Kevin Warnock

Novella Carpenter and Joan Gussow, January 25, 2011 at The Commonwealth Club of California

As I promised last month I attended this evening the talk called ‘Growing Food and Wisdom’ given by Novella Carpenter and Joan Gussow. This fascinating talk was held at The Commonwealth Club of California at their San Francisco office on Market Street.

Cover of Farm City by Novella Carpenter

Using the audience microphone I got to ask Carpenter where to start on my urban homestead household I’m now forming. Both Carpenter and Gussow gave detailed answers. Carpenter said to lay down a thick bed of animal manure based compost… several inches thick, before I begin planting. Gussow recommended not digging up everything in the yard, but advised just cutting it back down to the ground. Then she advised mulching with cardboard or commercial mulch and then digging through the mulch to do plantings in the essentially unturned soil. She said it would not be good to turn over the entire garden, as she said that would encourage lots of weeds to grow and cause a lot of needless work.

I am going to ask an audience microphone question at each event I attend at the Commonwealth Club from now on, as an amazing thing happened after the presentation. A nice woman started asking me about my urban homestead plans, and we got to talking. It turns out she’s looking to move and said she’d like to see the place to possibly move in herself. She has raised chickens and studied permaculture, and by her presence at tonight’s talk, it’s clear she has her heart in the right place for the crazy experiment I’m about to embark on. I hope she contacts me, as it seemed like a good fit. I have 2 remaining rooms, so there’s still hope if you’re interested in trying the urban farming life in the middle of a big, cosmopolitan city.

After the talk I introduced myself to Carpenter and told her of my desire to raise miniature dairy goats for milk. She said to start with chickens, as she said goats take more work. She pitched the goat raising class she teaches, which she said is full for now but will have slots next year, which is about when I predict I’ll be ready for goats. I am going to really try to get the aquaponics system and the chickens going this year, and that’s probably enough to get us started on the road to food self-sufficiency. I’m thrilled I will be able to take a class in goat raising from Carpenter herself for just $30. Sounds like the deal of next year.

I met some of Carpenter’s friends as well, including a nice woman who attends a writers workshop with her. It was inspiring to see Carpenter’s friends greet her, as I could tell they are extremely fond of her. In Farm City, one gathers she has great friends, and I confirmed that impression tonight.

Cover of The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

I read Carpenter’s book Farm City last year, and it’s one of my favorite books. It was so heart warming and funny and inspiring. I told her that Farm City and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma are the two books that last year changed my life to my current super healthy eating habits, which I credit with my particularly good physical health and height appropriate weight. I weighed 25 pounds more a year ago than I do today, which was not overweight, but getting there. It turns out Carpenter and Pollan both studied together in college.

Farm City details Carpenter’s life in a gritty section of Oakland, California where she squatted her urban farm on a vacant lot behind her modest 2 bedroom apartment. The book ends with the lot being sold to a developer of condominiums, so her future was uncertain. Tonight I learned that the developer abandoned her development plans due to the real estate market collapse of 2008 and later decided she wanted Carpenter to own the lot. Carpenter told the developer she has little money, but the developer offered her a super low price to be paid in installments, and Carpenter now owns her city farm. She’s now having the concrete pad removed so she can get at the ‘real’ dirt below. The video excerpt I show below tells this lovely outcome much more colorfully than I’ve done here. I’ve decided to no longer post full videos of talks, as I feel it’s wrong to do so without explicit permission, and so far I’m scared to ask. Should I be scared to ask? I think it’s OK to post snippets, which will be how I handle talks I shoot video of going forward. This means I’m not going to post the rest of the Tim Ferriss video I promised when I wrote about his Commonwealth Club talk earlier this month.I’m sorry about this, but I’ve been feeling guilty. Some full length videos of high profile Commonwealth Club events are available on YouTube.com. I suggest that all Commonwealth Club events be captured on video and posted to YouTube. I think that this would help recruit members and increase attendance, as it’s so much more rewarding to attend than to watch online, primarily because you get to meet the speakers and shake their hands.

I introduced myself to Gussow as well, and I will soon read her latest book, entitled ‘Growing, Older.’ Yes, there is a comma between the two words in the title. She’s been advocating growing ones own food inside cities for decades, and she had many enchanting stories to tell, including how her friends and neighbors rebuilt her bowl shaped garden prone to becoming a lake over a dozen times per year due to it being on the Hudson River in Manhattan. The Hudson floods over a dozen times per year, which I did not know before this evening. Now the depression has been filled in with dozens of cubic yards of soil, so when the river floods, the water runs off quickly and doesn’t collect and stagnate, like before. Gussow is a teacher and advocate for green living, and I found her to be a wonderful presenter, with a warm and affectionate manner.

