It started when one of his staffers invited me to join him on his New York City radio show, Media Squat.  That’s simple enough.  At the time the PLENTY was awash with media coverage and we were all getting interviewed a lot.  I said what I always do when it comes to telling our stories.  And that is:  “Happy to.”

And I also said I wanted a copy of Life Inc. for the library, and I was told, “No problem.”

I did the interview and forgot about it, until one day months later when I was shoveling out my email stall and I realized I had never received a copy of the book.  I was disappointed to hear, “Sorry, we ran out of review copies.”

And so I forgot about it again.

Until one day at Chatham Marketplace when the Rushkoff staffer’s Mom bumped into me at the till and said, “I have something for you.”  I was in a hurry, she was going to be awhile checking out, I didn’t really have time for this interaction, so she handed me her car keys and said, “it’s in the back seat.”

I couldn’t resist the notion of opening someone else’s car, so I dashed out to the parking lot, and there was a hard bound copy of Life Inc., a little worse for wear after obviously spending some time on the humid back dash.

I was delighted, tossed it on the ever growing “to be shelved pile” in the  library, and forgot about it.

Until I received an email from Rushkoff asking me to contribute to his paperback edition-due at the end of February.  Happy to.  Gulp.  My own manuscript for Industrial Evolution is also due, and I am behind, and I have no business taking on other writing projects at this point in time.

I dashed  off a piece on our project, grabbed my unread copy of Life Inc., and gave it a read over nine days of sailing in the Virgin Islands.  Normally I can’t read on a sailboat.  Normally it makes me seasick.  But I couldn’t stop reading Life Inc.

It’s a riveting history of corporatism laced with keen insights into media, money, time, and the relationship between people and products.  I was fascinated.  It turns out Ruskoff has written ten books, won a ton of awards and is a towering New York intellectual.

What worried me as I read on was his ability to clearly outline the gloom and doom of the human condition.  And I became leery of the “Happy Chapter” to come.  After all, the subtitle is “How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back.”  I kept waiting for the “take it back” part.  I’m a fan of David Korten-another anti-corporatist like Rushkoff-but I tend to dispense with the whole genre because I don’t know what else to do-other than form corporations to do what needs to be done.  After all, on our project we have a “C” corporation which is a co-operative, an “LLC” corporation which is supposed to make money even though it never has, a “501(c)3″ corporation, and a handful of other corporations ranging from “sole proprietorships” to “partnerships.”  As one who has spent his entire life incorporating, I don’t really know how to change the world without doing so.

As I approached the end of Life Inc., the opportunity for the big solution chapter grew less and less, and I was terribly worried that a great read was going to leave me heartbroken-like so many “Energy and Society” books do.

And I was shocked to see in the last chapter that Rushkoff’s solution is basically us.  He talks about trading CSA shares for web development, and implementing local currency, and reclaiming vacant lots for food production.  I was stunned. I need to re-write what I sent him for his paperback edition.

It was wild.  He didn’t mention our project by name, but as I write this I realize the whole book was about us.  Just as we have been turning our backs on the “virtual” economy, the one Michael Shuman refers to as “TINA,” and redoubling our efforts at meeting our needs with local commerce and community, Rushkoff was writing a book about it.

It was remarkable.  I feel like I’m giving away the ending.  Life Inc. is a keeper.  A must read.

I will  get the book into the library by the 18th.

In their efforts to “protect American consumers,” the FTC wants me to tell my readers that I sometimes get free books.  At Piedmont Biofuels we run a lending library for the whole project and beyond.  The focus of our library is books on energy and society.

That’s what I like to read, and that’s the kinda stuff I write about.

My brother Glen likes to believe that most of the books in our library have been borrowed from him, and not returned.  And my brother Jim does a mountain of book reviews.

The reality is that some of our books have been purchased, some have been borrowed, and some have been sent to us by publishers as “review copies.”

Here is my rule:  Life is too short for a bad review.  So I only review books I like.  That means that when I read a “free” book and I am not able to endorse it, I merely put it in the library with no review.

Sometimes I write blurbs for other authors.  That entails reading the manuscript before the book is in print, and offering a one line comment that might help them sell the book.  In exchange for writing a blurb, I often get a copy of the book for free when it appears on bookstore shelves.

We’ve always tried to stay “legal” at Piedmont Biofuels, where I work.  That means complying with local building inspectors, fire marshals, state environmental regulators (for both air and water), and with federal regulators like the EPA and the IRS, to say nothing of our compliance with the National Biodiesel Board.

Hopefully this entry will make me good with the FTC…

He started it, and handed it back, with the comment, “Too much Thoreau for me.”

I thought that was odd.  As a Thoreau fan.  But I know he reads a lot, so I figured he was right.

