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We had our first meeting!

I’m writing this recap amidst baby bedtime, wherein the child plays in her crib until she tuckers herself out, so I might forget details. But it was a good first meeting!

It was just three of us in the meeting space, and also the local councillor called into the Zoom for a moment but only to wish us luck—she’s currently on holiday.

What a great discussion though! We talked about big plans for the future, and small plans for the immedIate future. One direction we may go is taking care of a cemetery near me that’s falling into disrepair. We had some amazing conversations about land and culture and ancestry, and we think getting the cemetery to a place where we could run tours of it for tourists and locals alike would be a great starting point.

An important note here is that I live in the Scottish highlands. We have a lot of tourists who come here to discover their ancestry, and simultaneously, a lot of Scottish people who want to get back in touch with an ancestry that has been erased by English colonialism. We discussed how we want to uplift Scottish Gaelic (Gaidhlig) and other Scottish languages like Scots and Doric. Basically, we want to integrate the culture that already lives here and lived here before back into new green space.

(It helps that one of my friends, who was at the meeting, is a native Gaidhlig speaker and very in touch with the cultural intricacies as a result)

(They’re teaching me Gaidhlig too)

After the meeting concluded with some discussion of future meeting plans, that friend and I walked to the cemetery and checked it out with our plans in mind. I worry about the logistics about building on that space—both in the sense of we morally can’t break ground to build anything new and community-esque, and might even struggle with putting in new benches/paths, but also it’s more a job of hiring professionals to fix some broken headstones and clean moss from other ones. I’d be afraid of the liability associated with having a volunteer group clean up around headstones even in case one is damaged.

But, I think the cultural significance is undeniable, and it would get us in the good graces of the city— both people and officials. I need to do more research.

In the meantime since the meeting, a friend from the local queer group messaged me to say, essentially “hey did you know my job is getting people out into nature?” Answer: I did not! So we met up at a cafe this past Friday to discuss his thoughts on my ideas, and for him to suggest people to talk to. One idea he mentioned was that there’s a “green health week” coming up May 3-11, a week I conveniently have off work for unrelated reasons of ageing. The idea of green health week is to signpost outdoor activities happening for folks to participate in. We’re thinking I should organise a litter picking group for that week. He also organises a group for getting LGBT people active and outside, and is happy to share details of my events with that crowd.

I mentioned that I might do this litter pick on Facebook, and the councillor (who is my FB friend now) said I might be able to get Waste Management to pick up what we collect. Hooray! I’ll need to look into that.

Anyways. Our next meeting is in a week. I look forward to reporting back even more after that!

I'm doing the thing, y'all! See my previous Day 0 post here.

On March 18th (Day 1) I sent an email to my local councillor, explaining my desire for more greenspace and especially space for kids to play.

...and within 24 hours she got back to me with an email. Actually 3 emails. The first one dripping with excitement and the other two with INFORMATION.

Basically, her response was two-pronged: On one hand, she agrees we need more outdoor spaces for people to exist in the city centre, and she thinks there are a good few empty lots which could become such. On the other, she mentioned that what greenspace we do have, the council is struggling to manage. There's a cemetery near me which is falling into disrepair, and she mentioned that the best solution might be for a community group to come forward and take care of the area. Of course, she included the caveat that you can't put a play park on top of an active gravesite, but her point as far as I can tell was to say there's a need for community groups in general.

(sidenote: I think a cemetery with a play park would actually be very cool. I mean, I'd want to be buried there. My kids and their kids and their kids would be able to play near me forever)

Anyways. I responded with barely contained excitement, and explained that I'd be happy to put together a group to build a play park which could also take care of the greenspaces we have, like the cemetery. My logic is that communities, especially project-based ones, need successes to rally around early on or there's a higher risk of burnout. I don't remember if I learned that from experience or from something I read somewhere, but it feels true. So, I think the play is to put together a group which will fix up the cemetery as a first step, and when we've achieved that, our next step will be to work towards new greenspaces.

I also feel like that strategy, put simply, will make people like us. I'm really worried about public backlash, but I'll dive into that later.

Anyhow. After emailing her back, I made some flyers to post up around town, and wrote some words for posting on facebook (BLECH) and emailing to different organisations. I've only put up two flyers, and I've only emailed one org... but I also posted on facebook and now I have THREE signups on my google form for folks who want to work together. One of which is a friend of mine, but I mean, they're cool and I'd love to work with them on this, if only to have a friendly face at the meetings.

