Table Mountain Ranch Association
Annual Circle: August 2006

Observations and Questions

Here are some of my photos from the 2006 Reunion and Annual Circle at Table
Mountain: Table Mountain Ranch 2006
(It’s a flash file; broadband suggested) It was really wonderful to be camping with this amazing community on the Mendocino coast this summer. Wonderful to see the faces of our friends, new faces, old faces, and missing some dear faces. The reunion also brought up some serious reflections, some thoughts that I want to share with you.

Observing how a group manages its commons, and the health of that commons,
is a window into the health of the group. A group with a commons that thrives
benefits all members, while a commons exploited by a few will wither and die.
We see this on many scales, from the whole Earth (greenhouse warming) to the
micro family level.

It's especially important at Table Mountain Ranch, as we consciously created a commons both on the land and in our hearts, even in the midst of a society where every pressure is counter to cooperation and counter to tribal affinity, encouraging purely selfish behavior.

A healthy group will treat its commons as a resource that is respected and
replenished by the members, one that members draw upon in a sustainable way. The commons may be physical, as in some land; it may be emotional, as in a safe space; perhaps it's a web space; maybe it's a coalition of allies but in any case we look to the health of the commons and the dynamics of the interaction to gage the health of the group overall.

Applying this framework to Table Mountain Ranch Association, we have a commons in the land, a commons in the circle where we gather each year to share fellowship and make decisions about the association, and on our board.

The land seems healthy and vibrant, so on that level we get a "B", but the circle was not well and shows signs of malaise.

The disrespect that Doug and Willow showed to the other members of the circle as they made disparaging remarks and sulked sullenly away was painful to see.

The withholding of support by senior members is a vote of no-confidence in the residents’ group and the board. There were several founding members who voiced this position, including Zoe.

The board had some meetings where respect and decency were discarded and distracting theatrics used to avoid talking about the serious violations of the agreements that took place on the land last year. Board meetings need to be a space where respect for each other is a reliable assumption, and where board business is discussed in a collaborative setting.

Uproar is a tactic that doesn’t belong in the circle or at the board meetings.
Doug seemed to feel that it’s OK for him to storm out instead of talking with us about what’s going on. His show of sullen disrespect seems to confuse resident status with ownership. If he’s going to live on the land and benefit, then he belongs at the one most important meeting, treating us with respect, and we must respect the residents’ need to make good operating decisions.

Residents must build a viable farm economy in order to create a sustainable
ranch, so some autonomy is essential.

With Google Earth and similar neutral observing platforms in operation, we must understand that any structure won’t be hidden for long, and, once discovered, will make the land vulnerable to government interference unless it complies with county requirements, etc.

The bylaws define an important commons, the way that the land will be managed, and the process that we members agree to use to govern this commons. It’s a powerful tool and shouldn’t be discarded in the rush to exploit the commons that we see underway today.

The board has a duty to carry out duties as specified in the document, and to do less is to expose the land and the assets of TMR to decay or worse. The board cannot permit a cabin to be built without knowing about the proposed structure, evaluating how it would fit in, and who owns the resulting structure/improvements!

Where is such a contract? Vennie's draft of a residents’ contract is a good start. I think that it should add the elements of a lease, since the residents don’t have ownership rights and we can write it to take into account our unique relationships. Not a burden, a tool.

We’ve seen that when the board tells, and verbally agrees with, a resident to
limit some behavior that may affect us all, sometimes it’s not honored. In these situations it's often best to have an contract as a basis for resolution. Clearly contracts could protect the land by giving us leverage when folks use strong-arm tactics to take what they want.

I’d suggest that the Board immediately obtain a signed “hold harmless” document from everyone staying on the land. The board did a good thing in developing the "hold harmless" and I’d say that without the “hold harmless,” it's goodbye to the non-signing residents.

We should have a written contract from everyone who is a resident at TMR: A simple way to clarify what isn’t clear now. The land is owned by the Table Mountain Co-Op with a board that has oversight responsibility. We either have squatting, or we have residents as defined in the bylaws of TMR, and it’s clear from this year’s circle that it’s time to write it down, or we may well see more and more bullying tactics.

When Ishvi spoke about one side of the commons (how residents should benefit from living on the land), he was right, but not complete. I believe that each resident should do well, and as he or she does well, so should Table Mountain as those residents,visitors, and general members put back in a fair share to the common good.

