Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; William Powers: Twelve by Twelve

Tonight I'm pleased to welcome William Powers. He joins us to speak on his book 12 by 12 a well a one room cabin off the grid and beyond the American dream. In a society where many of us are simultaneously listening to an iPod talking on a cell phone during a latte and driving it can be difficult to find a moment to breathe let alone try to find deeper meaning in our everyday lives. In his new memoir 12 by 12 William Powers thrust himself into a new way of living and in turn a new way of thinking. Publisher's Weekly asserts that power is sobering and often hilarious taking showers and rain water warmed by the sun learning that in order to eat chicken for dinner he himself would have to kill a chicken given to him by his neighbors narrative of his life in the 12 by 12 offers precious insights into the way the ways that all individuals living in a fast paced consumer culture my incorporate different ways of thinking about the natural world into their lives. And we're now an environmental activist and author Bill McKibben says the 12 by 12 is a penetrating account of what it's like to move to the margins in our particular time and place. It will make you think hard. William Powers is the author of blue cup blue clay people seasons on Africa's fragile edge and whispering in the Giants era

frontline Chronicle from Bolivia's war on globalization. For over a decade power has led development aid and conservation issue to WPS in Latin America Africa and Washington D.C.. His essays on global issues have appeared in The New York Times Washington Post Slate The Sun and The International Herald Tribune. He's appeared on various media outlets including NPR's living on Earth and fresh air. We are thrilled to have him with us is this evening's we please join me in welcoming William Powers. So I wanted to tell you a little about the book and read from it and have some chance for discussion this evening. I hope you have a wonderful hour together. There's a lot to talk about this is the release of this new book that just came out. I've been touring around the country I'm just going getting back from Santa Fe New Mexico Phoenix and Tucson. DC and New York and I'm on my way up to Vermont and then North Carolina. So it's a whirlwind. Tour right now and the book itself you know actually has two two layers. On the one level it's a memoir of my experience living in this

12 foot by 12 foot house in North Carolina. And of the experience I had with other while the crafters living on the creative that edge off grid and living very sustainable lifestyles. But the other hand I think it was Kafka who said that a book should be an ax to a frozen soul. And really what the book is about is that upper level of trying to really just get into our consciousness as readers as literature tries to do and change things. So I introduce concepts like the creative edge wild crafters and the soft world with some reaction to Thomas Friedman's terrible metaphor excuse me of a flat world. So we're trying to change the world by changing the story in a sense. And so it's a bigger picture type of of a work. So with that said I would just like to just jump right in. I know a doctor who makes eleven thousand dollars a year. My mother said I looked up suddenly curious. She's an acquaintance of

mine. My mother continued passing me a basket of bread across the dinner table lives an hour from here in a 12 foot by 12 foot house with no electricity. I come down to visit my parents in North Carolina from New York City where I'd recently landed. After several years in Bolivia my mother went on as a senior physician she could make $300000 but she accepts only 11 and gives the rest back. So this doctor Jackie Benton she lives in a 12 by 12 house that's physically impossible. That bookcase is 12 by 12. She doesn't have running water either. She harvest the rainwater from a roof. I stopped eating and looked out the window. The rust colored sky above my parent's condo However exquisitely between orange and red. That distinctive sky momentarily brought me back to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. Beneath a similar red orange glow and the echo of a question a shaman had asked me what's

the shape of the Worlds. Something moved inside me. I looked over at my mom and asked Do you have any way of contacting Dr. Benson. I have her mobile number. My mom said says she keeps it off but does check messages every now and then. So that's how the adventure began. And believe it I actually got through to her it took a while. She's not easy to contact. And here's a little snippet from going out to her permaculture farm for the first time. Jackie squatted behind to heirloom tea bushes covered with golden honey bees. They explored her skin her hair the folds of her white cotton pants and blouse. I could see her stroking the wings of one of them. She was so absorbed in it that she didn't even hear me pull up. She led me through a permaculture farm. She pointedly described permaculture as the things your