So now I'm seeing who else signs up before April 7th, at which point I will schedule a first meeting! Though, I don't know where to do so yet. I have to figure that out.

In the meantime, the one-and-only org I emailed got back to me! They are SO EXCITED about collaborating, because their whole thing is planting food gardens in public and my opening hey-do-you-wanna-collab statement was that I'd love to have some of their food planters in my dream-greenspace. Also, turns out the nice person behind the organisation used to live on my street, and had the same problem with no greenspace. It's definitely a thing. I feel less crazy now, honestly, with how many people are agreeing that it's a problem.

So now I await a meeting with her, and I await April 7th to see who all can attend.

Through all of this, there's been a common thread of anxiety kicking around my brain. I do not have thick skin. As in, the kind of vitriolic nastiness that anonymous/pseudonymous social media tends towards really stings me. Especially when it's not just mean, but bigoted.

And well, I'm nonbinary. And bisexual. And my friend who is gonna help me out is nonbinary, too. Aaaaand we both frequent the local queer meetup. And we live on TERF island where, y'know, doing good things for children while also being a filthy queer gets you labelled a groomer.

But my partner rightly insists that, when I finally attract nastiness, I can't let it get me down. I don't really know how to do that... except maybe make a bingo card for the kind of shitty comments I might get.

For your entertainment, here's the things I'm afraid of having yelled at me so far, which may become a bingo card:

• non sequitur fat jokes (I am fat and as we know, that is funny and negates everything I say. I guess)
• Karen jokes (because fixing things in the city = complaining... I think?)
• "We've tried doing this before and it failed and so will you."
• "The council is working with you? I hate the council so I hate you too."
• "The groomer is trying to turn our children gay by letting them play outside"
• "Vandals will ruin anything you do."
• something something pronouns gender
• "You are an immigrant, stop trying to improve your city."
• "You're annoying."
• Facebook laughing emoji reaction

Honestly I debated sharing that list. But it felt cathartic to write out, and I think so much internet discourse turns into "have a thick skin or leave", which tends to shut people out, so maybe it'll help someone for me to discuss my fears as I do this project. Or I just think bingo cards are funny.

Anyways stay tuned! I really hope to make another post after the first in-person meeting, which should mean posting again in the latter half of April.

I was very inspired by the Schmorp chronicles so I'm attempting something similar! Both in terms of how I'm titling the posts, aaaand what I'm doing!

I live on a street that used to have a play park for kids, but it was shut down due to disrepair. Now the council has given some guy with pigeons permission to keep his pigeons there. Honestly, that's pretty cool that he has pigeons, but I do often despair that there's not a play park for my daughter when there used to be one before we moved here! And before she existed. She's 8 months old and currently trying to steal my laptop as I write this.

There's no good greenspace in a short walk's radius here as a result of the whole pigeon thing. Also, I love community improvement, people organising, and just in general DOING. I am one of the few lucky people who has identified a purpose in life prior to being too old to do anything about it, and it's that. So... why not hit two birds with one stone (not pigeons) and fix the lack of public play- and green-space with my most loved passion?

I found a map today of derelict and vacant land in Scotland (where I live) and there are spots on that map very near me! Also, since that map was made, I've identified other potential spots just by living here. I'm hopeful that there's space for this space I want. It's here if you're interested: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/192d9f7b2fb5436a89042b5af7544d9d/

I also found a resource by the Highlands and Island Enterprise (hey, that's local to me in the Highlands!) about how a community can form a social enterprise and acquire land. You can ALSO find it, if you want, here: https://www.hie.co.uk/support/browse-all-support-services/support-for-community-organisations/community-assets/ten-steps-to-community-ownership/

So today I'm making lists of people who I know want more greenspace (amongst my friends for now), lists of businesses and local councillors to contact, lists of plans and resources and ideas... many lists.

I go on holiday in less than a week, and then I'm back home two weeks later, and that's go time. Once I'm back, I can start contacting people to gain more info and guidance and in general kick this into gear.

For now, I'm absorbing knowledge. I am so excited.

I was buying some second hand furniture and they just had a box of new potatoes that were destined for compost because they were supermarket surplus. But, they had a sign saying to help yourself, they’re free, etc.

Obviously it’s great that they were going to be composted, but you know what’s better?

I took a bag home. I planted them in my garden, discarding any not-great ones for my compost. Only two plants worked out, but… today I pulled up a bunch of big ol potatoes that are going to be made into roasties this holiday season.