In an era when the political elite has declared war on the "safety net", war on the underclass, in an era when our rights are eroding, where the very web of life is under attack, we need to nurture our precious centers of cooperation and sanctuary. We must understand and appreciate the precious gem that is the Table Mountain Ranch Association.

Bruce Bagnoli

Flow

Sometimes "things just get better" as Flora Purim sings on her wonderful album recorded with her husband Airto, and this weekend was one of those. When you're in the flow, connected, things string together in ways unpredictable yet coherent when viewed from the history perspective.

Sharon browsed her email, found an email about a Jewish event in Berkeley where a woman who lives in Jerusalem was to sing. Turns out Sharon stayed with her on a visit to Isreal back in the 90's so she called to say hello. Miriam needed a ride to an event that was a mile from our home, Sharon went to fetch her.

Once here, it was a joyful reunion. Miriam is a singer and we invited her to stay with us on the weekend. Her event was at a Catholic University, and went well. In the moring we taped an impromptu segment of Sharon's show featuring Miriam's work for peace in the middle east, and her songs of peace.

Miriam went for a hike with us in the afternoon in nature at a nearby State Park. We hiked past marshland with wonderful birds, up the hills covered with golden grasses that reminded her of Isreal. Indeed the plants are similar here in California to the plants she sees walking in her homeland. Miriam wanted a challenge so I led the group on a small trail that asended into the forest that covers the hills overlooking San Pablo Bay.

Quite challenging, our climbing trail lead us to a saddle with a view that stretched from Vallejo to San Francisco. Took us a lot longer than we thought, and once we made the top we stopped for a bite of our food, drank our water, rested. Realizing we were late for a visit with her teacher, Anna Halperin, we hurried down to the car.

We called Anna as we were late, she agonized over our visit as her children and grandchildren were due for dinner. Anyway, we hustled and made it a few minutes before 6 as Miriam wouldn't be able to come halfway around the world for a long time, and Anna is in her high 80's.

Well after rushing there, her children called to say that they took a senic ride and would be late to dinner! So our visit with the Halprins could happen anyway.

Many years ago Miriam studied dance with Anna Halperin at her studio in Marin County, and it changed her life. Both are working for peace in Isreal, both share a vision of how Art is connected with our society and influences consciousness.

Sharon gave Anna a copy of her book, and learned that Anna's dances helped to solve a crime 30 years ago that Sharon wrote about in her book. WOnderful how closed time-like loops form when given that magical chance. Lawrence ( Anna's wonderful architect husband) shared his latest work with us (he's almost 90). It was such a gift to see this couple still together after all these years ( is it 60 years?) and vibrant, intellegent, giving and so conscious, so connected with nature.

After a short visit, her children and grandchildren arrived and we respectfully went on our way. The take away lesson is that despite the disruptions to our routine, despite the apparent lateness and displacements, Miriam was in the flow and we swam with her. The rich love that she sings about floated us to a series of magical encounters.

A remarkable part of the weekend is that I was to prepare for our upcomming trip, and was having difficulty finding someone to care for the garden. While we were late, a woman came by the house for another task and agreed to do the garden! So the time I "lost" with the unexpected house guest wasn't lost at all! Indeed the solution was perfect and with the efficeincy that only the flow can deliver.

Musicians know what I'm talking about, sports players know what I'm talking about, and you know what I'm talking about. I heard a musician who played with Miles Davis say that Miles was so much in the flow that when this fellow missed a note on the Sax, Miles filled in before the Sax player even knew that he missed the note! Thats being in the flow.

I give thanks for the love and flow this weekend.

Nameste.

Interesting column in the Wall Street Journal asserting that string theory is just an intellectual entropy increasing exercise, perhaps a dead end. Time for some thinker to connect with the truth. Surely somewhere on earth, amongst the billions of us here today, there is a glimmer of the new science?

When I think about the miricle of life, of being here with so many other beings "other than human", it's almost unbearable to contemplate the great dying that is comming if the predictions of global warming are conservative. While life itself will no doubt go on, the loss of so many species is a sin ( where a sin is something that comes between a person and god )of the most tragic sort.

