Randy White Comedy / Stand Up

Sometimes, you have to move beyond the blog – so I went and laid out some thoughts in front of an audience.

Leaked Footage of Randy White / Lawns to Gardens editor

Leaked footage of a street interview with me.

Everything You Need To Know To Be A Farmer In A City

As a micro-farmer, I know how hard it is for the average home owner to get started with converting property to be a productive, home-based ecosystem. As an urban farmer and technology executive, I came to the realization that we have enough communications programs and it really comes down to working with available city land to grow food. Our home was a typical “1950’s Beaver Cleaver” type home, and now it is a productive food oasis, with water systems and beautiful, living soil. With just $10 in seeds, you can create $650 worth of produce!

Since we don’t believe in chemical-based farming, our recommendations are all organic methods. There is no substitute for hands-on learning, however this is a fantastic list of ways you can quickly get started and learn how to be a farmer:

Organic Food Gardening Beginners Manual
87 Page Step-by-step Gardening Manual For Beginners To Learn How To Grow Their Own Healthy, Organic Food – Saving Money And Eating Chemical Free! Revised Edition Just Released.

Profiting From Home-Based Farming
R.h.s. Medal Winning Plantsman Reveals His Amazing Ways. Promote His Easy, Simple Ways Among Plant Lovers & Gardening Enthusiasts & Help Them Earn A Part Time Income Of $500-$1000/week.

Your Very Own Tree Farm
The Complete Guide To Starting Your Own Profitable Tree Farm.

The Container Garden Expert
Finally Have The Benefit Of Years Of Specialist Container Gardening Experience At Your Fingertips And All In The Comfort Of Your Own Home, With Minimum Stress, And Without You Wasting Your Hard Earned Cash On Methods And Products That Just Do Not Work.

Organic Vegetable Gardening
Organic Vegetable Gardening Ebook. Even A Novice Can Start An Organic Garden With This Simple Guide. Complete Step By Step Gardening Guide.

DIY Worm Farms
How To Build And Manage A Worm Farm To Suit The Average Family. Recycle Household Organic Waste Into Fertiliser For Your Garden And Help The Environment Too.

High-density Gardening
How To Design, Build, Set Up, Grow With And Maintain A High Density Garden To Provide You And Your Family With Fresh, Wholesome And Tasty Vegetables.

Home and Garden – Country and Rural Life
Gardening And Birds, Raising Chickens And Goats, Baking Bread… more

Cinder Block Gardening
Learn how to make a super productive garden using cinder blocks and other methods.

Postcard From A Transition Movement Hot Zone

The following is a guest column written for The Oil Drum. Randy White is a municipal sustainability expert, was a member of Portland’s Peak Oil Task Force, and is the Founder of Bright Neighbor, LLC.

It’s no secret that Portland is a pretty radical city. While mainstream America is still learning how to make the leap to full-time sustainability activities, Portland, Oregon is a major hot zone and leader in the human revolution. The intent of this article is to offer an opinion and insight into strategies, collaborations, and technologies that are occurring in our city to solidify life-supporting social constructs.

We All Have Our Problems
Portland is dependent on energy and money just like any other city. With over 500,000 people, we have the 23rd largest economy in the US at $88.6 billion dollars. We have crime, poverty, homelessness, and hard-working people who would love more time off to pursue more joys in life if only they didn’t have debts to pay.

The fact is, not enough people here have the skills, resources, or contribute to the system to say Portland can become a completely self-sufficient city. While science has determined the amount of calories and nutrition needed for human bodies to survive, only each individual can determine what is needed to satisfy each of our own living requirements. Right now, people around the world are searching within themselves to determine what this mother-of-all-market-corrections means in the context of their own life. In countries around the world, people are reflecting on survival, whether it means scrambling to meet basic needs such as food and shelter, or committing one’s life to helping others survive as we dismantle nuclear weapons.

Indeed, finance industries and governments continue to try and figure out how they can game the now collapsing currency market, and around the world thousands of loose-knit social movements and groups are acting together, radically altering the balance between commercial and non-commercial economies. Portlanders are trading sink repair for firewood, worm castings for books, and organizing into sustainability groups, meeting to discuss a multitude of survival strategies. The cool part is that it is in the most relaxed manner I could have imagined. You know something cool is happening when the art community gets involved. To see scholars, artists, chefs, teachers, farmers, faith leaders, bureaucrats and other various communities coming together to discuss survival in a civil manner is surreal. It is also the beauty of the Portland conversation, because empathy, understanding, and cooperation are now winning out over personal greed.