I’ve never successfully grown potatoes before, so finding success when I planted them super late and had to pull them up early (we had our first frost) feels really good. Especially because they are entirely free.

Anyways, wanted to share that as it’s the most solarpunk I’ve felt in some time!

Crossposted from the solarpunk instance I call home. Er, I think. I don't know how to crosspost. My first (published) foray into vocaloid and especially Teto's synthv.

I would absolutely love to talk about making this so please ask.

Music and art by me. I finished off the video with lyrics and such in vizzy, which I highly recommend for any other tiny-time producers.

My debut into solarpunky vocaloid music. Music produced by me in garageband/piapro/synthv, art made in clip studio, video rendered with a neato little tool called vizzy.

Quick caveat: I know it says Kasane Teto "AI" as one of the artists. This is not generative AI. Vocaloid is way, way older than any of them there GPTs, and is a wholly different kind of computer-assisted music. It's the difference between digital artists spending hours on digital art (Good!) and prompt peddlers generating "AI Art" (the devil). While Kasane Teto is now an "AI voicebank", her voice was still provided by a single, paid individual, and honestly I'm... not entirely sure what the AI part is. I made her voice do the sing thing. There might have been some natural language processing with how she's able to pronounce English, I think?

I will 100% unleash my autism to rant and rave further about how vocaloid works, if anyone's interested. But mostly I want to share my music and its meanings. This song was basically made for this instance, which I do love so dearly.

If anyone has questions about my music creation process or my lyric writing thoughts, uh, please ask. I'll answer. That's a promise and a threat.

Hello cool folks. I have a trans friend in California who might be facing unhoused-ness, and I want to be able to give her resources to help her. I used to know about stuff like the trans couch network from tumblr, but that was ages ago, and I live in the UK now so I only know UK based housing charities.

So: what housing organisations or resources exist in California, specifically the LA area? If any? I feel so out of touch on this side of the pond. I’ll do a Google search as well, but I don’t really trust Google to vet organisations like actual trans folks can.

Alternatively, any advice I can pass along to her would help. I’m trans but I’ve been lucky enough to have secure housing so far, so I feel out of my depth.

My baby is 6 weeks old. I’ve been planning to buy some loop earplugs “soon”. Well she just discovered a kind of cry that reverberates in my amygdala, so “soon” was NOT SOON ENOUGH.

Sigh. I’m gonna buy loops once my partner is awake. Yknow, so I can ask what colour he wants his in…

Eta for context! Loops and ear defenders specifically don’t block all noise, they just reduce the decibels of loud sounds. So using them means you can be more physically present for a baby with colic (and probably other fun ailments that happen later) longer before you need to step away from your nerves being fried. This is especially life-saving for neurodivergent parents, obviously, but I’d bet most parents get stressed and tetchy during certain cries.

Tl;dr still always reply to your baby when they cry! And it’s okay to use tools that make the experience gentler on yourself.

So I gave birth to my first (likely only) child about 10 days ago. First off, I can’t comprehend how much I love her. But more to the point, I’m having such big emotions about her and the world I brought her into.

I’m big into climate activism and uh, in general doing my damnedest to ensure there is a world for her to grow up into.

So it’s so weird looking at her. Thinking about the kind of tasks she has ahead of her should she go down the activist path. Wondering what kind of struggles she’s gonna face thanks to my generation. And also, I’m aware she’s her own person and will become herself, not mini-me. But in light of all of that, whenever I look at her, I just feel so much hope. It’s so irrational, this child’s highest achievement so far is drinking 85ml of formula in one go. But I look at her and feel like we will be okay.

It’s a stark contrast from the typical doom n gloom around child-creation you find in activist circles. Stuff about overpopulation and dooming your progeny.

Anyways… does anyone feel the same? Am i just a super sappy postpartum person?

So I live in a touristy part of Scotland, and my street is absolutely overrun with "secondary lets" (i.e. someone buys a house in addition to their normal home, and instead of being a normal scumlord, they turn it into a short term rental situation like AirBnB). If you search on my street on booking.com or airbnb, there's a total of 9 that I'm able to count-- and we're a small street! And the next door neighbour has posted a notice on their window that they're seeking a licence to become an AirBnB themselves.

