In Which We Are Introduced

Test. Test. Is this thing working?

This is my first blog. I plan to react to the things that happen as I build the permaculture plantation in my inner-city side yard, make art, get old, and live a life in a post-peak industrial democracy. Today I'm reacting to going to a big-box electronics store and getting an external hard drive and a USB hub. I also borrowed a scanner from my son.

I don't like it. I'd rather send letters to the editor, but we live when we live, and exchanging good ideas is like trading punches with the gestapo on top of a runaway train.

I'm Tom Roark, sixty, married, father to an adult son. I agree heartily with my neighbor Margaret's t-shirt that says "The Hippies Were Right." I live in that kind of a neighborhood -- South Minneapolis, Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District. We're the ones who elected the country's first Muslim Representative; I'm trying to turn the yard into a food-producing oak savanna; it's a liberal kind of place.

The blog title, "Can't Learn Less," is a slogan of Buckminster Fuller's. If you keep trying, you keep growing.