Elmine Wijnia: The Big Life Changes Conversation

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Mark Fonseca Rendeiro
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Elmine Wijnia

Legendary blogger, writer, crtical thinker and my friend of many years — Elmine Wijnia joins me to talk about the big life changes, be in location, the insane buying of a new home, the having of a kid, and all that stuff that sometimes happens in this life. Listen in and join us as we reflect on the how and why of choices made and journeys taken.

Re-inventing Ourselves and Our Homes

VTHouse
The Vermont Home / photo by Erik

Erik Nelson moved from house to house as an urban dweller, never living in a space that he felt connected to. Until he found forest land that appealed to him and built his own home there.  Or as he explains it:  “While most people find a job and then live near that job, we picked the place where we really want to live and then made it work with jobs we could get.”

But approach to work isn’t the only thing interesting about how Erik and his family live. In this podcast we talk about the reasons for making your own home on the side of a hill in Vermont, how the experience was building it and how it is now living there. In his experience we find yet another example of those who have left the conventional path and made their own home in a unique place/way.

Recommended: Erik’s Vlog, Wreck & Salvage and the entire collection of house photos on flickr.

Post Consumer Life and Homesteading

Holy Scrap Hot Springs – Summer 2011

What happens when two New Yorkers leave their successful careers and fabulous apartments in favor of building their own house and a new kind of life on a former trailer park in New Mexico? 5 years ago Wendy Tremayn and Mikey Sklar set off to live life in a radically different way in Truth and Consequences, New Mexico. Building their own home-compound. Growing a lot of their own food. Using alternative energy and sources for basic needs. And working from home as independent professionals and entrepreneurs. Whats more, they’ve been blogging and vlogging the process the whole way.

How did they do it? What do they say about the experience 5 years in? Whats the biggest drawback or benefit? Listen to this inspiring couple as we cover all this and more.

Part 1 in a series that focuses on the topic of making your own home, work, and life in what these days might be considered a nonconventional way.

(note there was an extremely loud storm in Amsterdam as I recorded this interview, so be ready for the sounds of rain)

Lost Knowledge Needs Finding

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Holy Scrap Springs photo by Mikeysklar

This week Im working on a series of podcasts as well as an article for United Academics Magazine which focuses on people who have created their own home and work spaces. Those who left cities and suburbs, left houses and apartments, left conventional jobs, and moved to a rural or undeveloped place. In their new environments they have built or rebuilt their homes using a mix of traditional, proven techniques and new, innovative features.  They do things like grow/raise their own food, collect their own water, generate their own power, and create their own kinds of income-generating work.

This phenomenon, at first glance, is nothing new; people have been leaving cities for the country periodically for decades. (though statistically more people do the opposite) But this generation is the unique above all for the techniques and knowledge it brings to these remote locations. Knowledge that is not only their own, but the never-ending collective knowledge one can consult via the internet. Installing a solar power system? Never built a barn before? Canned your own preserves? Check youtube, the step-by-step instructions are there waiting for you.

Of course the internet is not the only source of knowledge, the offline community that one joins when moving to a rural area also has its own experience and skills which might be called upon. Between the depth of the internet and the generations of experience in your town, whatever it is you don’t yet know how to do on your own, you can learn. And this is exactly what is happening.

Back in the urban-suburban world that so many in the western hemisphere see as the only two choices, such life changes are probably still seen as odd or undesirable. They might lose sleep over barely tenable costs of living and work stress, but they’ve grown up with the idea that this is all normal and simply “life”. Need something for the kids or for the house? Go to Walmart. Need heat? Turn up the thermostat.  All needs are met by some external service or source, all of which come at a monetary cost.  Again, at some point this may seem like the only way life works. But this group of people has proven otherwise, and their will to take action in this manner has inspired more people to do the same.

In the coming series of podcasts you will hear from this special group of people. They’re explain how they used to live and what led them to make a radical change. They’ll also explain the details about why this way of life not only works better for them, but why they are better prepared for the foreseeable future where the value of money decays further and the ability to grow or make things becomes more rare and necessary.

 

ctrp346 Audio Notes from Portugal

Lisbon, August 2010

Podcast recorded on my last day in Lisbon, thinking out loud about the issues related to housing and squatting in Portugal as well as the Netherlands.  Also further laying out plans for what to look into and who or what to be consulted in the quest to find answers and plant the seeds for a solution. No interview in this edition, just thinking out loud and an update for you the audience.

Another Nail in the Dutch Coffin

There’s what people think the Netherlands is like and then there’s what the Netherlands is actually like. Reality does not always fit the internationally renowned fantasy. From drugs, to prostitution and now to squatting; much of what the world claims to know about the land of orange, stopped being true some time ago.

The latest victim on the list of celebrated traditions that exist in few other places the way they exist in Amsterdam is the tradition of squatting.  At the height of squatting in the 1980’s, in Amsterdam alone there were at least 20,000 residents living in occupied buildings. Long after the city and private owners had left buildings abandoned and in disrepair, this community of hands-on, do-it yourself individuals took the initiative to not only take over these buildings, but to repair them and create a new community around them.  An empty hospital, a forgotten warehouse, an obsolete police station, a crumbling school house, no matter where you look in the beautiful city of Amsterdam, there is surely a squat that has been repaired and re-purposed by groups of artists, activists, and other creative types. And they don’t stop at housing, in the city of Amsterdam alone squats are home to organic vegetarian restaurants, affordable atelier space for artists, live performance spaces, film houses, saunas and more.

Yet despite the unique and incalculable contribution squatting brings to a city such as Amsterdam, in the halls of city and national government there has apparently not been enough voice to defend that tradition.  As June 1st, 2010 came and went, Dutch parliament passed a law making squatting illegal, in effect turning hundreds if not thousands of citizens  into instant criminals. This comes only days before a parliamentary election where the ruling parties are expected to lose badly, the very political elites who have led the charge against squatting.

A bizarre juxtaposition, as governments throughout the world sit around having meetings about how to attract the “creative class” to their cities. They spend millions on urban planning consultants and sociologists who subscribe to the Richard Florida school of finding ways to bring smart people to your town, thus creating vibrant and interesting cities for work, life, and visiting.  These same decision makers who dedicate so many resources to trying to make a city special, now stand by idly- or worse, lead the charge, to turn one the most innovative urban movements on the planet, into a collection of criminals forced to leave the hubs of creative energy and homes that have been part of the urban social fabric for more than 50 years.