I had such a wonderful time this evening. I feel like I made some new friends and validated my plans to start a Carpenter style oasis in Forest Knolls, my hidden gem of a neighborhood in San Francisco.

Michael Milken at The Commonwealth Club January 13 2011

I saw Michael Milken speak yesterday evening at The Commonwealth Club of California. Milken invested in my first Internet company Hotpaper.com, Inc., by his participation as a limited partner in the Angel Investors I fund, the notorious and newsworthy Ron Conway fund from the late 1990s first dot com boom. I disclose this since it seems the right thing to do, since I’m starting to consider myself a journalist by these blog posts. In fact, a staff member from the Club asked me if I was with the press at this event, probably because he saw me taking pictures from the side isle with my professional looking camera and telephoto lens. I told him I wasn’t from the press and he said I couldn’t stand in the isle, which was fine since I already had some good shots. This was at the Mark Hopkins hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco, California, so it was a lot more formal than events I’ve attended at the Club’s office on Market Street.

I wonder what kind of press credential bloggers can get, and I wonder how serious I would need to become to be able to get such a credential. I recognize these posts are pretty insubstantial, but I do try and I hope to improve my writing and analysis over time.

Milken is a convicted felon who served time in prison for securities fraud, for those of you who don’t know who he is. I vividly remember his rise to fame and his fall from grace in the 1980s. I bought and read the chronicle of his life, Den of Thieves by James Stewart, when it was published, which is noteworthy because back then I read few books, and it took a lot to get me to read a long book. I couldn’t put this book down, and I can still remember stories from it, such as when Ivan Boesky couldn’t decide what to order at a fancy restaurant, so he ordered one of each entrée, and walked around the table and took one bite from each. So when I had a chance to see Milken in person, I just had to go. I’m glad I did, for Milken is a smart guy that had interesting things to say. In fact, I think Milken would love my Green Homes housing idea, and I plan to talk with him about it when the project is further refined.

I believe the Club will post the full video of Milken’s speech, so I won’t try to recount all he said. What I will do is focus on the key part I found most moving… that Americans spend far too much on housing relative to their incomes. This is a point that is near and dear to me, and is part of what motivates me to think about advancing my green home plan I’ve written about on this blog.

Milken said residents in South Korea spend 22% of their income on education and just 13% of their income on housing.

Milken also said residents in China spend an average of 15% of their income on their children’s education but only 10% of their income on housing.

More generally, he said the first four highest consumer spending expenses of residents in the United States are:

• Housing – 32.7%
• Transportation – 18%
• Food – 12.8
• Insurance and pensions – 11.2%

In contrast, he said the first four highest consumer spending expenses of residents in Asia are:

• Food – 23%
• Education – 15%
• Housing – 10%
• Clothing – 8%

In Asia, transportation and housing account for just 16% of household income, while in the United States, these two items account for 50.7% of household income. In Asia, transportation ranks 6th on the list for consumer spending, while in the United States, transportation ranks 2nd.

Stated another way, in the United States people pay 317% more for housing and transportation than do people in Asia. This is an astonishing disparity, and I suspect it’s a disparity that’s ruining the United States and dramatically benefitting Asia. We just must ditch our jumbo sized residences and move into smaller homes. The country’s future may depend on it.

Milken really emphasized his point about how ridiculous it is to spend over half ones income on just housing and transportation. The average home size in the United States has doubled in not many years. My parents raised me in a house much smaller than the average new home size today in the the US. I turned out fine, and our parents turned out fine, even though their houses were half the size or less of today’s average US home.

Milken had other shocking facts to deliver, such as the US spends more each year to buy potato chips than it spends each year to research heart disease. I can’t recall the exact numbers, but $3.5B for heart disease and $5B for potato chips is probably about right.

Milken also pointed out Americans have gained a lot of weight since 1991, and that the US could save something approaching a trillion dollars if its inhabitants did nothing more than return to the average weight in 1991. I wish I could remember the period of time over which that trillion dollars could be saved, but I can’t, I’m sorry. If someone has access to the Milken slide deck, please send it to me, as I could write another dozen blog posts if I could review those slides again.

I’m not vouching for Michael Milken by this post. I don’t know much about him, and a lot of what I know is from years ago. But I do know he speaks well and delivers an engaging message that big changes need to happen in the United States. His heart seems to be in the right place, and if what he says he’s done is true, it seems he’s more than made up for the 6 crimes he was convicted of and spent time in prison for. However, if you disagree, I welcome your comments. I got a long and detailed comment on my post about Tim Ferriss, and while the comment was highly critical of my review of Ferriss’ interview, I was still happy to have the comment. I hope that I can spark vigorous dialog in the comment sections of this blog.