AIP Class Starts Thursday!
Sharon May 24th, 2010
Just a reminder that Aaron and I will be running our Adapting in Place Class online for six weeks, starting Thursday. The class is asynchronous - you don’t have to be online at any particular time, just participate when you like. The goal of the class is to help people develop a coherent plan for how to create a good and viable low energy life with what you have. Previous participants have told us that the class was “life-changing.”
The cost of the class is $180 or equivalent barter, and I do have one remaining scholarship spot (thanks to several kind donors) available for a low income participant who couldn’t otherwise afford the class. Email me for more info at [email protected].
Week 1 – How to evaluate what you have. We’re going to concentrate on figuring out what the major concerns are for your place and your community. We’ll talk about your region and its climate, culture and resources, your house itself, your community and neighborhood – the challenges you forsee and maybe ones you haven’t thought about yet, and your personal circumstances – how much money, time and energy you have to deal with it. How does the definition of home change when we do this? We’ll also talk about when adapting in place is not an option, or when you should consider relocating, and what your options are if you do need to leave or move.
Week 2 - This week will focus on your house itself – we’ll talk primarily about low energy infrastructure for heating, cooling, cooking, lighting, washing, etc… About costs and options and choices for both private homes, renters and for communities as a whole. We will also cover some renewable energy choices, especially low cost options.
Week 3 – We’re going to go into the walls of your building and into other mysterious home infrastructure- water, plumbing and toileting, insulation, keeping warm and cool and all the other things that your shelter does or could do for you. We’ll also talk a bit about what’s in your soil and on your property and how to make the best possible use of it (this won’t get heavy emphasis in this class since we teach a whole class, garden design, on just this subject).
Week 4 We’ll focus on Family Issues – Sharing resources with both immediate and extended family (both biological and chosen), dealing with people who aren’t on board, building collective infrastructure, cannibalizing what you have and making do, dealing with the brother-in-law on the couch, helping kids adapt. Also issues raised by young children, disability, aging, college.
Week 5 - We’ll talk about finances, money, employment, retirement and savings, making do, getting along on a shoestring, thrift, starting cottage industries and businesses and community economics. This is also when we’ll talk about transportation of all sorts. We’ll also begin discussing building a set of plans – 1 year, 5 year – to adapt to different scenarios.
Week 6 – We’ll talk about Community at every level, about how to build it, what to bring to it, how to get your neighbors to help, even if they are weird. How to get along with them even if you are weird 
, about models and ideas for bringing resilience and community to every level from the neighborhood to the state. We’ll also talk about security, dealing with unrest or violence, and try and get those plans finished.
Hope you can join us!
Sharon
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Good afternoon I’m David and I am from UK, Bromley .I am new to this forum. I have just set up my new Plumbing site and i am interested in your product. I have just qualified as a central heating engineer. My site is a bit basic,
Savvy clients will know weather to hire you!
After Iceland, speculators attacked Greece and are attacking now all the European countries, even though they are far from being the most indebted countries. See the link http://www.usdebtclock.org/
I have already told other interesting blogs about what we, a small French community of three and soon four families of neighbours are doing . We are aware that the financial system is enslaving humanity and, like the Phoenix, reviving stronger than ever after every crisis . We are trying to live outside the unfair rules of finance and to weaken it . If everybody joined communities like ours, the barbaric financial system wouldn’t revive .
We refuse to play that awful game any more : money is virtual, only air or mere paper junk and gold is a useless metal, not hard enough to make tools or weapons out of it . Everything has the mere value that people put in it . Remember the children’s tale : Beware, the king is naked !
Two years ago, we decided to get out from the grip of the financial world and become the true owners of our lives and decisions . Once the victims of the financial world , we have become the actors of our lives. All the bad news about euro and global financial disasters have very little impact on my neighbours’ lives and mine in our ordinary French city .
Two years ago, together with three families in our neighbourhood, we bought a plot of very cheap unconstructible land by the river for 3,000 euros instead of renewing our old cars . We made a collective vegetable garden on it . We added a few fruit-trees to those that were already there to have an orchard . Next summer, we are building a poultry-yard to be totally independent for our food and a nice comfortable Mongolian yurt for a foreclosed family about to join us . The next step will be a solar electric system to pump water from the river.
At the moment, we only spend our money on food and equipment for future survival . We never enter a supermarket , we just buy from small independent local suppliers to help them survive and fight against big chain stores . We have no loans, no credit cards, no savings . Law obliges us to have bank accounts to get our salaries , retirement pensions, unemployment allowances . We take our salaries or unemployment allowances away from the bank, as long as there are still salaries, as long as there is still money, ON THE VERY DAY the money arrives on our bank accounts. This way, we refuse to feed the greedy financial system.
We spend nice week-ends and holidays growing vegetables together, building useful equipment, having nice picnics together, even when it is rather cold . Friendly, nourishing , free leisure with friends , most enjoyable even for the children . We have nothing to lose, nothing to fear . We are ready for survival when the financial system fails.
[...] include the Un-Crash Course and Sustainable Post-Peak Livelihoods. - I’m hopefully taking an Adapting in Place class from Sharon Astyk - fingers crossed that there are still openings. Getting off the grid [...]