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The New Independent Home

     by Michael Potts
from chapter 13 :

Caveat emptor:
J. P. Townsend's story

     After she read the first edition of this book, J. P. Townsend sent me an email alerting me to the other side of the earthship story. After checking out her sources and reading the archives, I asked her to tell her story. Her experience and the advice growing out of it applies to anyone who wants to find land, design and build a house, and launch an independent lifestyle. J. P. and I share the hope that readers of this edition will not have to make all of the same mistakes, no matter where they buy land or what kind of dwelling they decide to build.
     I'm an old hippie deluxe. I spent the Nixon years in Europe knocking around the boulevards with the motto "soyons debiles!" -- "Let's get feeble!" My memories of Paris and London in the early seventies are heady: salons and suppers with revolutionaries, writers, filmmakers, and feminists, the northern light of London winters glinting off red buses and whitewashed buildings low enough to allow a sense of horizon and big sky. I arrived in the U.S. in time for Nixon's resignation speech. When my camera bag was stolen I secretly sighed with relief, gave up being a photographer, and started graduate school in anthropology. I thought I had done my preliminary research well, and I chose the Ozark area in order to be uplifted, I thought, by hardy pioneers from the voluntary simplicity "movement." Fieldwork in the Ozarks proved more stressful than I could have imagined. It was a hard life these hardy pioneers were leading, with odd results for the children I observed. It seemed there were no "happy families" in my research group. I came up against my own fears, finding myself unable to listen to the painful stories of incest and spousal abuse I was hearing. The stories affected me in ways I could not shrug off. My subjects depressed me utterly!
     I escaped to the mountains for the Reagan years, and in Boulder, Colorado, I began to meditate. As my interest in Buddhism deepened, I wanted to learn the language of literary Tibetan to get closer to the teachings and maybe help translate some of the sacred texts into English. So, during the Bush years I found myself, hippie, scholar, meditator, and female, in despair at the trashing we humans are responsible for on this planet. While I was studying in Kathmandu, some friends there took a permaculture design course offered by visiting Australians. I caught on, by osmosis I guess, that here might be an antidote to despair: building soil, growing food and trees. In 1994 I studied permaculture myself -- too late to save me from the disaster I am about to relate!
     Let me get it over with: I lost a small fortune by hiring a huckster to build me an "off the grid self-sufficient" home. I relied on the design and construction services of a "visionary" / architect / contractor / author / high-profile home-dealer. As I type this, the man is still pushing his services and products on the internet, in print, and in person to anyone who comes within earshot. Using the hippest new-age notions, his pitch describes seamlessly integrated earth-, user-, and pocketbook-friendly building styles embedded in utopian communities, unbelievably cheap! He promotes his wares with the unstoppable fervor of a high-pressure car dealer on latenight tv. Meanwhile, his state's Attorney General, county officials, and other disgruntled victims are howling for his head.
     How Did I Get Here? This Is Not My Beautiful House! Looking back, I see I made three beginner's mistakes:

Mistake #1
     I fell for a "visionary" sales pitch. I bought into a vision that was presented as: (1) the answer to everything, (2) fully realized, and (3) cheap. I failed to engage and trust my critical faculties, but went for wishfulness. The result of my folly is that I am still in possession of a legal and financial liability I can neither use nor sell. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Mistake #2
     I learned this the hard way: A sustainable lifestyle cannot be packaged and sold like a consumer product. Advertising and commerce would like us to believe otherwise; this is the nature and process of "greenwashing." Everything "alternative" is not always "greener." Be skeptical. We grow into sustainability slowly, by adopting thoughtful strategies and principles that fit the stages of our journey. For us in the West, this strategy seems to involve rolling up our sleeves and doing battle with our habits of consumption. In our civilization this is not easy; a supportive community helps us know when we have enough. If, in spite of my sad story you are still emotionally attached to the purchase of a nifty self-sufficient home-deal package, I urge you to get a bank loan; do not pay out of pocket. The documentary and legal protections that a bank officer requires might be worth the interest charges.

Mistake #3
     On the first day of work, if the architect/construction boss doesn't arrive on site with a clear schedule mapped out on paper, cut your losses then and there! Fire 'em, do not be shy! After my experience, I realize I was intimidated and disempowered right from the start by my belief in the builder's self-proclaimed expertise and my self-proclaimed ignorance. I lost control when I tried to exchange cash for a dream. I was well intentioned, I wanted to be kind to the environment, but I didn't want to take responsibility for the hard parts: I didn't know about picking a decent site, I knew too little about photovoltaics and catch-water systems and how they are wired or plumbed. And sadly, I didn't think I needed to know these things in order to live sustainably, nor was I encouraged to learn by the builder. I thought I had made a deal with him to provide me with an item I could own the same way I maintain my car without knowing much about the internal combustion engine. I have learned that designing and building isn't the hard part, it is the necessary part. When we can do it with friends we trust, brainstorming using design ethics like those of permaculture, it can be an ecstatic and healing journey.
     Buddhists have "four reminders" of the importance of meditation practice. The second reminds us about "impermanence": Nothing stays the same, and everything that is put together comes apart. Houses dissolve. I want to build keeping that in mind, constructing a "biodegradable" home, not something fit only for the landfill. I have become an extremist, an aspiring neo-Luddite, dreaming of a low-tech life.

I take my inspiration from a set of "Ecotarian Guidelines" put forward by the Tyaya People of Bocare, County Kerry, Eire:

Ecotarian Guidelines

  • Do not buy anything you cannot or will not ultimately produce yourself.
  • If you cannot produce an essential item yourself, make sure it will last your lifetime, without further input.
  • Buy only foods that are organic, bioregionally grown (start big and shrink it), unprocessed (uncooked, unshelled, unhusked, etc.) and unpackaged (bulk or refillable containers).
  • Materials: Reuse things, use scavenged or found things, and buy only secondhand. Use only natural materials.
  • Do not buy new timber or wood products.
  • Do not purchase electricity.
  • Do not purchase animal products.
  • Do not store money in anything other than an eco-institution.
  • Learn to be strong willed inside shops. The pressure to buy what you want is fantastic, but can be overcome . . . .
  • Start the change next time you go shopping

     Although I depend on technology in my work, I daydream about drastic changes and meditate on the third of the four reminders, which is the law of karma: Good and bad deeds follow you as surely as a shadow.

 

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The New Independent Home


People and Houses that Harvest
the Sun, Wind, and Water
a book by Michael Potts
paper   *     8x10   *     408 pages
8 page color section + 200 illustrations:
b&w photos, graphs, charts, and diagrams
ISBN 1-890132-14-4   *     $30.00

this book at Amazon.com

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