The recent publications in the journals Science and Nature discussing the huge amounts of CO2 that will be released when the tundra warms a few degrees more makes the release of the methane clathrates ( methane in ice) from the huge deposites in artic also more likely.

We are learning that there may be thermal runaway thresholds that trigger unstoppable pertabations in earth's climate that may change our planet for thousands or tens of thousands of years underway now. These changes may become extreme in decades, and we may be able to know within a few years that it's going to be a very rough ride.

Looking at the BBC population map showing the growth of urban population since 1955, it's shocking to see Asia exploding, and bodes ill for global warming. How can we feed 6 or 8 billion folks if we deplete the oceans, convert our breadbaskets to deserts?

We need to get started learning how to reclaim deserts for good, how to conserve our fresh water, how to live without producing so much greenhouse gases and how to help species, ecosystems and environmental niches to transplant themselves to the new places where they can live out the change. Resistence to political change will delay effective response, indeed those forces have effectively confused and delayed any concerted attempts to create the new world and it's new technologies.

We need to work on the engineering of flywheel energy storage, energy conversion, sound refrigeration, tissue culture, ecosystem restoration, genetics and molecular biology and agraculture, we need to work on our social values so that we teach our children how to live with the earth. Indeed the time has come to reconnect with the american native peoples relationship with the spiritual, with the rest of life on the planet.

Time to go water the bamboo then bike to work (I wish).

As California heads toward spending another 3.5 billion on new prisons, with hundreds of new positions for members of the guards union, the social costs of this authoritarian approach mount, and the fiscal burden staggers the folks who have to earn their living, there isn't much public conversation about how to improve our system.

Sanity in sentencing would have a huge effect on the California economy, and would even increase our security. California should adopt the measures tried and proven in other states to ensure that prison capacity is used to house violent and preditory criminals, while others are sent to less expensive alternative programs such as community service, home detention, "the farm", and so on.

When our California prison conditions become so over crowded that all immates are deprived of basic rights, all are brutalized and the self-fulfilling cycle is perpetuated as these people recycle into our society. If we reduce our prison population through the development of alternative programs including diversion and treatment, provide more flexibility in sentencing for some crimes, then our society will free up resources for economic development that are way more productive than the few prison jobs that won't be added.

It will take some time for changes in parole, changes in sentencing, changes in family support to produce the beneficial effects on society that will be recognized widely. Shifting the use of capital from prisons to education, medical care for the uninsured, etc. and a lower tax burden will produce jobs in our communities and address some of the misery that breeds crime.

I don't advocate eliminating prisons, just bringing the benefits and costs into line, understanding that many of the people in California prisons wouldn't be there for that crime if they were in Ohio, Colorado, or even New Hampshire. Clearly immigration issues are involved, so it's not only a California, not only a Federal issue, it involves our neighboors to the south, the influx of illegal aliens from Asia, and won't be solved by building a few more prisons. The three billion program wouldn't be the end of it unless our population shrinks or the policy changes.

Measures could include changes to the three strikes law to focus it on the violent preditors, changes in our support for community programs for parolees, more rational sentencing, wider use of home detention, work-release programs, support for the families of incarcerated people to reduce the collateral damage caused by the criminal, improved medical care for prisoners, even reform in classifying prisoners to reduce the brutalization of otherwise normal people caught in the system. There are hundreds of alternatives that deserve implementation, hundreds more that we must evaluate in order to shift our resources to a more effective policy.

Key to this shift is the prison guards union. Unless this union supports a more rational approach, there is little hope for change. Neither the legislators nor the Govenor will change policy unless the prison guards union supports the change.

I believe that the prison guards union members know better than the rest of us how much the system needs change, but it's not clear that the present union leadership sees a reduction in prison jobs ( resulting from a shift in policy) as part of the solution. I think that guard members have an interest in working in less crowded conditions, an interest in better medical care in prisons, and in living in a society that isn't so burdened by the huge cost of supporting such a large incarcerated population. Union membership voices haven't been leading the discussion on change, and I'd like to hear more from them. I'd like to see more reporting on what goes on in our system. We need to ensure that these changes don't compromise our security of course, but there is plenty that needs to change that would only increase our security.

My hope is that guards union members will use their considerable political capital to push for reform, for the sort of system that will reenforce respect for our system of laws, that will allow our society to be knowingly responsible for what goes on in our name behind bars. Unions pushing for more jobs is understandable, but as responsible members of society, these Unions could do more with their knowledge and influence to help Californians make smart choices.