grandparents knew and your parents forgot adding that the word is a conjunction of both permanent agriculture and permanent culture. But we made it to the core for farm zone 1 stepping inside a green plastic deer fence. It circled the half acre upper two acres and Harper dozens of gardens full of vegetables herbs and flowers. Then something stopped me. Was it a house. The edifice was so slight that viewed from a certain angle it seemed as if it might simply vanish like looking down the sharp edge of a razor blade. Wait a minute. Sure I'd seen the structure several times already during our tour. Hadn't I. But it hadn't really sunk in. It just seemed like a little shed or something in the background. She actually lives in there I thought. I was now looking at a different person whereas I've seen this remarkable position with the world's greenest thumb. I now saw a pop or something deeply ingrained in me reacted

violently to the situation. She has nowhere else to go she continued to talk about the joys of homesteading but all I could do was nod mutely and steal peeks at the harsh firing sights of a 12 by 12. Would you like to come in for tea. She asked. Part of me did not. But she led me toward that terrible tiny house to choose to live in anything so small was insane. As we approached the house it seemed to shrink and I imagine the awkward moments when we would both squeeze in and drink the tea standing up painfully forcing conversation. Four winters had weathered its brown walls. As we stepped into a minuscule porch she asked me if I'd mind taking off my shoes. Why does something paradoxical in me at that moment long for something grand for something that shouted the glory of human beings rather than being practically erased by the thick woods around it. Freud noted that people subconsciously struggle with two opposite but equal fears being expelled by nature cast out of

Eden and being absorbed by nature. This was the latter fear by scaling down to only this tiny speck of human space. Jackie had been envelops by nature no electrical wires no plumbing the bubbling creek now sounded almost ominous. I pulled off my shoes heard the door creak open. I couldn't see inside. Didn't want to. I wanted to be back in the plush interior of the car. Jazz on the stereo. Cruising on the highway back to Chapel Hill. But there was no turning back. I stooped down and entered the box. So that was the first moment that I saw the 12 by 12 of course. It was just a kind of an interviewer kind of moment of meeting her. But one thing led to the next and I received a letter from her a handwritten letter a week later when I was just about to head back to New York and she invited me to tiny house sit for her

to stay in the house for a season while she was out West. And then I took her up on it. I changed my flight and I went out to the banks of No-Name creek. And just a little taste of what it's like out there will brief taste of this kind of paradise in a way. Perhaps there's a cure in the practice of curiosity. With no electricity piped water or any of the conveniences we are so accustomed to. I was forced to see everything anew. The first puzzle how in the world was I to behave. Now Jackie didn't leave an instruction manual an idiot's guide to living 12 by 12. There was no shower of course and the creek was still too darn cold. But so was the rain water Jackie harvested from the two gutters running off the 12 by 12 roof. I took one bucket shower cursing as I kept freezing rain water over my head before I discovered a five gallon rubber diaphragm on her back porch labeled sun shower. The directions were on the side of it and I followed them filling up the rubber bag and letting the morning sun

heat its midday or evening. I strung it up in a tree beside the 12 by 12 and felt the positively hot water stream over my body which became a sensuous pleasure. Fire replaced electric lights sparks from outdoor fires would briefly escape gravity and reflect off the creek before disappearing into the massive dark sky and the flaming white points of the stars above most luxurious of all. Each night was a blast with the glow of candles on the 11th night. I lit the candles without even thinking about it. I simply came in after a hike struck a match lit them and began cooking candle lighting having become as automatic as switch flipping. The house glowed from the inside like a jackal lantern. Sometimes I'd step outside and look in through the windows a dozen or so or so candles inside the 12 by twelve point lits with primordial fire amid dark woods and I feel the smile spreading across not just my face but my

spirit as well lifting me with a feeling of emotional weightlessness. So it may seem a bit like paradise for a bit but there was a very dark side to the whole thing of being out there in the 12 by 12. This is not Walden in the 21st century you can't exactly retreat from globalization. So the sonic boom of military jets flying over 2012 because North Carolina is a big base area for Afghanistan and Iraq. You know the Virginia Tech massacre happened while I was out there just over the border. I was reflecting and dealing with that in this community and there was a cheese scare she says a mix of Tylenol PM and heroin that hit the high schools and was just really taking over. And then also there was the smell terrible odor that would waft over the 12 by 12 and over No-Name creek out there of the chicken factories. So here I am I'm just going on one of my walks during the day and suddenly I came upon this

