've written about the old campground and the sadness of its absence before.

 

I've also been to places in American, towns in beautiful natural settings, where only the wealthy can now afford to live, while those working in businesses that support those communities – shops, restaurants, bars, building trades -- must live long commutes away. That is certainly not growth I want to see for Northport. I would much rather see us continue to develop the community sharing ethos that makes this village such a delightful place to live and work.

 

“I worked hard to earn this!” one irate homeowner adjacent to a street end shouted as he tried to chase a grandmother and her granddaughter away from the public access. What does that have to do with anything? Besides, not all who work hard become rich (my hardworking grandmother always in my mind), and not all wealthy people have worked hard (though others have). The fact is that no one is in control of every twist and turn of fate. Everything accumulated is not the result of choice and sweat. 

 

And what about noblesse oblige? We who live here have great good fortune. Whether or not our individual households would be called “wealthy,” whether we’re still working into our “golden” years or retired and enjoying perennial vacation, if we’re here at all we are blessed. We are very, very lucky! 

 

Honestly, have you never vacationed in a place other than your home? How did you want to be treated when you were there? I try to make visitors to my bookstore feel welcome by extending the kind of helpful friendliness I have received and enjoyed in the U.P., in Arizona, in Montreal, and even – yes, true, believe it or not! -- in Paris, France.

 

I am reluctant to sign onto a simplistic “grow our community” agenda, in that I have no desire to see the village get bigger and wider and taller and spread out at the edges. But I have no problem with the idea of an RV-tent campground. The way I see it, this is development – at least, the potential for development, as Daly sees the distinction. It gives us a chance to share generously and gracefully with others what we are fortunate enough to have. In turn, it means jobs for the young people of our community. Why not?

P.S. Books read since last post: 94. Waxman, Abbi, THE BOOKISH LIFE OF NINA HILL (fiction); 95. Trethewey, Natasha. MEMORIAL DRIVE; A DAUGHTER’S MEMOIR; and 96. Lively, Penelope. THE PHOTOGRAPH (fiction).

Come Summer, You Will Hardly Know Where You Are

Work goes ahead, behind piles of dirty snow in the harbor 

Following my enjoyment of his biography of Charles Dickens, I’ve been re-reading Stephen Leacock’s delightful Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, the portrait of an imaginary Canadian town and its imaginary inhabitants so lifelike that Leacock’s readers had a hard time beliving he’d made it all up.

In regard to the present work I must disclaim at once all intentions of trying to do anything so ridiculously easy as writing about a real place and real people. Mariposa is not a real town. On the contrary, it about seventy or eighty of them. You may find them all the way from Lake Superior to the sea, with the same square streets and the same maple trees and the same churches and hotels, and everywhere the sunshine of the land of hope.

Mariposa (the imaginary place) is a small North American town--yes, Canadian, but not so very different from Michigan--on the shore of a lake, its population swelling in summer owing to an influx of tourists, so perhaps I may be forgiven if, as I read, I picture various buildings and people in Northport. (It's hard for me to believe Leacock's book was published almost 100 years ago, in 1912, since it feels so current to me.) We do not have Church of England in Northport, but we have churches, and instead of a 20-mile-long lake, we are on the shore of Grand Traverse Bay, an arm of Lake Michigan, but if you know Northport and were to read about Mariposa, I’m sure the latter would seem familiar. 

Northport, however, is a very real place. And despite one of the cruelest winters in living memory (not only for snow accumulation but for sustained brutal cold), never have I seen so many building projects going forward at one time. Here, then, is today’s gallery of what’s going on, beginning with the caboose down behind the Depot, with --

Yes! Solar!

Bowling alley moves closer to Opening Day

Golf course clubhouse amid remains of snow

Big renovations ongoing at the old Ship's Galley

Peek inside galley

New brew pub still under wraps

Downstairs at Lelu....

Now here's some really big news. I've already shown you work going on at Lelu Cafe (and elsewhere), but here's how that looked this morning. Then Keith, the carpenter you see at work here, offered to show me more. So we went upstairs....