Let’s examine some of the conversations taking place, and how people are organizing to do what we can locally:

Food, Food, Food
Portlanders will practically strip naked and make love to the soil. Our city is full of a diverse ecosystem of people and cultures who love and worship local food, soil, and farmers. The cool thing to ask at parties is “So what do you grow”? Little kids wear shirts that say “I Love My Farmer”. They worship apples – and I’m not just talking about their phones and computers.

As mobile as the city is with its fantastic bus and rail system, we have no problem getting around to all the amazing restaurants that showcase seasonal, locally grown vegetables in their menus. Our chefs strive to use local ingredients, as long as the cost doesn’t put them out of business. Our citizens have one of the highest percentages of CSA subscriptions. The fact is, we love food. So when it comes to loud-mouthed know-it-alls, you can bet Portland likes to brag about it’s success with food.

Using a variety of technologies to list events, food experts are leading the conversation. If you know how to grow food, fix soil, and install edible landscaping, you are all the rage. Take a look at this quick video and you will see what the job of the future looks like.

Presently, Bright Neighbor offers a “Lawns to Gardens” service, helping match people to homeowners willing st share their lawns. We are connecting Gerding Edlen’s newest building CYAN/pdx to Portland land owners to help create more garden activity and boost our local local food system.

Our April 17th kickoff of the Bright Neighbor Community Revolution Tour will include boosting lawn farming production, water harvesting, and permaculture practices throughout the city.

Transportation
This one is real easy. Portlanders either walk, bike, drive, ride, or rail it to and from where they need to be. If you need to get there, you can get there cheap, you just have to consider whether you will be exposed to the elements and how much time it will take. But we know we will get there somehow.

When it comes to fuel supply solutions, some Portlanders have electric vehicles, and many are discovering that you can make ethanol from hundreds of non-food supply threatening feedstocks other than corn. As for ride-sharing, people are getting to know their neighbors to work on cooperative projects and partake in resource sharing. For instance, if you need a ride right now, you can just call up your friends or discover your neighbors via one of the many Internet technologies. You can always use the Internet and phone to find a ride and share resources. The question is which technologies to use will make it easiest for communities.

Fixing our local commerce system
One high-brow conversation among Portland communities is talk of fixing our money system and the restructuring of the economy based on a non-fiat based local currency. The challenge with this movement is an assumption that outstanding debts can or will be canceled or repaid using any new system. The beauty of this movement and conversation is that even if we don’t solve the new riddle right away, the conversation is fascinating and the beer is great. Even thinking about the idea of replacing the world’s current broken money system is exciting in and of itself. The questions being asked have to do with real value, the meaning of real wealth, and property rights. It is being talked about by all political parties, all religions, and all citizens.

We are asking:
Who grows my food?
Who supplies my fuel?
Are my water need secured?
What is worth more, a knife or a variety bag of seeds?
How does the community determine each person’s value?
How do we know who is trustworthy and who isn’t?
How long will dollars matter?
Am I capable of doing what it takes to survive?
What is my purpose if not to make money?

The conversation in Portland revolves around a common realization that our community is quickly developing an entirely new system of accepted social values, logistics, and supply chains. I will end this postcard from a transition hotzone with the opinion that emerging businesses are using a variety of technologies to bring new food supplies into pop-culture at maximum velocity. More of our citizens are contributing real value to the community through hyper-involvement at the neighborhood level, and Portland will continue to lead the way in defining modern community survival trends.

What’s cool that is going on in your city?

Privacy Is The New Transparency

To the folks on Mashable that think they know markets had better listen up. Privacy is the new Transparency.

Social innovation and technology are starting to stink. I am neck-high in communications technology development, and the abuse of it is making me just want to throw my gadgets away except for my i-pod so I can rock out to tunes while I’m gardening.

Facebook sucks, because you never know when someone is going to blackmail you with naked pictures.

Thurs., Feb. 5, 2009
MILWAUKEE – An 18-year-old male student is accused of posing as a girl on Facebook, tricking at least 31 male classmates into sending him naked photos of themselves and then blackmailing some for sex acts.

