In lieu of commenting on your comments...

I started replying to all the terrific, thoughtful and considered comments you left on my last post but the sinus headache I've had for three days (I love Spring! Wattle blossom, not so much) is making the screen swim before my eyes.  So please accept my thanks here, I've been mulling over all of them.

Rainbow Chard

I do want to clarify a couple of things though: Firstly, that when I said that I felt like moving to the country would be copping out, I meant that for me, and only for me. One of the problems with blogging is that my posts (& thoughts) are a natural progression of the last four years of blogging and I forget that you aren't in my head and for the most part, haven't read the rest of my blog.  I'll have to do a better job in future of making my position more clear, LOL.  Anyway, I'll just say here that I feel very strongly that because something like 80% of Aussies live in urban areas - and that urban dwellers are the direct and indirect cause of (probably more than) 80% of greenhouse gas emissions - there is a huge need for those 'in the know' to show that living lightly and sustainably can be done in urban areas.

Secondly, when I spoke about people beginning to speak out now, I didn't in any way shape or form, mean to discount enormous value of the people, like Sonya and Linda, who have been slogging away 'at the coal face' so to speak, for many years now, training people in permaculture,  setting up Transition Towns and so forth - I consider them/ you to be part of the 'first wave' of "doers"; the real pioneers. 

Finally, I wanted to share an awesome poem by Marge Piercy, the last stanza of which Linda included in her comment on my last post.  I think it's relevant for all of us...

The Low Road  

What can they do 
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can 
bust you, they can break 
your fingers, they can 
burn your brain with electricity, 
blur you with drugs till you 
can t walk, can’t remember, they can 
take your child, wall up 
your lover. They can do anything 
you can’t blame them
from doing. How can you stop 
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can 
take what revenge you can 
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting 
back to back can cut through 
a mob, a snake-dancing file 
can break a cordon, an army 
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other 
sane, can give support, conviction, 
love, massage, hope, sex. 
Three people are a delegation, 
a committee, a wedge. With four 
you can play bridge and start 
an organisation. With six 
you can rent a whole house, 
eat pie for dinner with no 
seconds, and hold a fund raising party. 
A dozen make a demonstration. 
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter; 
ten thousand, power and your own paper; 
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time, 
it starts when you care 
to act, it starts when you do 
it again after they said no, 
it starts when you say We 
and know who you mean, and each 
day you mean one more.

--Marge Piercy
Copyright 2006, Middlemarsh, Inc.

I wanted to email you personally Linda, but I couldn't find an email address for you, so instead I'll say here, thank you, not only for 'getting' where my motivation lies, but also for believing I (we) can make a difference.  Your book (The Permaculture Home Garden) and Jackie French's Backyard Self-Sufficiency were the first two books I ever bought, some years ago now (ahem), which weren't 'standard' gardening books and to say that they changed my whole concept of a backyard would be an understatement :-)


 Cheers,