But then my wife Tami read it, and started quoting from it, and then I had to fly to Toronto, and I needed a book, so I snatched it from Tami’s bedside pile.

The subtitle of Less is More is  “embracing simplicity for a healthy planet, a caring economy and lasting happiness.”  It is a collection of essays edited by Cecile Andrews and Wanda Urbanska (New Society Publishers 2009).

And it is fantastic.  Forget Thoreau.  Forget the hubris in the subtitle.  Forget about the fact that Urbanska is a self-styled television star.

It is a series of hard-hitting essays by a diverse collection of writers that wraps its arms around everything from simplicity to climate change to economic metrics to happiness.  I approached each chapter (each new writer) with skepticism and a willingness to put the book down, and I found myself delighted time after time.

I’m not a religious person, so it is easy for me to approach a chapter by Reverend Canon Sally Bingham entitled “Religion and the Earth” with my guard up, but like most of the other writers in Less is More, she won me over with terrific writing and ideas.

Religion, it seems, is one thing that has sustained for a couple of thousand years.

This is a book by contemporary philosophers, and academics, and practitioners of a new way of being, and as such it is pure delight.

Cecile Andrews chapter, The Circle of Simplicity was a highlight for me.  She goes from a guest observing her shopping list of “bread and water” to the construction of community in a few short pages.  It was marvelous.

I’m thinking the notion of “Less is More” came from a Browning poem, and has since been seized by architects and artists and writers of all sorts.

I’m not sure how the phrase applies to our growing library, exactly, since new arrivals are coming at a rate faster than they can be read or shelved, but this is a book that anyone would be glad to have on their shelf.

My first attempt came after a Fourth of July weekend on Kilby Island, off the coast of North Carolina.  My daughter Jess received a new camera, and filmed everything from badminton to magazine reading on the couch.  2 hours of footage was reduced to this:

My second attempt was in Lion’s Head, Ontario, visiting my brother Glen on the edge of Georgian Bay.  One of the cool things I did when I was there was publish an entry in his Wind Blog that stirred up a sea of discussion that is still swirling about.  Less controversial is the movie I putzed around with while I was there.

It is a fascinating book.  In many ways it is a counter point to Thomas Friedman.   I’m a big Friedman fan.  His last book;  Hot, Flat and Crowded was a manifesto for what America needs to be doing right now.

And I am with him.

But The Power of Place puts Friedman into a new perspective.

De Blij is a geographer.  And a demographer.  And an academic. One of his points is that the world is only getting “flatter” for a tiny percentage of the population.

De Blij borrows heavily from Buckminster Fuller’s “Spaceship Earth,” and breaks down the planet’s inhabitants into “Locals,” “mobals,” and “globals.” The overwhelming percentage of people die in the same country they were born in.  He calls them “locals.”

I married a “local” girl.  That makes me an authority on the subject.  If I were a character in Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man, I would be the guy with “my foot caught in the door.”

De Blij would score me as a “mobal.”  That is, someone who crosses a national boundary in search of a better life.  A risk taker.  A place changer.  He is kind to “mobals.”  It is a much kinder term than “dirty immigrant.”

My poor daughter does not qualify as a debutante because I am an immigrant to this country.

Got it.

I am currently flirting with New Society on writing a third book.  The potential title is Industrial Evolution, and the notion of “place” is inescapable.

One of the topics I will need to cover is Chatham County’s response to our project.  As a place, Pittsboro has been forced to respond to our undertakings–many of which have never been encountered before.

Chatham County is funny.  The Internet is supposed to have offered us a flattened world.  But in Chatham it has been used to build and defend parochial views. Our online presence is characterized by armchair quarterbacks and lovers of the status quo who like to spit poison on anything new or different.

De Blij would nod in agreement.  “Flattening” doesn’t just happen. Most of the world remains as round as it ever was.  I was intrigued by the book.  I thought it was tight, well written, and certainly worth reading.  It will be in the library on Monday.  New additions to the library include: A Nation of Farmers by Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton, The Solar Century by Jeremy Legett and Common Wealth by Jeffrey Sachs.

His path to Small is Possible came via the PLENTY, which is our newly revitalized local currency.  In the chapter “Financing Ourselves,” I accidentally did two things.  First, I wrote about our locally owned Capital Bank.  Local readers became enamored with the idea of banking locally and started opening accounts there.  They got a copy of the book to find out what their new customers were talking about. The founder of the bank bought some copies. I accompanied him to his wife’s book club at Mrs Lacy’s Tea Room in Sanford, North Carolina.  For a moment there I was the darling of Capital Bank.