Upstairs!!!

Do you know what you're looking at? Can you believe your eyes? At last, at last, the hotel is coming into being! Nine rooms at the corner of Nagonaba and Waukazoo, right across the street from Dog Ears Books and only a short walk to marina, harbor, beach and picnic grounds! Please excuse all the exclamation points, but I've been waiting years for this. Talk about something the town has needed!

It's Enough to Make a Person's Head Spin

That’s my current short answer to the perennial question, “What’s new?” Will returning summer visitors even recognize little Northport, Michigan? There are changes afoot almost everywhere you look in our little village these days. Photos below show only a few, and you have to be kind of a visionary to be able to picture what things will look like come May, let alone June or July. Let's start down at the Depot, where renovation has expanded beyond the little stone building  to the caboose.

That's the scene down near the marina. 

Out at the south end of our block of Waukazoo Street, lots has been happening for months, as Tuckers of Northport charges toward completion. Here's the scene as of Wednesday, March 12. 

And all that activity is only outdoors. Plenty is going on indoors, too. Here's how the main floor of Lelu Cafe looked this morning, while all the coffee-drinkers were cozily crowded, out of the way, into the bar:

Change! Novelty! Expansion! Growth! During the couple of "warm" days we had, there was activity at Northport Brewing Company, but I didn't see anyone doing anything there yesterday or this morning, so no pictures of that. 

David Grath has doubled his gallery/studio space, and I'll devote a post to his space soon. Meanwhile, although there are no painters or carpenters at work in Dog Ears Books, things are happening there, too, on a daily basis. For one thing, with every new book order I put in I include a few items no one has (yet) asked for, such as this little gem:

So we have surprises for you, too.

And now an important date to mark on your calendar: Friday, June 13. Mark it now! Add 5 p.m., Dog Ears Books. I'll let you know more as time goes by....

This Blog Is a Lie

Not entirely, because I do love my life, and I am grateful for it and take joy in it. All that is true. So my blog isn’t a complete lie, but neither is it the “whole” truth, because the pain is as real as the pleasure.

Between me and the road to the woods, a new row of cherry trees

Orchard advances on our old farmhouse, on leased land around us, like an encircling army, coming closer every year. NO ENTRE signs warn of pesticides, and our freedom of movement on all sides is more and more limited – with each passing week, it seems. Our neighbors’ dogs and our Sarah can no longer be allowed to run on the hill between their house and ours, as rows of trees now march up and down that hillside. Of course, the dogs don’t understand. 

When our grandson and his friends visit, they like to explore a certain path to Lake Michigan that has been part of grandson David’s world up here for all his life, as it used to be part of our own before so many big, new houses were built along that stretch of shoreline. The last time the kids were up, I heard from a friend who lives in one of the big houses that “young people – strangers” had been seen on the beach! On private property! This same friend was upset a few years back when a new house was planned on property adjoining that which she and her husband own. “It will be lost to us!” she cried. I told her it had been lost to the rest of us a long time ago. Our grandson, a young man of boundless goodwill and no troublemaker, has not yet accepted the loss.

My husband used to have a house down in the woods in what is now part of Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. We love the Lakeshore and are happy it is public land rather than condos, though it still feels like home to us, very personal. But all visitors are equal under the law, and our dog cannot run off-leash in the old meadow, even under our supervision. I feel as much on the leash as my dog and chafe at the restriction. It’s “the Meadow,” our special place! No one cares.

A few years ago I discovered a lovely wooded ridge with a new road down below and a foot trail along the ridgetop. There were wildflowers in the spring and berries in late summer and early fall. Only once did Sarah and I meet anyone else there, and it was another woman with her dog, and we enjoyed the company. I knew all along, though, that it was only a matter of time before houses would be built there, as the land had already been divided into lots, the road brought in, utilities provided. Last year the first house appeared, halfway down road. No more ridge path exploring.

Another semi-wild spot closer to Northport, old orchard land, was handy for short, quick off-leash expeditions. A golf course is going in there now. Orderly recreation. Lots of people will enjoy it.