Seriously, things are getting out of hand. The watchdog group Privacy International is sounding an alarm about Google’s new phone tracking system, Latitude. “As it stands right now, Latitude could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners and obsessive friends,” Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said in a new report.

So let me just lay it out on the line. Here are the hot trends that will be followed by money in 2009 – because my company is making money with them.

1) Walled Gardens & Private Clubs Will Soar

It sucks to not know if the person who you are chatting with is real or not. I’m no fan of Ronald Reagan, but he had one thing right: Trust, but verify. Just like the real world, you are allowed into some clubs and not allowed into others. You will start to see a lot more “Pay To Enter” groups, clubs, and social networks, because privacy is something that people will still pay for. It’s no big secret that humans like to have fun and enjoy sex and drugs and other social taboos. It’s whether or not it hurts your relationships and ability to earn money that matters. And relationships are where it is at. So businesses that capitalize on private, licensed walled garden community technology as well as free, community supported social networks will win.

And I’m just kidding about Facebook sucking – Facebook rocks. I see it as a vital player in helping America deal with our upcoming liquid fuels crisis. President Obama will be issuing orders through it, and it’s not Facebook’s fault anyone can use technology to do harm if he or she is a bad person. My bet is that they mimic and monetize Bright Neighbor’s member verification process.

2) The return of activities based on Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs

This economy sucks. But hey, mountain hiking is practically free! And bowling is cheap! And people like to gather in the real world! So we will replace lost jobs with activities that help shape up our country. We are angry Americans, pissed off that we are losing access to money, but still the spoiled brats of technology and oil culture. That means we aren’t going to roll over and die just because some old fogies in Washington can’t get their checkbooks balanced.

3) Hyper-Local Community and Permaculture Becomes Sexier Than Hollywood

Please Hollywood – no more computer generated action sequence movies for a while. Batman is a weird, weird guy. We need stories that show monetary incentives that rally Americans to pick up shovels and get digging – not geomagnetically blowing up stuff and talking to armed vampires. It’s time that we all start listening to local hippies and farmers that get to say “I Told You So”, even as globalists start to freak out at the prospect of their capitalist empire of global trade shattering.

Because even though it looks like we have extra oil now that the price has dropped, it’s not the price that is the concern – it’s the supply. If someone blows up an oil terminal, we will have a real liquid fuels crisis, and immediately could suffer energy and food shortages, leading to social, business, and military pissed-offedness in a world full of really, really big missiles and boom boom sticks.

So 2009 is the year to get to know your neighbors better, even if you don’t want to. And don’t just get to know them, start hanging out with them and put yourself in an uncomfortable place for a while to get used to it. Because in case you haven’t noticed, we are arriving in Hell’s lobby. We have to take evasive action to immediately build hyper-local trust networks because people’s willingness to do things for each other, and to trust one another, depends on how well they know each other and how often they see them.

This has been my mantra for a long time, and luckily we do have so many ways to communicate with one another. It’s whether we are doing the right activities that counts more.

One last trend to report… hacked road signs. The trend is growing!

Randy White is the Founder of Bright Neighbor, a community self-sufficiency and technology company that specializes social collaborations and logistics to help communities adapt to the triple threat of economic, ecological, and energy collapse. A city dweller who has focused on reducing his impact on the planet while helping entrepreneurs forge new businesses, Randy’s expertise focuses on home-based self sufficiency opportunities. He will be speaking at the Pacific Northwest Better Living Show March 28th at the Portland Expo Center.

How To Profit From America’s New Shopping List

Hey America, if you are paying attention, you can make a lot of money right now!

President Obama just told us his shopping list for his three year plan (funny, it takes three years for fruit trees to produce). Obama is about to get a check for $825,000,000,000 dollars and he wants to buy all sorts of cool new things for America, such as:

10,000 school renovations – Great for all the folks who can help kids learn about chickens and growing vegetables and neat stuff like that

Improved local community communications networks – Hey, I sell those things!

75% of Federal building to be more energy efficient – You mean like ride sharing? Light bulbs? Turning computers off?

2.5 Million weatherized homes – Wow, whoever makes bricks and insulation from waste plastic bags & stuff will make a killing!

Double America’s renewable energy – Woo hoo! I sell hooch making machines! I’m gonna be rich!

Anyway, I am writing about this because the secret is, and always will be, to be a master of markets for things people really need. That means neighborhood collectives can team up and go legally harvest firewood and split it up among the community, where people volunteer their labor in exchange for good and services they need.