Secondly Small is Possible was picked up by BJ Lawson, who was running for Congress.  In “Financing Ourselves” I told the story of the PLENTY–which was a currency I had supported and used for many years. Monetary theory is a hobby of BJ’s.  One day at lunch a group of us kicked around the idea of breathing fresh life into the PLENTY organization.  It was one of those idle conversations where one person says “I could do the website,” and another says I could do “this” and my suggestion was that I might be able to “get a bank.”

We did all of those things, the new PLENTY was launched and it turns out “Local Bank Accepts Local Currency” became international news.

It started with a misquote in USA Today which said, “We are a wiped out little town.” That led to a local burst of media, followed by the national guys. I headed off to Democracy Now. Next thing we knew our mayor was on FOX news, and Melissa was on the BBC, and CNN trucks were rumbling through our little town.  Then came the Russians, and the Polish TV crews.  Then Inside Edition.  It’s been nuts.

I confess to being at a deep disadvantage on the TV front.  Having not owned one for 18 years I have never seen many of these shows.

One of my favorite sidebars to this story is that of Janine Saunders.  She was raised at Blue Heron Farm–which is an intentional community in Pittsboro–written about in the chapter “Housing Ourselves.” Janine moved to New York, hired on as an assistant with Rushkoff, and was given the task of getting me on the show.  I love it.  Rushkoff has thought deeply about currency and capitalism, and I am thinking it might have come as a surprise to Janine that in order to get “the story,” from Manhattan she would need to start back in her home town of 2500 souls…

I confess to being hoplessly behind on this website, but I am delighted that the book has grown legs of its own.  I have been writing magazine articles lately–one on sustainable biodiesel for Alternatives Journal (that one was peer reviewed which was interesting and different), one about grassroots communications for BiodieselSMARTER, and one for Wildlife in North Carolina.  And I have continued contributing to the News and Observer, where one of my columns caused a minor dust up over food vs fuel organizing.

Most of my writing of late has been devoted to the death of my brother Mark.

Finding my way through a world without Mark has caused this site, and Energy Blog to suffer.

And while I have updated the Random Photos section, I have abandoned my attempt to keep the “Appearances” calendar up to date.  These days I am on the “Michael Shuman” track.  He once told me he did a public speaking gig once a week for many years.  I’m on once or twice a week these days.

A little economic development, some biodiesel, some sustainability in general, and occasional book stuff.

Just enough to keep me stressed and behind…

I’m the biodiesel guy on the bus.

The fall colors are on, the weather is crisp, and I am reminded that Joel read Small is Possible prior to its publication, and sent me a wonderful blurb for the back jacket. It came in too late for the first printing, so perhaps we will see it on the next round.

Here is what Joel wrote:

“Cutting through the heady academic and altruistic arguments for local,
small economy, Estill’s captivating storytelling offers practical and can-do reality.
I came away from this book filled with enthusiasm for a pro-neighborhood commercial community.”

I’m looking forward to meeting him tomorrow…

I also receive random photos from the world, and I thought I would put them up here.

This from my nephew in London:

“Facing out and everything–nice work!”

July 17th, Raleigh.  My picture made the bathroom wall of this venerable institution.  Nice.

At a meeting of the E.F. Schumacher Society in Great Barrington, MA.

Small is Possible hails from Schumacher’s tradition. This is the home to his library of books and letters. It was a remarkable place in the country, with an amazing internship program.

Beside me, Zafer seems unimpressed by yet another reading…

I found Schumacher’s library to be a fascinating and relaxing place that was populated by curious and intriguing people.

My friend Tarus was doing a consulting gig in Australia. I rent office space from him to store books. While he’s away I’m going to slip another thousand books into his room…

The boys took over the studio of WHYY after an interview I did for A Chef’s Table.

We blasted through 25 radio interviews in the summer of 2008, adding a nice stressful dimension to our usual travels.

We dropped in on Quartermoon Books on Topsail Island during our annual stay there.  Despite the idea that Small is Possible is aimed at local economy, biodiesel follows us wherever we go. Touring the book in the summer of 2008 was a fascinating ride. Wherever I went to discuss locally economy, I was greeted by people who wanted to talk about food vs. fuel and asking me to explain how biofuels are not evil.

For Biodiesel Power, Leif, Rachel and I ran around North Carolina having readings in conjunction with “Coop” conversations, hoping to inspire grassroots biodiesel efforts in neighboring communities.

We did this in Boone, which now has a biodiesel consumer coop, and we did it in Wilmington, where Cape Fear Biofuels continues to prosper and inspire us all.  North Carolina’s pattern of commercial biodiesel development is clearly modeled on the thinking of Piedmont Biofuels, as outlined in Biodiesel Power and Energy Blog.  When you look at a map of biodiesel production in the United States you see that North Carolina’s industry is characterized by a series of small scale producers, rather than 100 million gallon monster plants.