walking from the 12 by 12. And then to my left I saw the source of the stench a monstrous chicken factory he pouts bio sealed to read one sign in flaming red another sign Gold Kist poultry center behind the signs was an absurdly manicured lawn like in a state photo from Town and Country and dozen or so more houses long rectangular warehouses for the poultry. By now the smell was almost unbearable. On the warehouses circular fans blew out feathers and the stench of chicken waste. These chicken houses were identical to the others I had seen on the drive out to Dr. Benton's. They each did tens of thousands of birds a day feeding the Gold Kist empire. Both This was the country's third largest chicken processor until it was purchased in 2007 by the even larger Pilgrim's Pride. In addition to mutilating their chickens through beak searing tail docking in your cutting goldfish was experimenting with featherless

chickens to eliminate inefficient plucking along with beak list chickens that couldn't peck each other something they tend to do as they go nuts over being confined to a dark space their whole lives. So. What this is it is not an isolated you know occurrence of one chicken factory it's part of a kind of a disease that I was seeing. You know it's a kind of a plague. You might say or a disease it's like almost as if the earth right now is a diseased organism. You know with climate change with massive deforestation all of this you know and the antibody luckily is the people you know as I saw in Copenhagen when I was there in December for the climate conference it's just the people it's us that's going to solve the climate crisis not the leaders you know so there's 2 million NGO as small women's group small farmers around the world as Paul Hawken reports that are all these antibodies that are working to to save the planet. And I also had just returned from this decade abroad where

although you know some projects in Bolivia in West Africa and around the world were successful locally. But the bigger picture was hammering away at it. And I realized that really what I have to do is look at my own society and think about how can we make a change here. You know the glaciers that are melting above my apartment in La Paz Bolivia was happening because of you know SUV is being used here. You know so there's this whole connection there. And the other thing is I met the world's last what a sou a woman in the Bolivian Amazon. It was in my project in my projects down there actually shook her hand it felt like my grandmother's hand with the veins. I could feel the veins. And I looked into her eyes and we we spoke. And she died after that and she was the last person who could speak what ASU way. Now there's nobody left. And you know it's something that we don't really want to hear about or see but it's real it's real we're losing the tongue every fortnight. You know one language every two weeks because of you know biofuel prep plantations and logging and grazing the type of things that I've seen working around the world

this economic model is causing not just its Asian species but also of people and really what it comes down to I think is the wrong metaphor. And that's why I tried this book to focus on the metaphor of the soft world a living textured world. We need to we need to see that. How many people have read or heard of Thomas Friedman's flat world the world is flat. Ok so like more than half. And if you go to Washington D.C. practically everyone has heard about it it's like it's one of these metaphors that's very deep in our consciousness. So Friedman's metaphor articulate a truth about the way we've come to imagine the 21st century. The metaphor carries a host of negative connotations. The world has hit a flat note industrial agriculture creates a flat taste and multinational corporations flatten our uniqueness into homework anomic us serving a one world unit planet a once natural atmosphere has been flattened by global warming. Every square foot of it now contains

390 parts per million of carbon dioxide instead of the 275 historically rain forests are flattened to make cattle pastures a living ocean is depleted and flattened by overfishing vibrant cultures like that of Sue are steamrollered to the edge of extinction. Have the well rounded objectives of our founding fathers life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Been flattened to a single organizing principle the unification of Greed's. Does the world have to be flats. Is it too late to imagine other shapes. So that's the kind of disturbing feelings of almost like depression I was having coming back to the states after all those years abroad and viewing my own society through this 11:48 lens and viewing these terrible metaphors and. But there was hope to be found. And I think there's a lot of hope and part