Things of note:

• They're already operating as a short term let. And it's obnoxious. And eroding the community spirit of the, well, community. Because a tourist here for a week is not a member of the street's community.
• When I say next door, I mean I live in a semi-detached house, so this airbnb is/"would be" literally attached to my house. (Americans, think duplex if that terminology is more familiar)
• I literally have not been able to meet the owner of this airbnb in the year I've lived here, which sucks because hey, I like to know my neighbours! But also because we had a rat problem in winter and their side of the building had a massive gaping hole in the front exterior wall, which the exterminator wanted to fill but couldn't because it wasn't our property. We left letters for the owner, even just to introduce ourselves, no dice. I'm salty, yes.

So on to the point of this post. I submitted an objection to this licencing, and was informed of its safe receipt today! But uh they also said in the email "there will be a meeting to discuss the licencing, you are invited to attend and make your objections in person"

I'm not exactly a stranger to public speaking, or trying to be persuasive. But I'm autistic as fuck, out of practice with said public speaking, and also like 8 months pregnant. But I recognise that showing up to speak is going to be influential, moreso than my letter. So I'm gonna haul my pregnant autistic ass to the wherever and make my statements. I do feel like being a heavily pregnant person is going to help my case from an emotional standpoint? Who knows.

But oh god. I'm nervous. I want to have solid facts, solid arguments behind my case. I don't want to come off as a petty NIMBY, I want to present myself as someone who cares about communities being eroded, who cares about people being unable to find affordable housing because everyone and their cat wants an airbnb, and I want to have sources to back myself up. I just feel a bit lost in finding those sources and knowing what to say. Heck, I don't even know what the council will ask! Or expect! Or what it'll be like!

I am taking any and all advice. I'll also be scrubbing the identifying details from my objection letter and sharing it in a comment here, if that's helpful at all.

Do note: "You can do it!" is also a VERY welcome comment right now.

Very much inspired by the recent post about what anti work actually means. If you were free from the “work or starve” paradigm, what would you do with your time? No wrong answers.

Personally, I would like to spend more time outside cultivating food and fiber. (Fiber here meaning growing flax for linen, raising angora rabbits or even goats or sheep for their fiber, etc. I am big into textiles)

This is a goal I pursue even now, because my current job is high paying and 4 days a week and I want to use that relative privilege to gain skills that help my communities. Speaking of, I’m also a big fan of community organising, which is another thing I’d want to keep doing post-work.

But like I said, no wrong answers! You don’t have to have a plan for how you’d serve your community. Some of us wouldn’t. And most of us don’t have the time to even think of what we could do for our communities. For that last case, I hope this discussion can be inspiring!

Weird title, I know. But I've recently found out that I'm pregnant with my first child. It's an equal mix of anxiety, excitement, and anger at just how consumeristic having a goddamn baby is. So I'm curious how my fellow Solarpunks would handle the introduction of a new small mammal into their world.

My main concern revolves around Amazon and general gifting.

I live in the UK, but I'm from the US originally, and my family and most of my friends are back in the US. Their go-to for sending me anything is Amazon, because you can easily shop in the US and ship to my home in the UK. I've had mixed feelings about this for a long time, but now that my entire family is gonna want to Buy Something for Baby I'm especially cautious. I don't want to tell them not to buy anything (Well I do, but more on that later). But I absolutely do not want to receive anything from Amazon. Environmental, economical, political, and ethical concerns aside, I don't really trust items from Amazon to hold up like I'd want them to. Might not technically be an issue with baby clothes, since they'll be worn for a day at most, but anything else I come into possession of needs to be sturdy enough to be safe, and to be able to be reused/passed down/given to other parents in the community when no longer needed.

I found a website called LittleList that's a UK-based baby registry, which seems to allow people from anywhere to order anything to my door, and they even seem to have an emphasis on more eco friendly brands. My plan as a result is to tell people they can only order off of the LittleList registry, or they can just get a card for my family and/or baby. That said, I'll take advice for either how to get people to actually listen to this request, or for other, better requests to make.

My other concern with getting gifts (and even buying stuff myself) is I don't know what I'll actually need and use, and I'd hate to buy or receive useless stuff just to clutter my house. Also, I'm in Scotland, so the government will send us a box full of baby necessities when baby is born. I hope I can use this little fact to convince people that really, I don't need anything.

TL:DR; anyone have advice for how to keep people from inundating me and baby with cheap Amazon stuff?

I'm also wondering if there'd be interest in a solarpunk parenting community here, because god knows if I posted this on a generic parenting forum I'd get all kinds of people not getting it, and I know this won't be the last weird question I have.