More and more I understand the father of the protagonist in Conrad Richter’s The Awakening Land trilogy, who dragged his family from the Pennsylvania woods to the Ohio Territory because Pennsylvania had become too “crowded.” We are fortunate in Leelanau County to have lovely nature trails. I know this. I appreciate the trails. But following a trail, staying on a path, with other walkers and hikers ahead and behind, is not the same as being alone in the woods, and it isn’t anything at all like exploring.

Then there is another, more universal aspect to loss, which is that each passing year brings advancing age and, with it, hovering clouds of future physical limitation. Two or three years ago, for the first time, when I was out hiking wooded hills with my dog, the footing somewhat treacherous, the thought occurred to me: I won’t always be able to do this. Once it occurred, that thought never left. The good part of that is being constantly aware of precious moments and hours while I’m living them; the sad part is picturing their eventual end. 

A chaque âge ses plaisirs, my old friend Hélène used to say. I hope it’s true, but right now I’m not at all interested in finding substitute pleasures. I’m not ready to give up the hikes alone with my dog or the exploring of wild nature or my gardens or my dream of chickens or any other part of my off-road, back-of-beyond country life. And so, sometimes, in the middle of the night or even in the bright light of afternoon, my heart is pierced with sadness. 

No one needs to tell me how lucky I have been for so long. I've been spoiled -- not by wealth (never had it; never will have it) but by freedom of movement. I know that. I'm grateful. Don't often complain. Still....

Could a "Boom" Knock Us Right Out of the Ring?

The London Review of Books had a page-and-a-half “Diary” feature in the 7 February 2013 issue. Rebecca Solnit was the author, and her topic was the Silicon Valley economic boom and how it has affected housing availability and prices in San Francisco and the surrounding area. Where high-paid, high-tech workers (“routinely make six-figure salaries, not necessarily beginning with a 1”) commute 3-1/2 to 4-1/2 hours to work, the corporations they work for provide buses with wifi, so employees can start work before arriving at their offices (and unfortunately undermining community support for improved public transportation).

“Where orchards grew Apple stands.” 

Why does that one sentence make me, an Apple user, so sad? Because I live in orchard country? Because I could live more easily without the Internet than without fruit?  Once wild and creative San Francisco, now a bedroom community for Silicon Valley, is the scene of regular evictions, and prospective home buyers bid up property minute by minute.

It’s a boom.

The story was fascinating enough (to me, it was fascinating in the manner of a disaster story), but then Solnit changed the subject somewhat: “San Francisco’s tech boom has often been compared to the Gold Rush....” In the mining boom, there was a population explosion, runaway inflation, and, while the boom lasted, high wages for the workers flooding in. Booms are like that.

The oil and gas boomtowns of the present, in Wyoming, North Dakota and Alberta, among other places, follow this model. Lots of money sloshes around boomtowns, but everyday life is shaped by scarcity, not abundance. The boom workers are newcomers. They work long hours, earn high wages, drive up the cost of housing for the locals, drive out some locals.... Like a virus, mining destroys its host and then moves on. There are ghost towns across the west full of dying businesses with the landscape around them ground into heaps leaching toxic residue.

Silicon Valley, she writes, returning to her main subject, is different from mining towns in many ways—“clean, quiet work, and here to stay in one form or another.” It’s the similarities that interest her, though—the “mass displacements and the casual erasure of what was here before.” Mining or high-tech, she is saying, there are similar losses for those not in on the boom.

I couldn’t help thinking that there is another connection between the two kinds of booms that Solnit did not explore. This is not criticism: she had a certain focus, certain points she wanted to make, and the piece does that very well. But the truth is that there could be no Silicon Valley industry, no high-tech boom, without nonrenewable mineral resources. Mining is part of San Francisco's boom today.