of that hope is in some of the wild crafters that I discovered out there. You know people like the Thompsons my neighbors the 12 by 12 it was a family out there and they were reinventing the Jeffersonian ideal of independent freehold. You know and getting your own plot of land and farming it his kids six of them had been living in. They were living in a trailer park in the Triangle area in Raleigh or Durham. And unfortunately they got involved with drugs and guns. And they said you know what we're going to back the lad we're going to come organic farmers which they did and they were just experimenting and they were still learning. But it was so empowering to see them and dozens of others doing this to me to share a little bit of their story with you just for very briefly. And this is kind of a funny moment interacting with his kids. Mike Thompson the 9 year old Kyle's dad walked toward me through the gentle hill from his house. A bucket of feed swinging in each hand. He was a portrait in Red's rosy cheeks a tomato red shirts in black

block letters support organic farmers and a pirate's red goatee hanging a full six inches off his chin hiding his Adam's apple. I could see in him the reflection of Kyle a tilt of the head a similarity in the ease of offering a smile. On other days I notice a blend of introspection and unease on Mike's face. He'd be putting up a hot pan or feeding the chickens and he'd have another look as if doubtful his organic dreams would actually flourish. But on this day he had a glow around him as if he found his place on the earth in a huge splash of dry Grahams. He dumped out both pails of feed a miming a little whoop as he did winged creatures rushed at Mike and me aiming for the seed piled at our feet. The farmer around us was a chaotic swarm of birds out of this chaos. I felt a tug on my sleeve and looked down to see Kyle. I found a chicken for you he said. I recalled a conversation we'd had while I bought

eggs from him the previous day about getting some poultry as well. Yes the chicken meat. Do you have some ready. No but I have a chicken he said pointing into the swirl of chickens and ducks around us. There it is that's yours the white broiler. I saw it but only for a second it's a nice five pound chicken strutting around in the free air not squeezed into a chicken factory pen. It soon vanished into a swarm of color as other birds swooped in. How much is it. I asked and immediately regretted the question. What did it matter. There was no doubt I would buy that chicken and many more chickens from this family even if it were twice the price of a factory farm chicken. I looked around at all this genetic diversity this happy dance of people and animals and suddenly wanted to buy all of their chickens. I wanted to support this. So a couple of days passed there. One day Kyle saw me from across the pond and ran over to remind me

about the dangling issue of the white broiler. He pointed it out again in the swarm of fowl and I told him I take that one plus another. OK Kyle said. Would you like to take them with you. Like this I said but they're alive. He looked up at me through blue eyes a little puzzled. I tried to clarify. They need to be slaughtered. Yes Kyle said innocently. Your going to slaughter them. A moving wall of chickens turkeys and ducks was all around us. Kyle was now joined by two of his brothers. The three blonde boys stared at me with an earnest expectant intensity. I was fully acquainted with the relevant theory. If you eat it you should be able to kill it. Someone else shouldn't do your dirty work. And if I couldn't kill a chicken perhaps the only honest response was to become a vegetarian. Kyle filled the silence. My dad can show you. It takes one hour. How about we talk about it later. So I'll leave it there.

So anyway this just a little slice of one of these families out there and you know you can picture the factory farm chicken the way that the smell versus this just incredible contrasts. I'm just going to close with one paragraph that I think takes us full circle from you know some of the mystery of who is this Doctor Benton in to some of the Harz of the flat worlds all around it into what each of us can kind of do in our own lives. There's so much we can do it's the great thing about the environmental issue is that any one of us can go home and make a change. When I was in Santa Fe last week everyone in the audience like 50 or 60 people each wrote down one thing that they would do you know when they left like some people were super hyper environmentalist living off grid. But even they can do one more thing. And other people were sort of urban middle class folks that could take one step and it's like amazing the amount of energy that came out of that so you know I'd encourage each person here today to take that one action

you know. Even in large cities it's possible to maintain warrior presence and scale back from over developments to enough by planting a windowsill or community garden doing yoga walking and biking and carrying out at least one positive action for others every day. Nor do we need to live 12 by 12 to experience the subtle joy of being whether in the city or the country. Leave your cell phone behind and sit or walk for 15 minutes very slowly. Pay attention to your senses. Feel the breeze. Notice the smells and sounds. We decide what's good. We decide what gets globalised consumption or compassion selfishness or solidarity by how we cultivate the most valuable place of all our inner a.. Thank you very