Money, as we know it, is just a means of representing value. What has real value to you? Probably the same things that have value to everyone else: Food, shelter, transportation, water, electricity, friends, resilient neighborhoods and communities, skills and stuff the community can use.

That’s the power behind Bright Neighbor. We offer a machine that helps fix community economies and ecology. Think about it this way…

Chickens are egg machines.
Gardens are fruit and vegetable machines.
Trees are fruit and nut machines.
Worms and mushrooms are soil fixing machines.

Bright Neighbor is a communications system, a carbon reduction machine, a money saving machine, and a community repair machine all-in-one. We have implemented it in governments, businesses, faith communities, private corporations, and with individual community organizers who want to fix their community. Our customer base now ranges in all of these markets, and if President Obama wants to buy any of these things, Bright Neighbor is one of America’s post-petroleum startups now open for business.

Three cheers for the Three Year Plan! I hope you make oodles of money.

- Randy White

PS: If you are interested in setting up a Bright Neighbor community communications system, please fill out this form.

The Mother Of All Crossroads

My buddy Sam Drevo is a world class kayaker. He has navigated some of the fiercest waters on planet earth while simultaneously making love to and taunting mother nature. Sam looks at rapids ahead, and paddles straight into what could be the last moments of his life every time. It is his confidence, training, and humility that always allow him to come through alive, even if he knocks his head along the way. At least he has a plan for rough waters, and knows how to navigate new, uncharted territory like an expert.

And Sam has known adventurers who have made mistakes and paid with their lives. We are all fallible, right? You know you yourself have made miscalculations in the past just like everyone else, and things haven’t gone according the exact way you thought they might go.

Oh sure, you must have been smart about your plans, made all your mental details, laid out your strategy, and went for it, right? You were plotting, you see. We all plot every day, because we have to in order to survive. It could be anything from what to do in case you wash your cell phone and lose all your stuff, get that hot person to go out with you, or try to get away with something naughty. It could have be anything from trying to fake your own death, to helping fix your community. As long as you have a plan.

And right now, it seems many people have been caught off guard with this economic hardship and are just now scrambling to make a plan.

Who usually makes the plans for you? Is it your faith leader? Your boss? Your spouse? Henry Kissinger?

As we continue along the timeline of our lives, we are at the mother of all crossroads in human history. Everyone knows something really, really big is going on, but no one seems to know who to listen to about it anymore. Even as Obama takes his place on the throne, I am finding people asking themselves “what is my plan, and do I know exactly what to do?”

We can certainly make up for our past mistakes, we absolutely must. We blew it, America. We screwed up, bigtime. I have screwed up , you have screwed up, we all screwed up. Now we are facing the consequences, and we need plans that are not only ready to go, but that are already working.

As we each can at least pitch in at the local level, we need to be asking ourselves:

- Do I have a good relationship with my neighbors?
- What skills do I have that can help the community?
- What can I do to help others that will make me feel better?
- Do I really need all this stuff I have acquired to be happy?
- How will I make rent / the mortgage this month?

In globalism, we are expected to either be a producer or a consumer. You either make something, or you use something. Then there are the middlemen – called markets. And it is the markets that are collapsing, along with the ability for people to earn money as markets cease. If you get laid off, and no one else will hire you, what are you going to do to survive?

It is for this reason that I created Bright Neighbor. We are setting up communities across the country right now, and we are here to help governments, communities, businesses, and faith groups. We are already doing it, and are teaming up with Powell’s Books to offer the new Bright Neighbor University lecture series.

In April, I will be presenting an hour long workshop called “Lawns to Gardens: 10 Strategies For Thriving Through The Recession“. Or a title like that. More details to come!

- Randy White

BONUS VIDEO:
Sam Drevo and the Down The River Cleanup Crew

On the Behavior of Staying and Keeping Warm

What is more evil:

A) Running your heating source (gas, electric, oil, etc.) at full blast at the future expense of other humans
B) Asking for assistance once you have exhausted all of your own resources?

Are either evil at all?

Are you here, do you really exist?
Why does blood flow from open flesh?
Will we actually be able to stop the planet from toasting us right off the surface?
Will we destroy ourselves with nuclear devastation and religious wars?
Is nuclear war carbon negative or carbon positive?
Will children starve to death because their parents are out of work?
Will hard working people lose their homes because of government and financial services greed?
Will people start to take part in the creation of food, not just the eating of it?
Will people voluntarily wear a warm bathrobe instead of turning on their heat?