Okay, I’m not a hermit, and I write this blog on a laptop. I even have a cheap, pay-as-you-go cell phone for emergencies. It’s almost impossible to be an American these days and not be connected. As I've said before, I’m not a Luddite. But neither do I want the electronic devices in my life to proliferate like those animated brooms poor Mickey Mouse, would-be sorcerer, had to deal with in “Fantasia.”

Soil, water, food grown in soil, minerals under the earth—these must be protected and conserved. It doesn’t make sense to pollute water and soil by mining and processing finite, nonrenewable materials. It isn't in California's backyard, but the high-tech industry is not as "clean" as it appears from that one geographical area. We can do better. We can insist that the industry do better.

Does all this seem a long, long way from your backyard? No, it's right at your fingertips!

Guest Blogger: Laurie Attends a Video Conference in Spain

My friend Laurie in Kalamazoo writes as follows:

All--

Here are notes I took on a video of an excellent Master Class speech given by Chilean economist and environmentalist Manfred Max Neef.  The talk was given at the International University of Andalucía (Huelva, Spain), on December 1, 2009. Says Wikipedia,  

Max Neef, in 1982, won the Right Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, for his work in poverty-stricken areas of developing countries. He has worked with the problem of development in the Third World, describing the inappropriateness of conventional models of development that have contributed to poverty, debt and ecological disasters for Third World communities.

Here’s a link to the video of the conference http://cuva.uta.cl/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1042:600-a%C3%B1os-de-un-mundo-sin-hambr

Below are the notes I jotted. (I apologize for any glaring errors – I was listening in Spanish and jotting in English.) Well worth reading. 

Laurie Kaniarz

THE WORLD ON A COLLISION COURSE


Manfred Max Neef


(Laurie’s Notes)



When FAO (Food & Agriculture Organization) announced in October [2009] that 1 billion people around the world are hungry, and it would take $30 billion in aid annually to save these lives, at the same time, 6 Central Banks (US, EU, Japan, Canada, England, Switzerland) injected $180 billion into financial markets to save private banks, and have continued to do so, so that, as of September 2009, they’ve injected $17 trillion into the private banks.  $17 trillion is enough to save the world from hunger for 600 years. Where is that money now?



(Regarding the law of supply and demand: there’s much more demand for bread than plastic surgery, more need for a cure for malaria than haute couture dresses.  We need a referendum: do we want to save lives or banks? There’s never enough for those who have nothing.  Always enough for those who have everything.)

This is the most repugnant news I’ve ever heard.

There’s a 4-way convergence:


1. Exponential climate change


2. The end of cheap fuel


3. Diminishment of genetic natural resources: fresh water, energy, forests, fishing, wildlife, subsoil, coral reefs


4. Gigantic speculative bubble – 50 times greater than the real economy (interchange of goods and services)



The causes of this convergence:


1. The predominant paradigm of present-day economics is that we tend toward economic development at any cost, and this stimulates corporate greed.


2. Devouring fossil fuels propels that economic greed


3. Promotion of consumerism as the road to happiness


4. Destruction of traditional cultures and values to improve the industrial economic model


5. Scorn for the planet with the production of waste



There is danger in this for the environment and society.  Global warming implies the loss of productive soils, storms, hurricanes, desertification – all having implications for the poorest people on the planet. All systems are dependent on fuels.  There will be a further diminishment of species by 50% in the next decades.

 We have to accept the limits of what the earth can handle.

 We must move from “efficiency” to “sufficiency,” and solve inequality, because without equality, peaceful solutions are not possible.  We must replace the dominant values of greed, competition and accumulation with solidarity, cooperation and compassion.  Adjust ourselves to lower levels of production/consumption, favoring local economies. LOOK WITHIN once again, rather than outward.



We’re in the 21^st century, trying to solve our problems with 19^th century economics, even though we no longer use 19th century physics, biology, anthropology, medicine, etc.

 Economic “neo-liberalism” is a pseudo religion.  It conquered the world in a few decades, which religion [Christianity, Laurie?] couldn’t do in 2000 years.