much. Thanks. Thank you. Well I mean it's I've been working as you know for 10 years abroad and subsistence cultures I spent plenty of time off the grid in Liberia Sierra Leone South America so it was entirely new to me. You know I'm drawing a lot of those experiences into the book as well. The amount of time there's actually out there was just one season it was the end of winter into spring. I lived out there and I've been back several times to talk with her and to interview her and so on. Yeah I was. Well I did have my laptop but the battery would die after like a few hours and then I would charge it at the local library sometimes driving my bike down there I had just a bike. No car so I was pretty much off grid for that time. Well Dr. Benton chose those dimensions for a quite a practical reason. Any structure 12 by 12 or below is considered to be a shed or a non house. So you don't have to pay property taxes. That's good. But also you're not required by the state to

put in plumbing electricity and so forth. You don't need permits in fact if it's 12 by 13 you have to put in plumbing and you have to put in electricity it's required by law. So it's a little bit radical the whole thing in fact they're not even supposed to live there year round and there are others who are 12 by 12 in around her now of imitative. So that's why I changed her name is kind of anonymous. I mean it's not anonymous but it's also the idea of you know she was a physician she had lots of money and she just decided to downsize she realized that in her she's over 60 60 years old 61 years old she figured you know now is the time to scale back to what I really need. My kids are grown up. This is the right size for me. So she's not encouraging you to go live in a cave and eat fruits and berries or build yourself a 12 by 12. You know although some people are. You know the idea is to ask her what's my 12 by 12. What are the dimensions of enough in my life. It's kind of what she's getting at. You know there are certain some days where I had almost none. I would say were I just spent and I talk a lot about solitude in the book and the value of solitude and retreats you know to get in touch with the

inner emotions that are BlackBerrys are all of our gadgets everything distract us from you know so there's plenty of that. But there is plenty of community too. And I think people have a misconception of off the grid as being hermits not of all in fact off the grid doesn't just mean off the electrical grid it means off the sort of mainstream cultural Gred and creating subcultures. So the whole area is rich with other wild crafters and permaculture s and bio fuel you know bio diesel to rip brewers and everything else that form communities which are those weddings traded goat for lettuce and vegetables like there's this constant exchange and barter and kids playing with each other and so on so I was involved with all of those different you know people all the time you know whether the kids next door would come over and work with me on her plot of land or I'd go over there and you know just this kind of exchange. You know I want to say that she had a solar powered shortwave radio that picks up BBC and stuff like that.

I think so I'm not hundred percent sure on that. You know she's got her daughters live in Chapel Hill So she goes and it's got a grandchild now social listen to probably some news there. But I think the idea is to be pretty much outside of that. That whole thing in music you'd be amazed at how little you need music even if you love it when you have the sound of the creek flowing by and the different birds in the trees blowing overhead and everything it's just like this whole other soundscape that human beings existed in you know for 99 percent of our evolution a species we were in that soundscape not like that. Headphones. She did she had a car that runs on bio diesel and it was locally proved out bio diesel like in that area. So yeah. But whenever she travels she had she great dogs it she said you know she great dogs it which is takes buses even across the country you know. So that inspired me to take a bus up here today. Actually no I didn't find them to be at I mean there was definitely the libertarians on the right libertarian left there's all kinds of political points of view and like home schoolers and everything. But no I didn't find there to be that that was a big part of it. It was more like the sustainability

agenda you know cultivating more joy in one's life growing one's own food the healthiness of it sharing with neighbors. You know the types of. I think that was what was driving it much more than any kind of anti-government and I didn't sense much of that at all you know. Yeah I mean I honestly believe just from my firsthand experience 10 years in different countries around the world are 15 years like that corporate globalization is committing eco side against the planet. I don't think we can state that more strongly especially today I mean the oil spill you know it's just it's terrible but to me it's not terribly surprising it's just like almost like a metaphor for everything else that's happening around the world I mean do you that we're losing an acre we're still isn't her very first every two minutes you know so thousands today were lost. So the climate is heating up fractionally today and everything else the environmental era in a sense. So yeah you know it will be 12 by 12 you saw even that much more