The economy of California could easily benefit more from the effect of shifting the jobs created by public employment from new guards to new nurses, new educators, new foster care and disabled care workers. These jobs are not quite so concentrated in one politicians district, and the benefit isn't easy to fit into the ledger.

Our society more easily measures the growth of prisons than the growth of wellness,but the productivity growth from a healthier population will show in GDP. We also don't easily measure environmental quality as a social benefit, but the improvements in public health and the declining cost of care from pollution related health problems is well understood. Environmental laws have improved our country overall, and a similar shift in our social climate would follow if we implement the reforms I discuss here.

the best space ship is the earth, doesn't get much better than what we had. now the question is are we condeming our decendents to a hell created out of greed? what will we do when the polar caps are gone? (move to higher ground if we can). Sounds as if we as a species aren't quite as smart as we tell each other. I'd like to know if the global climate modelers can give us a hint about what we must do if we are to mitigate the comming warming, if we are to avoid some chaotic transition to a climate mode more like venus than our present earth. More likely is a long term reduction in diversity, the loss of entire eco systems, and the eventual reduction in human population to a level less injurious to the rest of the life forms on earth. Maybe we could learn to do the Moses thing, to help species survive the blast of heat that is the delayed response to digging up the dynasaures and their forests and burning them......maybe we better help the forests move north and south, pay more attention to basic watershed management, start moving away from the coasts. What about Bangladesh? What about much of the tropical coral reefs? It's one thing to think about a rise of a foot or two, but 20' would change the california coastline by miles in some places. China is about to release a blast of coal and oil derived co2 that will dwarf the entire world output to date, sealing the wave of heating that's breaking our climate cycle and pushing us into a world that humans haven't experienced since we learned to talk.

We humans should be using the climate modeling to do further studies of how Austrailia could modify the climate, following up on the discovery that a few hundred square miles of forest in the center of the contenient could double the rainflall across the entire land mass..... modeling how we could get there perhaps.

In a similar way folks better begin to cope with what we must do to care for the Pacific forests, the sierra's, the coastal area. I'd plant redwoods as a base activity, millions of acres of new redwood forest, millions of acres of pine and fir, moving species north to adapt to the comming change. Time to get to work to learn how to generate power without co2, how to live in a more sustainable way.

December 2005

A scientist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory working on greenhouse warming recently pointed out that if the only thing you want to do is sequester c02, then forest is not the long term answer. He is right in the narrow sense, but very wrong in the most important sense.

Our response to Global Warming must include vigorous efforts to plant more forests in critical locations. Climate modelers have determined that a fairly small forest in the center of the Austrailian outback could double the rainfall over the whole contenant. So a new forest as small as 100 square miles could make a huge difference, yet it would be a project larger than we've done as a civilization, and it's just the sort of thing that could make a long term difference.

In a similar way, forest ecosystems must move toward the poles faster than ever before except in astrophysical events, and if we want to have a recovery time on the order of hundreds of years instead of hundreds of thousands of years. then we need to help forests grow in new zones, we need the trees to modify the hydrology, the weather changes, to form the basis of a more sustainable economy.

In the short term, planting forests would counter the spread of deserts, especially when done in conjunction with climate modeling to guide the efforts for best ecosystem effect.

The changes in glaciers will change rivers, and expose new land for tree growth. There is only a short time during which the trees must become established if the soil newly exposed is to be nurtured, or it may be eroded and deposited under the oceans. So Humans must shift what we spend our time doing.

We will also have to move out of low lying area's as the sea rises, and rather than push against the sea, we better become adept at moving, at conserving our marine resources like fish....

Bruce Bagnoli


We need to develop flywheels, fusion, tidal power, hydropower, safe nuclear power, wind power, and learn how to save enough genetic material, genomic information, from species that may be going extinct.

We need to develop alternatives to coal burning , and find ways to make our microprocessor and RAM industries sustainable.

A stable population on the earth at levels of 1-2billion would seem to be one factor that would help if we didn't have to do it suddenly. If through changes in living conditions and standards we could flatten the growth curve, it would undoubtably restrain the rate of growth from this point on.

What I fear is that the