These are some samples of the thoughts I have wondered about this morning. And these thoughts of course become explorations themselves, as we question our existence and how we will possibly feed so many people as the economies of the world collapse.

After all, people would rather play video games and sell “thin air” than get out and work the soil. But what choice do we have? The government can’t hand out welfare checks and food stamps forever, there are too many people taking and not enough people putting back in. That means there is an imbalance in the force, young Luke.

So how do we counter that imbalance?

It seems people are waking up to our desperate situation.This is when strong leaders are needed, and people need to support their leaders. George Washington would have lost the Revolutionary War against the British if France hadn’t come to his aid to help him pay his troops. Of course, he hung his troops for not showing up to work… at least these days you just get fired.

Yes, we have become a nation of pansies, crying like babies for handouts from Mom and Dad government and the generosity of people who love us. Or some kind, random stranger who helps you out because it is the right thing to do. However you survive, the question still remains:

Do you wear a bathrobe, or blast the heat?

I am in a bathrobe in my freezing ass house, and I wish I could blast the heat. But it’s not the right thing to do. Brrrrrrr.

World Leaders Admit The Planet Is Screwed

Well, world leaders are finally fessing up to Einstein’s folly – that the spread of nuclear weapons and technology of mass destruction cannot be controlled.

Eventually, there are going to be very big explosions in a city near you.

So party while you can, and be a good human. That means trying to help other communities so they don’t blow you up, and vice-versa.

This means all kids on earth need to get along or we will certainly witness one of mother nature’s big bangs.

Merry Christmas!

The Recession and Depression of Plenty

Have you noticed how even homeless people have cell phones?

The peak oil community, for the longest time, has been freaked out about running out of resources. There have been all sorts of efforts to help people prepare for a society fighting over the remaining resources. The problem with our society and economic system, however, is the opposite of the normal peak oil argument – we actually have too much stuff, not the other way around. Granted – there are people that go without things like ipods – but they make due.

In general, we have created an over abundance of cars, toasters, programmers, and advertising sales people. The problem isn’t ’stuff’ depletion as much as money depletion. We have plenty of stuff. Which is why with food available, people aren’t trying to learn how to garden – they are just trying to land another job to pay their bills.

The fight is really between human laws and mother nature’s laws. We are at the peak of everything, but the cash is scarce – having been sucked into corporate officers’ pockets. Right now, CEOs and lawyers are still fat and happy, while your average worker is getting laid off due to their redundancy. The system hasn’t collapsed – it has retracted. Without any money in savings, the ability for people to live at the same level of comfort is what is threatened, not the monetary construct. We haven’t created a new economic system to replace the old one, so suffering is occurring as the old system ceases like an engine without oil.

If we all defaulted on our debts to banks – could the banks kick everyone out of their homes at once? We aren’t there yet, we are still in the peak oil ‘collections period’.

This means while jobs and money become more scarce, we are back to people trying to sell off their goods and services to make ends meet – creating a surplus of Nintendo Wii consoles on Craigslist. All the people with money have to do is wait longer, and the prices will come down even further. Yes, the general population has been fattened for the slaughter, and the feasting has begun.

So, what to do?

Well, I created a sharing system for friends and neighbors (or anyone in a geographic region or community for that matter) to share resources. If groups of people would inventory their stuff, they could share things. But sharing stuff only helps save money – it doesn’t generate it, unless you rent out your stuff when you let someone borrow it.

For instance – many people have tools. The stores have plenty of tools, too. So when someone needs a drill, they can either borrow one or they can buy one. But lots of people already have drills – and the folks at the drill factory are being laid off as the realization that we have materialized enough stuff for everyone kicks into our consciousness.

And when there is no more market demand for cars, toasters, or whatever has been produced enough – people get laid off. Those workers still need to make payments for bills and debts, however. So they ask for assistance from the government – racking up more claims and causing a drain on government resources.

How long can the government hand out food stamps and heating assistance before it is overwhelmed and more people are taking than adding to it? We are seeing it happen in front of our eyes.

So as this recession continues, it is the quest for continued sources of money – not the quest for ’stuff’ that is the way the average person is experiencing peak oil. I think we will continue to see more people living together rather than having their own private nests.

At least we have lots of Nintendos to play.