clearly. Yeah I mean I did feel like the neighbors in that area did have those community ties that gave them a sense of identity outside of the mainstream culture. The subcultures are growing stronger in this country those pockets are all over the place you know it's in the hundreds of thousands now of people who are living in those types of lifestyles all around the country. So there's lots of ways one thing on my website William Powers books Dot com. I've got a resource a section that lists other wild crafters permaculture wrists all these different links to how to connects. There's also a network of Sustainable Communities intentional communities. I forget the exact address. I mean the website but you can link into that includes a lot of permaculture us. But the great thing is if you're traveling to there's the world or Gannett farms network the wolf network so you can work on with farms you know and all around the world traveling and like it's free. You stay with them you work four hours a day. It's a great experience and encourage

young people like yourself and you want to travel get outside of our culture for a while you know experience it as at the pot at the pub just wood from outside you know. Just how I dealt with killing the chickens. We have to read the book to find out. I mean I want to give everything away right here. But actually well I'd actually have to say I did not kill the chickens. I couldn't go through with it. My own personal whatever. Yes in fact I did eat chicken from just from them while I was out there and just eggs from them and lamb for another neighbor and you know a lot of what I ate was out of her garden. Dr. Benton's gardens you know the Greens she talkee mushrooms growing on logs and she made like all our own sort of wines and jams and all that kind of stuff. But one thing I should just stress though is that it wasn't all about work. What I've noticed living abroad for 10 or 15 years is that there's a leisure ethic around the world which is in opposition to the work ethic. And there's a lot of joy to be had in these other ideas and I think that like the revolution must be irresistible in a way. And anthropologist You know I think I'll just say that like the average subsistence

farmer works 21 to 22 hours a week. You know and I just found that fascinating how like in Africa all over the place people who are living so simply seem so happy. Need to become relate to that and I think it's because people are people through other people in these countries. It's about being more not having more. And there's a whole sort of idle majority out there of people who are outside of the kind of like industrial revolution driven sort of factory worker thing you know and I discovered that also in these wild crafter communities North Carolina was a lot of time sitting on the porch talking with neighbors chatting you know it wasn't like it was this driven culture. Because in some ways like the most ecological thing you can do is to do less you know. So so getting online all of that stuff I mean. So you're asking me how people would be able to do that or people were connected. I don't think this is like a sort of neo latte movement like rejecting all technology. So some people

like other panels on the roof and they could be connected to computers. Others were using the library the library was very well used. You know it would buy or take their Bio-Diesel down to the library and use the Internet there. You know but for like an hour a day or an hour or a week or whatever it was that's what Dr. Benton does so. Among like yeah definitely. It seems that way but it really isn't because it's simple it's simplicity like and this may sound terrible I hate to talk about it at such a renowned institution like the Harvard bookstore. But there was this composting toilet that she has that's a five gallon bucket that's it. It's the simplest. There's the human or handbook it's like the bible of composting toilets that you have your shelf and you just put this bucket under a toilet seat hidden in it looks like a regular toilet and then it just fills up and it gets composted. And in 13 weeks it's regular soil like anything else. I couldn't personally compost it with my tomatoes and potato peels. Just the aesthetics of it bothers me despite the science being that it's just soil in terms of water. You wouldn't believe the amount of water you can harvest of a 12 by 12 roof in North