Myth 1: Globalization is the only way to development.  Between 1960-1980, “don’t import what you can produce at home.” Between 1980-2000 this was replaced by deregulation, privatization, elimination of international trade barriers, and full openness to foreign investment.  Between ’60-’80, the poorest developing countries grew 2%.  Between ’80-’00, they had declined 0.5%.



Myth 2: Greater integration in the global economy is good for the poor. But it causes the poor countries to look outward rather than at their own people’s needs.  The 7 richest countries are 50 times richer now than the poorest 7.



Myth 3: Comparative advantage is the best way to ensure prosperity – “free world trade.” Prices can be lower, but 
costs to society & environment are enormous.



Myth 4: More globalization + more jobs. There are fewer jobs in countries of origin, more sub-employment in the outsourcing countries.



Myth #5: Globalization is democratic and transparent. Decisions about world commerce are made by unelected bureaucrats who work behind closed doors in Geneva [World Monetary Fund - WMF].  Their decisions cannot be appealed.  If a country that receiving translational investment has an inconvenient law, it must abolish the law. This affects the very idea of democracy if it has to adapt to the interests of the corporation. 

The WMF has no rules about child labor or labor rights.  All rules benefit the corporations.  Poor countries are prohibited from producing their own generic drugs, for example: they’re obligated to buy from transnationals. Africa has the resources, but can’t produce its own drugs.  The WMF is dedicated to ensuring that corporations govern the world.  Imports and exports are not between countries but between corporations.

Myth #6:  Globalization is unavoidable. ANYTHING arising from politics is reversible. What needs to be done is to take back local decisions that bring consumption back to the local market.  A human-scale economy.

New rules could be: 

- Profits flow back as much as possible to their place of origin.  Unsustainable – taking up huge amounts of resources – is transport over huge distances. In Chile, in the huge, state-of-the-art dairy producing region of the country, I unwrapped a butter packet that came from New Zealand.  It’s cheaper if you look at it from the point of view of an economist, but prices never tell the truth.  The cost of the environmental impact of shipping, to economists, has a value of “0.” Plus, the shipping was subsidized by New Zealand – also a value of “0.” The fact that local producers will go bankrupt – “0.” Same with energy: “This type of [alternative] energy is more expensive.” End of story.

But it’s only “more expensive” depending on how you make the calculation.  If you give value to the impacts, that which is deemed “more expensive” becomes cheaper. 

- Bring back safeguards to local economies with tariffs and quotas to avoid monopolies.

- Ecological taxes.  Taxes on energy use that causes pollution and negative impacts.  We’ve created a “fun” society and we pay taxes on that.  We should pay taxes on the bad, too. They tax you for working, for investing, but not for dirtying, polluting, destroying – you get to do that for free. You should be taxed for how many kilowatts you use rather than on how much you earn.  This would have a formidable impact on world economy.  They are doing this in Scandinavian countries.

- In Sweden, eco-municipalities receive the benefits of income tax, not the State.  You pay your tax and immediately see – and have influence on – how it’s used, in the place where you live.



I propose this new economy for the 21^st Century, with 5 principal postulates:



1.  The economy should serve the people – the people should not serve the economy.


2. Development has to be with/for people, not objects


3. Growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily need growth.


4. No economy is possible at the exclusion of the services provided by ecosystems.


5. Economy is a subsystem of a great system – the biosphere – and so permanent growth is impossible.



A fundamental principle value I propose to sustain the new economy:

 No economic interest, under any circumstance, should ever be held above the reverence for life on the planet.

 But what we have today is exactly the opposite of what I have postulated:



- We’re in a world in which each of us is at the service of economic interests, not the opposite.


- We identify economic development as who has the most cellphones, computers, etc.  The human being disappears in the process.


- There is an obsession with growth as the only measure, but growth is a quantitative measure, and development is a liberation of creative potentials.

 All living systems grow until they stop growing, but they don’t stop developing. We’ve all stopped growing, but we’re in this room [at the conference] because we haven’t stopped developing – more ideas, more information.  Growth has limits, development doesn’t.