Tami and I had a fabulous trip to Malaprops in Asheville during our Biodiesel Power adventure.  It was a severely truncated tour because the book came out just as we were opening our biodiesel plant.  Bad timing.  Lesson learned.

Below is the “glamor shot” that Tami arranged to be taken by John Rosenthal. When she was a waitress in college she used to wait on his table occasionally, and she has never broken her infatuation with him.

It’s the “author” shot for Biodiesel Power, and what it taught me was that no one cares if you have an artful glamor photo of yourself on your book jacket.  Just grab a digital camera and smile.

I think people do care about “blurbs,” however.

When you watch people “shop” for books, they automatically turn to the back cover for inspection.  I do the same thing.  If I recognize the name of a “blurber” on a back jacket, I’m more inclined to buy the book.

I buy more books than I can read.  It’s a problem I have.

Nowadays publishers send me books to review and to write blurbs for, which means I am buried in books.

Small is Possible was picked up by Whole Foods.  They are a big supporter of The Abundance Foundation where Tami works, so yes, I did a “signing shift” in a grocery store.

It was a little bizarre sitting in a grocery store, ready to sign books for shoppers, but that’s OK.  I’m glad Whole Foods is carrying the book.

We also ran down to Wilmington to do a fundraiser for Cape Fear Biofuels.

My editor at New Society lives on an island off the coast of British Columbia. I like to tease her about her idyllic life–mostly because I am jealous of anyone who gets to sit around and edit books like Dimitri Orlov’s Reinventing Collapse, or Jason Del Gandio’s wonderful Rhetoric for Radicals. Occasionally, however, I am reminded that her life might not be ideal. New Society did come out with The Better World Shopping Guide, which I prefer to ridicule rather than read. Which caused someone to set up this shot and mail it in:

One time when I was away from the plant, we received an order for some biodiesel from the Obama people. They wanted some fuel for the inauguration. That request ignited our imagination and someone (I think it was Moya) decided that Barrack needed a copy of Small is Possible, and that it would be best if everyone around signed it. So a copy of the book was shipped to D.C. with the fuel. They also sent a jigsaw puzzle for Barrack’s girls, and a T.S. Designs Biodiesel tee shirt for his wife. Thoughtful group.

I was in Canada at the time, so I received the story via email and blog posts, but one of my favorite photos was the inscription by Tim, who is a perennial Intern at Piedmont Biofuels.

Tim’s inscription is on page 41 and it reads, “Thank you for reading this far. We know your time is extremely valuable,” and it is signed “Tim Angert.”

As I recall, Tim left our project in North Carolina and went home to Pennyslvania to vote. At the time it was a swing state.

Movies are a summer luxury in our family. So are good books. Which means it is no surprise to have the kids off watching WALL-E, while I am immersed in the book that may have been its inspiration.

Weisman’s premise is simple: humans leave earth. No nuclear holocast. No global warfare. No exotic disease. Just a nice clean departure. And with humans gone he takes a look at how nature might respond to our absence. It’s a daring undertaking.

It is a captivating exploration of everything from architecture to the bacteria we rely on to clear the dead skin from our eyelids.

The World Without Us explains how we pump groundwater out of New York City to keep the subways from flooding. Doing so maintains the integrity of the structures upon which the city rests.

I’ve read my share of oil industry books, and this account of what would happen to our petroleum infrastructure in our absence is a sheer delight.

From freeze-thaw cycles to rust to unchecked kudzu the book shines a clear light on our role in planetary ecology. I loved it.

Perhaps Bill McKibben kicked off the idea of our species inexorably altering the plant in The End of Nature. That idea is a given for Weisman and makes for a refreshing start point.

With clear writing and boundless curiosity Weisman appears to have wandered the globe discussing the absence of humans with everyone from canal operators to coral reef ecologists to chemical plant engineers. And it is a delightful trip.

In a way the book is a long, solid argument for population control. He foreshadows his conclusion with a conversation with E.O. Wilson who suggests the species will start self limiting population growth about now. And ends with the grim suggestion that if humans are to avoid complete ecological collapse, every couple must be limited to one offspring.

As a father of four with a vasectomy, it’s hard for me to plug into that one, exactly. And I have watched my children argue about environmental issues with childless opponents.

I suppose that in many ways the population argument is the one we are afraid to enter freely. All of our talk of conservation, and zero waste and carbon footprints is possibly silly in the face of population control. Which is one of the reasons The World Without Us makes for such a daring and bold book.

Now that it’s on the shelf, I guess I will roust the kids from their video screen and head to the garden. I believe we have potatoes, sweet corn, and edamame to harvest…