Carolina. When I arrived these 250 gallon tanks on either side of her house were full when I left they were full. So all of my cooking washing cleaning everything came out of those Buc out of those tanks you know the sun showers. There's also a spring hidden spring nearby that you can go to get very fresh water just fill your bottles and bring it back. So I found that water electricity none of those things even bothered me at all. It's you know it's really possible to do it. So it's very tempting very tempting. I mean it's very like I said just closer to nature. I think a lot of the sort of mental illness and sort of emotional problems in our society are connected to that divorce between nature and ourselves. You know so when you can bridge that gap even to a small amount. It just works miracles on your psyche and your well-being. However you know each of us has to look at our own lives and figure out what's our own 12 by 12 at this stage in my life. I feel like I have a lot to give

in other ways. And by just going off grid. Completely right now. You might not be the moment for it. You know so I use this kind of a retreat space more than the local community college in Chatham County there has permaculture classes. Also how did you like wild tinctures and how to like Harvest herbs out of the forest and all that. The whole curriculum headed up by this guy Harvey Harmon who's a professor there and he took the initiative and so he's teaching permaculture sustainable are all these things. So she's been taking those classes with him and gaining those skills. You know also made reading the Foxfire manuals about how to like remember those skills and bring them back and you know inspiring yourself that took several years before she actually built this house. And by the way it only cost seventeen thousand dollars for the cab and two acres of land on a creek. Not a bad deal you can pay that off right away and you know what yeah it's North Carolina. So there are lots of vegetables already out like strawberries and greens and you know all kinds of things that are starting to come out. Different herbs. But you know it's not

until like sort of June July that you get the full blast of food. You know some people are doing that they're eating within 100 miles of their house. And locavores you could but it takes a lot of a lot of planning a lot of you know eating just roots and tubers most of the winter and you know. But and you know like a lot of the folks out there they they can enjoy are things they're very into that whole culture preserving. Is anybody here six foot tall and is anyone about six with the OK can you stand up for a second. OK so it's two of him by two of him. That's 12 on 12 so it's like up to that roof they're up to the end of the red and then over the same amount and back. It's a pretty small area isn't it. Thanks a lot appreciate it. You know that that's a small space. But on my website we've got schematics that an artist friend of mine drew up so you can see exactly what it looks like inside and outside of the zones permaculture But you know basically there's a lot above with

the bed. So that's where I slept in a little window up there and then down below is the stove and that her great grandmother's rocking chair and some bookshelves and all that. And then two porches the porches don't count against the 12 by 12 size. So those are also outdoor spaces like one of the couples until it was out back. That's where you wash dishes in the front was like a little swimming you know. And then there's the zone principle permaculture where you put the kitchen garden right near your kitchen. You have that deer fenced in. Beyond that is the stuff that's like berries and fruit trees that can survive contact with deer. There is like wood and other non timber forest products. And then just pure static pleasure of nature beyond that. And this was to resist sprawl. This was part of a 30 acre plot with five families on it each that had two acres and 20 acres which is set aside for conservation. And that was this very innovative. Eco Designer I talk about in the book who is teaching these courses and who's setting up these committees he thought that was the only

way to stop sprawls by buying up the land and creating history as he's done lots of them. So they were and you know their Social Security and there's like you don't need much money if you're living a 12 by 12 or living very simply. And Medicare and you know but you know there's a lot of like sort of natural you know plans of what they would say that's kind of controversial I don't mean to offend anyone. But one thing that I've noticed in living abroad for all these years is that people have a different ship with death in other countries especially in software societies indigenous cultures where they're not as afraid of it. And it's kind of like more of an episode like extended families and communities and less fear of death so a certain point you pass away but you have all these offspring everyone else is replacing you so you know I think that our culture's got a little bit too far in that direction perhaps in that it's OK to have a certain level of healthcare that's not necessarily the absolute you know best. Well some of the other 12 by 12 years they have it laid out differently where they don't have to bet on a topic like these the other family I talk about there. They're the Paul

and Paul it's a father son combo It's like Paul's wife now they're having a baby in the 12 by 12 in July. So I'm going out there with Carolina next week and seeing that. But they've built for 12 bottles. So they can live in different ones. It's in Chatham County and it's just sort of west of Chapel Hill so it's about an hour from that urban area of 1 million people. So a lot of these folks can actually survive as organic farmers. They have this big market there's tons of farmers markets in those cities that they can sell their stuff and definitely farmers markets are awesome. As everyone knows by supporting that you're supporting these types of people. And that more Jeffersonian ideal of being able to be a land holder in this country. And I think that's really the bedrock of democracy in some ways is having that independence you know and freedom. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.