My hero, a man I consider the greatest thinker, Kenneth Boulding, said, “Anyone who thinks permanent growth is possible on a finite planet is either crazy or an economist.” [Kenneth Ewart Boulding (January 18, 1910 – March 18, 1993) was an economist, educator, peace activist, poet, religious mystic, devoted Quaker, systems scientist, and interdisciplinary philosopher. He was cofounder of General Systems Theory and founder of numerous ongoing intellectual projects in economics and social science. - Wikipedia]

No economy is possible at the exclusion of the services provided by the ecosystem.  The economy is a closed system that doesn’t relate to families or nature.  Economists think they don’t need to know about pollination.
 Growth can’t be infinite on a finite planet.  If I want to blow up a big balloon, I can’t blow it up bigger than the room I’m in.

There is a need for reverence for life. Too many people say, “Life doesn’t mean anything … as long as I can do business.” Millions of children are slaves. According to UNICEF and other organizations, in the 21^st century, there are more slaves in the world than when slavery was abolished in the 19^th century. Tens of millions of slaves, two-thirds of them children.  It doesn’t show up in the news.  “With so many kids in the world, who cares?”  Why doesn’t it show up?  SLAVERY IS GOOD BUSINESS – YOU CAN MAKE GOOD MONEY AT IT.

Don’t expect the solution to come down from Mt. Sinai.  It’s up to us.  It starts with each one acting according to his/her belief system and loves.  Don’t ask yourself, “But what can I do?”  That’s defeatist.  ANY ONE OF US can do something at any moment that could change history.

 Examples:  Gandhi got sick of being discriminated against as “colored.” He started out being a nobody, a lawyer, but defeated the most powerful nation on earth. Rosa Parks sat in the white section of a bus and said, “I’m too tired to move.” She was [considered] less than nobody, but sparked the civil rights movement.  They both acted according to their beliefs. 

This won’t happen to you if you always adapt to what you don’t believe in.  Don’t act according to what’s best for you – advice we all get – but what’s best for all.  We all get this bad advice – I’ve given it myself, and I apologize to anyone I’ve ever given it to: “You’ve got to see your goals clearly to know where you want to go.” If you look toward one fixed goal, you won’t see the people you trample on to get there.  It’s a miserable life if you do what you “should” rather than what you MUST do.  The way you can have a happy life is living according to your beliefs.



Here’s some better advice: Drift and steer in a state of alert/attention.  This doesn’t mean you’re at the mercy of the current.  Life is like surfing: you can’t decide where you’re going to end up on the beach because you can’t predict what the waves will do.  But if you’ve got all your antennae up, if you make judgments about what to do as each condition comes up, you’ll end up somewhere along the beach. 

Creativity encourages us to create a world in which we are all relatively happy.

People who know where they’re going never discover anything because they’re obsessed with where they’re going.  But “obstacles” are all the adventure.


Manfred Max Neef’s bibliography includes:

0.Max-Neef, Manfred A (1992) (pdf). From the Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics. Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. pp. 208. ISBN 1-85649-188-9. http://www.max-neef.cl/download/Max_Neef_From_the_outside_looking_in.pdf. Retrieved 2011-02-15.

0.Max-Neef, Manfred A; Antonio Elizalde, Martin Hopenhayn (1991) (pdf). Human Scale Development. The Apex Press. pp. 114. ISBN 0-945257-35-X. http://www.max-neef.cl/download/Max neef_Human_Scale_development.pdf. Retrieved 2011-02-15.

0.Max-Neef, Manfred A; Paul Ekins (1992). Real-Life Economics: Understanding Wealth Creation. Routledge. pp. 432. ISBN 0-415-07976-4. http://www.gettextbooks.co.uk/search/?isbn=9780415079761. Retrieved 2011-02-15.

Laurie Kaniarz is a graduate of Kalamazoo College. She has lived and traveled in Spain and South America and is currently employed by Foods Resource Bank in Kalamazoo. FRB is not an emergency aid organization but works to move people in poor countries toward long-term, sustainable food security.

...old photo of Laurie and me in Leland's historic Fishtown....