welcome to the first day of the New Year here where i am, in Western Colorado, USA. i am feeling an uncharacteristic sense of optimism today; any day can be full of new beginnings, but how great is 1/1/24 to also be full of opportunities?
speaking of which, what kind of actions have you been taking recently, or do you plan to take in the near future? how are you bringing solarpunk into the world?
may 2024 be a good year for you and yours, and me and mine, and ours, and humanity, and the earth.
Fixing up another batch of computers to give away - these ones came from the recycling center (I’ve been making friends).
Helping give away a desk I fixed up.
Working on rebuilding a park bench (I have the cast iron sides and back but all the planks were rotted out - I’m replacing them with reclaimed oak (from an old shelf). I plan to put it by our local bike path.
Giving lots of stuff away via our local Buy Nothing -type group and helping my older neighbors use it as they clean out.
Looking for a big secondhand fresnel lens to try building a solar forge for this summer. Its been forever since I could do some proper forging. My neighbor is okay with me using his paved driveway for the workspace.
Fixing up a secondhand wood router so I can add fancy edges and dovetail joints to my capabilities.
Continuing on my solarpunk photobashes - the next one will be of a woodgas plow truck, then I want to do some scenes of a library economy in action.
Helping with some other solarpunk art projects.
I swapped my old bike in at a local charity /coop. My old one was too large and wasn’t getting used because of it. The new one came second hand and fits much better. I’ve been riding almost every day since and have replaced a decent number of trips I would usually make by car.
My wife rescued an old limanted faux antique table from the curb this summer and we’ve been having a good time restoring it over the holidays. We’ve been learning to work with vaneer and how to do patches and the like. It’s been a lot of fun.
I’m looking forward to some gardening this spring. I was able to convince my landlord to let us take out a large section of lawn and replace it with a native xeroscaped garden. My wife and I have been working on it for a couple of years now and it’s really starting to fill in. My cat seems to appreciate it as well. When we moved in our back yard was basically critter free, now we have tons of birds, squirrels, possums, and the odd skunk.
finally finished my compost bin - just three pallets in a U shape, but it worked! added PiHole and Unbound DNS to my home server setup to keep ads and other nonsense as out of our lives as possible. more to come!
Heck yeah! Ad blocking is a game changer. What are you going to grow with the compost?
- Growing letteuce out of HDPE plastic containers I found in a dumpster
- Finished setting up AdGuard Home network-wide
- Giving away houseplant cuttings to friends and family
- More reading, less doomscrolling
- Celebrating Veganuary
- Backburner project is finding a battery to power several of my raspberry Pi’s with a solar panel. Also, a long list of self hosted services on my used OptiPlex
I plan to continue fixing and riding my ancient E bike, which functions as my car.
